Asleep At The Switch

On June 9th, I got to Turner Field very, very early.  This wasn't just some random day game, after all.  You can meander down to The Ted any home-game afternoon and have a fine time marinating in Budweiser and peanut shells and scorching Georgia sunshine.  This day was different, special.  This was Sid Bream Bobblehead Giveaway Day, and I'd be damned if I wasn't one of the first 20,000 through the gates fortunate enough to claim one.  Just look at that majestic representation of one of the most iconic moments in Atlanta sports history.  It's a thing of beauty.

"The Slide" took place 20 years ago this October, when the National League's power structure looked an awful lot like it does now.  By record, the five best NL Teams in 1992 were the Braves, Pirates, Reds, Cardinals, and Expos.  If you take the Nationals to be a metaphysical continuation of the 'Spos,which to a degree they are, then things haven't changed much.  (Or rather, they've changed a great deal and then changed back.)  Granted, it's not a perfect analogy.  The following things are different than they were in 1992: the Dodgers and Giants are also formidable contenders this season, which was not at all the case back then.  The advent of the Central Division and subsequent team realignment has resolved the cartographic farce of the Braves somehow belonging to the NL West.  Oh, and none of the '92 players are still active.  (I checked, Jamie Moyer didn't pitch a single game in the majors during the '92 season.) 


Not only did I get that sweet bobblehead on that Saturday back in June, I got the rosy feeling that comes from watching your team play excellent baseball.  That was back when Atlanta was only a game back of the Nats in the NL East; when Michael Bourn was raking; when Brandon Beachy and Jair Jurrjens were in the rotation; when the Braves looked great.  Things look a little less rosy today.  After muddling through a mini-swoon through the second half of August, the Braves came out smoking like a Craig Kimbrel fastball in September ... or so the record said.  The team took 9 of its first 11 games this month including five straight, and everyone in the ATL breathed a collective sigh of relief.  Maybe we wouldn't catch Washington in the divisional race, but we were going to the postseason without a hitch.  There would be no repeat of the long, precipitous decline that capped last year's campaign in agonizing fashion.  Not this year, not this team.  This team had an identity.  This team had a deep and healthy bullpen.  This team had a shot at a lengthy October run.  The problem is that the swoon never really ended.

Atlanta's offense can also be added to the list of things that are different than they were in 1992.

 From the 1st to the 13th of September that season, the Braves scored 76 runs and allowed 48.  In that same date span this year, they've scored 37 runs and allowed 41.  This month, Atlanta has been collectively outscored by a pair of teams struggling to remain relevant in the wild card race (Phils, Brewers) and a pair of teams who barely qualify as big-league clubs at all (Rockies, Mets).  Aside from an 11-run outburst against New York on the 8th, the Braves have failed to put up more than three runs in a game for ten days, and that against some of the lowliest pitching in baseball, no less.  On the year, the team OPS has been a very respectable .718.  This month it's .643.  And I don't even want to contemplate our Stranded RISP rate, which has been truly atrocious since the proverbial calender page turned. Calling the recent offensive production anemic is doing a disservice to anemia.  The Braves don't lack red blood cells, they lack blood period.  They lack life.  This team is sleepwalking through the deep stretch drive, and the situation will become untenable if they don't wake up soon.

It's not that we're headed for another closing-day loss meltdown.  I hope.  It would be almost impossible to drop out of both wild card spots with so few games left.  I hope.  (Although we said much the same last year at the beginning of the month.)  It goes back to the well-worn concept of being hot at the right time.  Two weeks ago, the Braves were scorching and looked ready to roll into the playoffs firing on all cylinders.  Now, the bats are doing a convincing rendition of John Cage's "4:33" and the pitching is coughing up five-run innings every other game.  Staggering into the postseason in a collective torpor is rarely the recipe for success.

For that reason, tonight feels big.  Back in the Ted after a discouraging road trip.  Against the upstart Nationals, a team we'll likely have to battle again in the postseason.  Against Ross Detwiler, who has semi-owned some of Atlanta's premier players this season, to the extent that Fredi Gonzalez is sitting Michael Bourn and Brian McCann tonight because they just can't seem to hit the guy.  And against the tide of inertia and entropy that has enveloped the team of late.  If we can't swim (or at least doggy paddle with gusto) in this game and the ensuing series, it's going to be sink, undertow, and out to harsher waters right quick.

This is it, boys.  Time to flip the switch.  Play ball.  

  

The Ghost Of Pitching Changes Past

Not to speak ill of the semi-retired, but a certain facet of Bobby Cox's managerial style used to drive Braves fans up a wall.  Let's be honest here: though he was and is and is a lifelong top-echelon baseball thinker, the man had a penchant for inexplicable bullpen moves.  Cardinals fans are nodding in sympathy right now, but this tendency wasn't anything akin to Tony La Russa's mad scientist schtick.  Most of the time it wasn't some elaborate, matchup-oriented chess maneuver or high-concept stunt.  Neither Bobby nor pitching coach Leo Mazzone ever went in much for that brand of gamesmanship.  No, it was simply that he'd leave a starter in a few batters too long, or pull them when they were cruising, or send precisely the wrong guy to the mound in key situations.  Worst of all: you knew it as it was happening.  You could just feel it. 

Any Atlanta fan over the age of 25 knows exactly what I mean.  Maybe John Smoltz would be in a jam, clearly having an off night.  His stuff wouldn't have the electric zip it usually had, guys would be tagging singles left and right, and Bobby would leave him on the mound.  We'd collectively sit there thinking "get him out of there!!!", as if we could telepathically force our manager to make that decision through sheer force of will.  By the time he listened to our ESP prompting, it was almost always too late.  Conversely, maybe Tom Glavine would be ripping through opposing batters, and then with one out in the sixth, for reasons known only to himself, Bobby would yank him and send Armando Reynoso or Mike Remlinger or some other poor soul out to the mound.  Your gut would tighten, you'd wince, and you'd think "Oh f*** here it comes."  And it would come.  The leadoff walk.  The double into the gap.  The crack of a towering homer leaving the bat to slice through the humid Georgia night and land deep in the seats.  As if by alchemy, a two-run lead would become a three-run deficit. For all our gawdy starting rotations (and often underrated bullpens) of that halcyon 14-year run, Bobby's pitching changes sure could spin straw into crap.  

When it was announced that Fredi Gonzalez would be taking Cox's seat in the dugout, the general thinking was that a guy who spent a number of years with the organization was the perfect replacement.  Gonzalez, after all, understood the Braves Way, or How Bobby Did It, or whatever.  Unfortunately, that apparently includes a pronounced atavism regarding Cox-ian bullpen management.

I was driving home from work on Friday when, in the opener of a semi-critical series with the Nats, Andrelton Simmons sent a two-run dinger juuuuuuust over the wall in left-center; his apparent favorite spot in Turner Field.  That homer completed a four-run rally to tie the game; it was pretty much the definition of a momentum shift.  How did Fredi Gonzalez capitalize on this windfall?  He sent freaking Chad Durbin to the mound to pitch the next inning.  As soon as that particular bit of information came over the radio, I tensed up.  Such a move had all the makings of a disastrous Braves bullpen moment, and I knew what was going to happen before it came to pass.  As I held the steering wheel in a death grip, Michale Morse launched Durbin's first pitch into the right field stands.  The Braves lost 5-4.     

On June 12th, Gonzalez pulled Mike Minor, who was (and still is) in dire need of a confidence boost with one out and a man on first in the 8th.  Minor had been mowing down the Yankees for seven innings, and commanded a four-run lead.  Instead of letting him roll, or sending in Craig Kimbrel to get the last five outs (heaven forbid we use our best reliever for more than one inning at a time!!!), Fredi sent a woefully struggling Jonny Venters to the hill.  The next few minutes unfolded like so: single, walk, A-Rod grand slam to tie the game, single, Fredi pulls Venters and STILL doesn't go to Kimbrel, sends Cory Gearrin out there instead, Nick Swisher hits a two-run homer.  Yankees win 6-4.   

And tonight, just now as I was writing this, yet another example manifested.  Our promising young starter Tommy Hanson was in the middle of a superb performance against the lowly Cubs, allowing just one run through six innings of lights-out work.  Now, here's the thing about Tommy: he has endurance problems and generally does not fare well late in games.  Over the last week, Atlanta has been subjected to the sort of  triple-digit heat and drenching humidity that usually waits until August to fully afflict us.  This is the stuff that drove humans to invent central air conditioning because at some point on the thermometer oscillating fans become utterly worthless.  Vicious, implacable summer weather.  The kind that drains the body's energy and addles the mind.  The kind that turns even the most finely-tuned athletes into staggering, dead-eyed versions of themselves.  In other words, precisely the sort of conditions under which one does not send a starting pitcher of questionable stamina back out for the seventh inning.

Actually, I'm going to cut Fredi a little slack on sending Hanson out for the top of the frame.  Before tonight, the man hadn't lost a game since May 28th, and he was clearly in a groove on this sweltering evening.  The problem was leaving him out there after two consecutive singles to start the inning.  I mean, how glaring and obvious a red flag do you need?  Right then, the prudent action was to get Hanson the hell off the mound and send in Eric O'Flaherty or some other competent arm.  Nope, Fredi left him there even as he was clearly faltering.  So of course, Hanson walked Darwin Barney to load the bases and then gave up a three-run double to Luis Valbuena.  4-1 Cubbies, which was still the score when Freddie Freeman flied out to end the game.  Bobby Cox's one fatal managerial flaw is alive and well in the ATL. 

Look, like every Atlanta native, I revere the man.  He wrote out our lineup cards for the entirety of my cognizant life up until a few seasons ago.  But he had a genetic deficiency when it came to when and how to make pitching changes, and I deeply wish Fredi Gonzalez's memory retention of managerial techniques had excluded that particular tic.  I know baseball is difficult and fate is capricious, but in 14 years we only won a single World Series with one of the greatest pitching rotations ever assembled and a lot of heavy bats.  With (mostly) lesser lights on the roster and brutal competition these days, what can we realistically hope for in 2012?  If the answer is going to be anything beyond "a decent regular-season record" then Fredi has to shake those bullpen idiosyncracies.

Fans, on balance, are not anywhere near as knowledgeable as those who have had years of intimate involvement with a sport.  We do, however, have the ability to recognize patterns when they're staring us in the face.  This is one such pattern.

Dear Fredi: if you won't listen to your gut, listen to ours.  Or, failing, that, listen to logic.  Please stop mismanaging your pitchers.  I gotta tell you man, we've danced this two step before and we're beyond tired of it.

Sincerely,

Braves fans everywhere.