Atlanta Braves with David O'Brien

Phoenix – Greetings from the desert Southwest, where it’s a cloudless day with the temperature headed to the  mid-90s  and there’s another slate of Arizona Fall League games starting at 12:30 p.m. before intimate gatherings typically comprised of couple dozen scouts and about 75-100 assorted others,  including autograph hounds, girlfriends, potential girlfriends and those just fortunate to have the afternoon off.

(And if they’re unemployed, well, then at least they live in a place where they can go watch top prospects play in beautiful weather without crowds or high prices.)

Pals Freeman and Heyward figure prominently in Braves' future

So today we’re here in Peoria to see the Peoria Saguaros – that’s the team that has six Braves prospects on it (seven before Jason Heyward left with a strained back last week – face the Mesa Solar Sox in Peoria. Saw the same two teams play yesterday at HoHoKam Park (Cubs’ spring training site) in Mesa, where Mike Minor gave up a couple …

Continue reading Fall League’s in full swing, rumor mill’s about to be »

While it’s still a little early for many trade rumors of substance to start percolating, there is one Brave whose name is occasionally mentioned on this blog as a potential trade piece, one that to me seems not just highly improbable but almost outlandish.

Jair Jurrjens.

Yes, there are some denizens, presumably of sound mind and in a sober state, who advocate trading a 23-year-old elite starting pitcher who is not even eligible for arbitration until the 2011 season. A pitcher who won 13 games as a rookie, then improved significantly in 2009 during his second full season in the majors.

Jurrjens is a budding ace, not trade piece

That’s not even taking into account that he’s extremely bright, has an impeccable reputation as a teammate and a hard worker, and he’s a kid who never complained while getting brutal run support for most of a season in which he could easily have won 18-20 games instead of 14. Beyond all that, he’s just too talented to trade right now.

He went 14-10 with …

Continue reading Would you really trade Jurrjens? »

As we begin typing, the Phillies are two outs from returning to the World Series, this time for a likely Amtrak series against the New York Yankees, who with a win against the Angels on Thursday can wrap up their first AL pennant since 2003 — six years and only a billion or so dollars’ worth of Yankee player salaries ago.

Oh, well, at least I predicted half of the field correctly (I picked Phillies and Angels in my AJC previews last week).

And if a commuter-train series isn’t the Dodgers-Angels Freeway Series that many of us had sort of hoped for, at least it’s not the supremely annoying NY Subway Series we dread (though with the current state of the Mets, I don’t think we need fear a Subway Series soon, unless it’s a Cubs-White Sox version, which wouldn’t be bad).

I’ll get to Martin Prado and why I think he’ll be the opening day second baseman in just a second. (That’s what I’ve thought ever since about late July, when he was one month into thriving as the everyday 2B, and my …

Continue reading Wren’s plan for Braves: Get better »

For a slow Braves week with nothing going on, there sure was a hell of a lot going on. Whatever happened to the days of sitting back and getting a little time off after the baseball season ended and before the free-agent and trade discussions began?

Oh, that’s right. Little thing called the Internet.

Hudson says he'll take "hometown discount," but….

Anyway, it is what it is today, and what it is is a 12-month baseball season, for all intents and purposes. College football fans like to say there’s three sports seasons – football, spring football and recruiting. Baseball fans are intelligent enough to divide their attention between their favorite sport and the others, but most also realize baseball never stops anymore, from pre-spring training Fan Fests and pitching camps, to spring training, the regular season, various firings and hirings, the postseason, more firings and hirings, free-agent filing, trade rumors, GM meetings, trade rumors and free-agent rumors, Winter …

Continue reading Clark left Braves, Hudson hopes to stay »

We’ve got some Junior Wells wailing on the stereo, Dodgers-Cardinals muted on the TV, door to the patio open and a nice Punch cigar burning. It hasn’t been a week since the season ended, but doesn’t it already feel like long time since the Braves were serious contenders for a postseason spot? And no, that’s not the cue for some lovable cynics here to say, “Because it has been a long time – about four years!”

No, I was referring to that fleeting time less than two weeks ago when the Braves were on a 15-2 tear that brought them within two games of Colorado for the wild-card lead. Two games. Then they lost one when the Rockies won one, and that was that. Flameout Even as Bobby Cox talked about how badly the Braves wanted to make sure they held on to second place in the East, they lost their last six in a row (their longest skid of the season, by the way) and finished in third place behind Florida.

But while the Marlins’ clueless owner debated whether to fire manager Fredi …

Continue reading Wanted by Braves: Big bat, righty preferred »

There’s nothing quite so uniquely empty as the feeling of following a team — whether as a fan or a beat writer — in the last days of a baseball season that’s ending with a meaningless series of game, rather than a playoff series.

Because the baseball season is so long, so involved, from six weeks of spring training to six months of almost-daily games, and because you (and me) have so much more access to players than in other sports, it’s a very different experience following, covering, and also play baseball, than other sports.

The ending feels strange and somehow hollow when expectations for a fan’s particular team were high to begin with. But especially so when you had those expectations reduced, then raised again, brought back from the brink, when you had either given up hope or were at least teetering — back in mid-June when the Braves were a sub-.500 team, or a few weeks ago when they were in fifth place, 8-1/2 games back in the wild-card race.

Any way. They made …

Continue reading Eliminated Braves are optimistic for ‘10 »

 So we ink-stained wretches of the pressbox are watching Ricky Nolasco’s overpowering 16-strikeout performance against the Braves last night, marking each strikeout in our scorebooks while typing away at our stories and making note of the various announcements being made as Nolasco matched this franchise record or that one, or this Braves opposition standard or that one.

And it was announced that Nolasco’s 16 strikeouts tied Sid Fernandez’s 1989 mark with the Mets as the most against the Braves since the team moved to Atlanta before the 1966 season. Impressive, no doubt.

Diaz reacts after making last out of Wednesday's game, ending Braves' rally and any remaining postseason hopes.

But there was one small word that was easily overlooked within that announcement. The “in” Atlanta part of it. And if I’d listened closer, and hadn’t been watching and scoring the game while also writing, I might have objected and said, “Yes, but what’s the record for …

Continue reading When Braves strike out, they go for broke »

Believe? The Braves believe they must run the table. They're probably right.

Three games behind the wild-card leader with only five to play seems about as desperate a situation today for the Braves as they faced on the morning of Sept. 10, when they were fifth in the wild-card standings, 8-1/2 off the lead.

But if you’ve been following them closely and don’t view the Braves any differently today than on Sept. 10, well, then all I can say it you must be determined not to change your perception regardless of events.

Because it’s been a helluva run back to relevance for these Braves, and no less a realist than Chipper Jones has been talking the past week about how much this finish could and should mean for the Braves moving forward next year.

The same Chipper who in previous weeks had talked about how next season might be his last if he doesn’t play any better than he did for much of this one.

Seeing his team rally down the stretch and win 15 out of 17 games before …

Continue reading Playoffs or not, Braves’ strong finish bodes well for future »

   (Staff writer Carroll Rogers is filling in for David O’Brien.)

   We’re at the point where every game is important, the end-all-be-all. Yes, agreed, we’re there. But let me venture out on a limb and say tonight is especially so, if, for no other reason than because Josh Johnson is pitching.

   The Marlins were going to run Rick VandenHurk out there until they figured out Johnson was well enough from the flu to start (he was scratched from Sunday’s start vs. the Mets). So now, the Braves face one of the best pitchers in the league, if you ask Bobby Cox, and if you look at the radar gun.

   Johnson has a mid-90s fastball that doesn’t let up. He’ll throw hard in the sixth inning just as sure as the first. He has a nasty slider and changeup, and together the kind of repertoire that had him no-hitting the Braves into the sixth inning the last time they faced him in Florida on Aug. 31.

   You remember that game? When Kenshin Kawakami was the one to finally help the …

Continue reading Next hurdle: Josh Johnson »

   (Staff writer Carroll Rogers is filling in for David O’Brien today.)

   Let’s see if I’ve got this right. Braves are back in the hunt, down only 2 ½ games in the wild card. And there’s a touch of fall in the air (overnight temps in the 50s?!) and a zero percent chance of rain come game time. Could that combination bring fans back out to Turner Field tonight for the start of a seven-game homestand?

   It’s the final homestand of the season, one where any one loss along the way – really two – could dash the Braves hopes. But any win could keep this momentum rolling and put that much more pressure on the Rockies.

   Don’t you hear, kind of anecdotally, among your friends and acquaintances, people talking more about it now? I wonder if, and for the Braves sake I hope it will, translate into a little more excitement at the ballpark this week.

   It’s hard to say. I’m never sure with Braves fans how much what’s going on between the white lines affects whether they …

Continue reading It’s the Marlins…and it’s serious »