Wow, what a long winter it has been. But that doesn’t really matter anymore, because spring training is here and it starts today at 1:10 PM EST against the Mets. Coverage will by on SNY, as well as MLB.tv. That is, as long as the weather holds up.

I feel obligated to write something, even though the off-season has been relatively quiet recently. Personally, however, my team didn’t make the playoffs and I am getting antsy for some new sports. That is why I think I’ve decided to get MLB.tv for the 2010 season, because I just don’t think I can go another year of only listening to the Braves on the radio. The thought of this has been getting me excited for what’s coming up, so I thought I would just expand on my thoughts for the first time in what seems like a while.

Finally, the blog has been fixed after it broke itself. I’ve put a new theme up, but will probably change it because it seems kind of ‘bleh’ to me.

As the old adage goes, you can never have too much pitching. That is the philosphpy the Braves took into the draft on Tuesday. Holding the 7th overall pick, the highest since the team took Roberto Kelly second overall in 1991, the Braves hoped to select local product Zach Wheeler but he was snatched away by the Giants with the pick before. The Braves selected Vanderbilt lefty Mike Minor with the pick.
Minor profiles as a guy with little upside. He currently projects as a number 4 starter. Minor’s stuff is average, he gets by with pitch ability. His fastball sits anywhere from 86 MPH to 89 MPH. His best pitch is a plus change up.  He has  solid curve and uses a slider for his primary breaking ball. The slider does have good depth on it. His pick off move is probably the best in this year’s draft.  Minor is a low risk, low reward guy. What you see is basically what you get.  The Braves in my opinion would have been better suited  taking a high upside guy here rather than selecting Minor.
The only other pick the Braves had today was the 87th pick. With that pick they turned their attention to the Ivy League and selected Princeton’s David Hale. Hale projects as a power reliever in the pros.  His fastball routinely sits at 92-93 but he can dial it up a notch to 95-96 when he needs to and has topped out at 97. He has flashed a plus slider at times and has shown some feel for a change up. He played two ways at Princeton so having him focus on pitching should help him progress more.
The Braves hold the 7th pick in each round the rest of the way. I expect the Braves to return more towards their roots and start to pick more high school kids with high upsides. A few names to keep an eye on for Wedsnday’s rounds: Austin Adams, Luke Bailey, Colton Cain, Brody Colvin, Matt Grahm, David Nick, Jonathan Singleton, and Zach Von Rosenburg. I will have a write up on the draft when it is complete.

Well, well, well. I guess I have some explaining to do about the lack of updates on this blog. As I’ve mentioned before, life is busy. I’ve been going through some major changes in my life recently, and honestly, I haven’t had the time or energy to write anything. So, for that, I apologize. I promise, however, that I’ll try to be better about it in the future. This means recaps for the following games, and maybe old recaps for the ones I missed. It really depends how my schedule works out. Bear with me, though, I promise you no long hiatuses like this anymore.

Finally, a win. The last game the Braves had won was last Friday, but it had just been mediocre performance since then. Well, they rebounded last night, not because the pitching staff was great, but, surprise, the offense found its way to the ballpark.

As I mentioned for yesterday’s game, writing about a team that always loses gets tiresome. Fortunately in tonight’s game, even though they lost, they did provide some excitement at the end. It wasn’t enough to win, but it’s a good reminder of why I’m in this for the long hall.

You know, these recaps aren’t much fun to write when the Braves are losing. They lost their third game in a row last night, and now have a 11-14 record. What’s worse, I know how I mentioned that Bobby pitches to pretty much every hitter, no matter how much they’ve beat up on the Braves in the past. I named Carlos Beltran as one of those players, and he’s beginning to make me question Bobby’s decision making. Beltran knocked the Braves around last night, but I’ll get to that in a second. Let’s start with the pitching.

I wanted Jo-Jo Reyes to have a solid second come-back start. Apparently, it wasn’t meant to be. Once again, the Braves lose a series to a sub-.500 team and have lost their second series in a low. Let’s get on with this.

It seems no matter what this team does, they can never get over that .500 hurdle. I have a feeling that once they’re finally able to surpass it, they’ll take off. But, until then, we have to sit through games like these. Oh, and I hope it stops raining. Rain delays aren’t much fun.

Mike Hampton. That’s all that I really have to say. He started the series opener against the Braves in Atlanta on Friday night, and his reception wasn’t exactly welcoming. Probably for two reasons: he left the team after they had put up with his injury madness for 3 years, and because the Braves’ offense awoke and knocked him out of the game early. Let’s go.

I still dislike the Cardinals. Wednesday night was just more of an indication why. Vazquez pitched really well, but the Cardinals had to go and spoil it in one inning. Despicable.

Reyes proved me wrong. Man, did he ever make me eat my words. For a long time in this game, it looked like he was finally going to give a very strong performance with no results, but the offense was able to overcome and win the game on a single hit. Nice going.

Let me start out by saying that I dislike the Cardinals. I don’t know what it is about them as an institution: Tony La Russa, David Eckstein, whoever their new shortstop is, Blaine Boyer, and ESPN’s love-fest with Pujols, but I don’t like them. I also don’t like the fact that they always beat up on the Braves. Last night was just such an occasion and proved to be frustrating to watch at times. It was a 1-run loss that put them below .500 in a game where the offense struggled to mightily to do much of anything. I’m going to chart a graph of how the Braves seem to always stay at the .500 line.

You can’t win them all. The Braves should just be happy with themselves that they were able to rebound after a weak series against the Nationals. After two wins to begin the series, they just couldn’t complete the sweep, and got roughed up pretty bad in the process.

I mentioned yesterday that I thought that today’s game was going to be a pitching duel. Well, apparently I was only half right, as Lowe came to pitch, but the Braves absolutely teed off of Arroyo. The end result was the start of a winning streak and a record above .500. Hopefully they can keep this momentum going. Onto the game.

The reason why the Braves won against the Nationals on Wednesday night was because they walked in the only run of the game. The Braves won tonight for a similar reason: patience at the plate. Once again, the Braves were aided by the opposing pitchers walking in runs. The result was a win in game one of the series and a record back at .500.

The Braves finally put an end to another losing streak that they were on and prevented themselves from being swept on Wednesday night. Oddly enough, it wasn’t the offense that overcame its adversaries, but the Nationals’ bullpen doing itself in.

The rain continues to keep on pouring and the Braves continue to keep on losing.

[Image: Yahoo! Sports]

I’m more upset with the weather than I am actually with the way this game turned out. Sure, the Braves lost a 1-run game to a team that had a 1-10 record, but thunderstorms in the cold weather? Oh well, I guess that’s not for me to decide. This game had two rain delays in it, which tends to happen when it rains a lot. Fortunately, they were able to play all 9 innings. Unfortunately, their offensive woes continue and they lost.

It’s about time. That’s all I can really say about this win. Well, not really, but it still felt warranted. Everything was working for the Braves today, who returned to a .500 record. The starter didn’t put the game out of reach, the bullpen didn’t follow suit, and the offense rejoined the club today. This combination prevented an embarrassing sweep by the Pirates and ended a 5-game losing streak. Onto the game.

I thought the Braves got over this last season. I thought that the offense problem wouldn’t be an issue after the way the season started. I thought this team was done losing 5 in a row to mediocre teams. I thought this team was finished with playing below .500. Apparently, I was wrong. This game was the epitome of last season. The starting pitching had a meltdown, the bullpen matched the starter’s effort, and the offense was nowhere to be found. It’s been 22 innings since the Braves have scored a run. Let’s get on with this.

After getting swept by the Marlins, the Braves hoped to turn it around and beat up on the Pirates. Unfortunately, that wasn’t meant to be. There were two problems that the Braves mainly faced last year, which, once again, manifested themselves tonight. What were they? The bullpen and the…offense? Ah, yes, the offense. I’m beginning to think that this is starting to become a problem. So, let’s get on with this.

Getting swept is always rough, especially this early on in the season. But all you can really do is chalk it up to bad luck and soldier on. Hopefully the Braves will be able to rebound in the next game and learn from their mistakes. I’d be more upset with this game if Kawakami hadn’t pitched, but, he did, and it’s interesting to see what he’s going to do.

As I mentioned yesterday, the problem of the bullpen still seems to linger from last year. Well, once again tonight’s game bore witness to that. More interestingly, however, is the question of how the Marlins are 7-1 this season? Maybe it’s the shoddy play of their opponents? I guess we’ll find out in this recap. Onto the game.

There were a few fundamental problems with the Braves last year that seem to be resurfacing again, in part, during this season. I’m speaking mainly of the bullpen and the offense. Although the starting pitching wasn’t necessarily consistent last year, they seem to be doing pretty well now. Unfortunately, it’s the other problems that still plague the Braves.

The Braves completed a sweep of the winless Nationals. The Braves have come out the gate as if they are Friesian Fire. Starting the year off at 5-1 for the first time since 2007, when the team started off 7-1. The hitting was the star today.

Kenshin Kawakami. That’s basically who this game was about, even though it looked like he was going to have a rocky major league debut in the first few innings. But the Japanese-native turned that around and the offense had has back, so all was right in the world in helping the Braves’ record improve to 4-1. Here we go.

Coming off a bit of an embarrassing loss against the Phillies on Thursday, the Braves were able to rebound and take out the Nationals in their home opener in an extra-inning show. Although it wasn’t as clean a win as a Braves’ fan could hope, they certainly got the job done, despite a thunderstorm being thrown into the mix.

Just when we thought everything was going well, the problems of last year began to rear their ugly head again. What was it this time? Well, stated eloquently, the fustercluck of a bullpen that this team has. There really is no good reason why the Braves should’ve lost this game, their first one of the year. A late comeback was also ineffective, already starting the 1-run loss total early in the season. So, off we go.