The next two series coming up are against the Mets, who are still playing well, and the Diamondbacks, who have the best record in baseball thus far. The longest homestand of the season continues with a doubleheader tomorrow against another of our division rivals in the Mets. We shall see what happens as anything is possible in this game.

Tonight kicks off Interleague play with three games against some of the current Braves’ former team, the A’s. I really don’t know much about them because I don’t really watch any other baseball besides the Braves, but I’ve read some things about them in this Talking with the Enemy over at Talking Chop. And with my curiosity, I’ve looked at what Yahoo! has to say about the team, well, from a statistical perspective anyway. (It sounded good anyway.)

Last night was how you really win ballgames, even though Boyer decided to make it interesting in the 9th. But still, a win is a win. Tonight we wrap the series up with Chuckie going against Cole Hammels. While we have a few guys that haven’t seen Hammels, and even though his ERA against the Braves is over 4, there are some guys in the lineup that haven’t done anything against him. But the two people I see as keys tonight are Mac and Chipper. Mac has a .444 BA with 4 hits, 2 doubles, and three RBIs against Hamels and Chipper has a .333 BA with 3 hits, 1 double, 2 HR, and 3 RBIs against Hammels. So, Mac and Chipper are my two key people for tonight’s game.  

This morning I thought of this title and it still sounds good, so I’ll use it. The title says it all. Need I explain myself? Didn’t think so. Braves need to win these next two games against the Phillies to take the series at least. That’s one thing about the Phillies I will give them credit for, they do not roll over and die, at least not against us, even when things look bad; they keep fighting until the end and we should, too.

The Pirates series definitely could have gone better, but at least we didn’t get swept as it looked like there for a minute. Hopefully the offense gained some sense of confidence from the second game going into Philadelphia. While we always seem to take the toughest teams to beat more seriously than the rest, for whatever reason, last year we still had problems with the Phillies; they seemed to always prove to be a thorn in the Braves’ sides.

With yesterday’s rainout, we’re going to try to fit in a twin bill today with Pittsburgh since we do not see them again this year. From 12 pm to 7 pm, there’s a 50-60% chance of rain in Pittsburgh, so we might be lucky to get in one game today. Hopefully we can manage two and won’t have to sacrifice a much-needed off day later in the year.

Normally I wouldn’t post a video unless it were baseball related (with exception of the previous End of Ze World video), but I always seemed to think the Mother’s Day episode from Full House, and yes, I watched the show growing up and still watch reruns of the show on ABCFamily, was so cute! Especially the part with the Mother’s Day song. Observe below:

With the team on a six-game win streak, I say let’s do our best to keep it going. Today we start a four-game series against the Pirates in Pittsburgh and I’m sure it hasn’t been quite long enough to forget the first time we saw them at home. We have Glavine on the mound tonight for us facing Ian Snell. Glavine still has yet to pick up a win and his last outing wasn’t that great considering it was a Reds massacre or there about. Let’s hope he has his stuff tonight and can notch his first win of the season.

Everyone is dropping like flies and getting injured. What are they drinking/eating in that clubhouse? Whatever it is, they need to find it and get rid of it before the whole team catches on. According to Yahoo’s injury list, these are the following on the DL:

Like my title says, if yesterday is an indication of what’s to come with this team, then it will surely be welcomed with open arms. The offense finally woke up and let’s hope they keep it that way against the up- and-coming mediocre series ahead with San Diego and Pittsburgh. It’s really nice to finally see this lineup clicking on all cylinders and showing off how much of a threat and dangerous offense they can be. It’s really nice to see Mark T. and KJ heating up as well, even though Mark was hit-less in yesterday’s offense awakening. Mark T. and KJ seem to make things flow better when they are on. Mac keeps hitting and will only improve with runners on base, as he showed yesterday that he can and will produce in key situations. Kotsay is exceeding expectations and that’s a good thing.

While many people are already panicking and it’s just May 1st, I’ve been thinking of some possibilities that might help out the team. Of course, not all of these are my ideas, so I won’t take credit for them. These are just possibilities that the team could think about doing over the course of this season. Some of these suggestions are not meant to be taken seriousily, by the way.

Last night didn’t seem to prove that these off days are helping too much and we have one tomorrow and another on Monday. Why is that when they play the Nats, they seem to forget every fundamental ability to that they’ve learned? Maybe the Nats’ bad luck rubs off on us, but then lasts for a few games after, unfortunately. It seems to be the same thing over and over again. The starting pitching is giving us quality starts and the offense, defense, and bullpen seem to keep letting us down in some way or another, ending in a loss. I know it’s too early to panic, but something has got to give somewhere. The same guys are having to produce because the rest of the offense is not doing their part, especially with men on base and RISP.

This has to be the third time we’ve been in Washington D.C. already. At least we won’t see them at all in May that I remember seeing. Tom Glavine will be activated from the DL to face Tim Redding, who we’ve seen before, in tonight’s game. The game starts at 7:10 pm on SportSouth. Hopefully having an off day, and with Chipper and Escobar hopefully returning to the lineup, we’ll get a win tonight.

As you’ve probably noticed, I rarely make a post on Friday’s because it’s my day to sleep in. Well, I thought I’d make a post today because I received an invitation to the Longball Cellars Wine Tasting & Presentation for the charity wines that are being sold for McCann, Chipper, and Glavine. The “private party” I was invited to is on May 19th from 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm, RVSP date is the 13th. The only thing is, I’ll be in school that day, though not all day, but the main reason I probably won’t go is because I won’t be 21 until October and I would have to go alone most likely. Plus, I’d have to drive over two and half hours to get there from where I live, which stinks.

What’s worse about this loss is that we managed to leave more men on base than the last few games (13). Over the course of the last three games we’ve left a total of 31 men on base. That really needs to stop and our hitting needs to be more timely in key situations, especially since our bullpen can’t really hold a lead or close game right now. We really need to get better in clutch hitting. Also, it doesn’t help when we send the same guys out there that keep blowing games out of reach to hold a game. Buddy Carlyle and Chris Resop should not be brought in to shut down games at all. Obviously, it hasn’t worked yet for them and it probably won’t but every once in a blue moon. But Bobby keeps sending them out there nonetheless like he forgets what they have (or haven’t rather) done during games lately.

Smoltz secured his 3,000th strikeout and more and the offense didn’t even show up to help him get the win. I know we’re not going to win every single game because even the “best team in baseball” *insert your choice team here* loses games at some point. Your team isn’t going to gel every single time you play. Mac hit the nail on the head when he said last night was “disappointing.”

Tonight Smoltz goes for #3000 in strikeouts. For Talking Chop’s NAHWAL (Noc-A-Homa-Win-A-Lotta game that fans play for fun and prizes) for today, I predicted that Smoltz would strike out Ryan Zimmerman in the 3rd inning of tonight’s game for #3000. Just thought I’d include that in the post. We’ll see how it goes.

This idea was actually thought out by DOB in his latest blog, since he thoroughly believes we won’t be able to sign Teixeira for $20 million+ per year. At first, my being partial to KJ kind of kicked in, and I was thinking, “he has got to be kidding.” But I read most of the blog, I could then see where he was coming from, and it is something to think about; it wasn’t actually that bad of an idea.

So we’ve won three in a row and we’re slowly but surely building our confidence back up after the first few unlucky weeks with the injuries and what not. If we sweep the Dodgers, that will only make things better. It seems Hiroki Kuroda hasn’t done badly, but he is 1-1. If we hit smart and actually bring guys in when guys get on base, we should be ok. We left a total of nine men on base in yesterday’s game (ten in Friday night’s game) and that’s becoming our downfall, except for the offense coming alive during the latter innings of the games. At least we’ve learned how to take some walks now, we did have five yesterday. Plus, our bullpen isn’t sucking right now either, which is always good since most of the guys in the ‘pen are shaky at times. Maybe the baseball gods felt bad and thought they’d give us better luck for a little while. Even if some of our guys still have yet to start anything that resembles hitting, not naming names though, which I probably don’t have to, unfortunately.

This roadtrip has not gone our way at all. Injuries, one run losses, very little offense, very little bullpen pitching is the gist of it. Like Chipper said last night during Braves Live, no one is being consistent right now. We left the home stand feeling pretty well because we had beat the Mets, but it turns out, now we’re just counting down the days until we go back home, which is down to tonight. I’m sure the players are happy about that. But it really shouldn’t matter where they’re playing; the way we’re playing right now is just horrible. There’s really no excuse, but something has got to give somewhere.

According to MLBTR, we’re currently hurting for pitching and need to make a deal soon or we might as well call it quits. They list who is available for the Braves to consider. Are we really hurting that bad? One, we don’t know the verdict on Glavine and if he doesn’t feel any worse than he did Sunday, some find it a non-worrisome injury. Glavine apparently said himself, “they better not,” be putting him on the DL without his knowledge, but he’s not ruling the possibility out if it will end up hurting the team. Two, yeah, we’ve lost Hampton, but he was an added bonus at the time. Everyone was almost expecting something to go wrong with Hampton with the backup depth we acquired in case something did happen to his fragile self. Three, Smoltz is Smoltz and while he is getting older, he is still making every effort he can to pitch when his time roles around. As he said, he has a lot of pitching left in him and he’ll know when he can’t pitch anymore. But let’s not push it, Smoltz isn’t 20-something anymore. Four, why would we spend money or give up a player on someone else that we really don’t need unless one of our other pitchers are lost with an injury, which hopefully doesn’t happen.

I happened to open my browser just now and stumbled upon an article written about America’s Top 10 Miserable Sports Cities from Forbes.com. For some reason, they have Atlanta ranked as #1 and have a lot included about the Braves in this said article. Here is what the article mentions about the city’s history of sports in Atlanta:

I have to make this post short because I have a test next class and I need to look over my study guide. I won’t be out of class until 2:00 pm, so this is probably the only chance I’ll have to post this.

Well, it’s not really new, but Frenchy’s official site has a new look to it than it did last year and I believe it runs better. During the off season it was down, and I’m assuming that’s because it was being redone. The overall look of the site flows really well, in my opinion. The layout is a lot better than the previous one and is more functional for visitors. Frenchy even has his own blog on his official site, but it doesn’t allow you to comment on it like the Delta blog that he posts on, because Delta is running on WordPress and the blog on Frenchy’s site is run by something else. Personally, I think he would get more feedback and interaction by having comments on his official blog, but that’s just me. Maybe he’ll have that feature added sooner or later.

Last night’s historic game in Coors Field was also a major downer with a 2-1 loss. Not only did we get quality pitching yet again from our starter in Tom Glavine, and I know it was freezing the entire time, but there was only three hits and those were spread out through nine innings. It wasn’t like it was the first time we were facing Aaron Cook and we usually hit him pretty well. We hit better against Johan Santana on Sunday than yesterday. But enough griping, it’s not going to change the outcome unfortunately.

Today is the first time we see Johan Santana this year and I’m sure it won’t be the last. With Smoltz going against him, if he is the Smoltz of old, we can expect a good outing. As Smoltz has said before, he knows his body more than anyone, so if he says he can go, let him go for it; he hasn’t proven he’s going down hill yet. If we bring the offense that was obviously apparent yesterday, along with timely hitting, we should pull out a win. Sure, we’ve only seen Santana once in the last few years, but he is beatable. We already almost beat him last year, except for Wickman blowing the game. Now that he won’t be doing that, let’s hope the bullpen doesn’t follow in his path in doing so. Should be a great match up and great game. I’ll be watching on TV, but my sister is going with a few of her friends, so I might be able to get a few pictures out of her if she takes them. More often than not, she takes them of herself and her friends more so than the players, etc., but you never know. The game comes on at 1:30 pm on SportSouth. I’m guessing they’ll do a Braves Live? I’m not quite sure on that one, though.

Our last game of the first series and Hampton takes the mound. Let’s hope it’s a good outing for him, I know some people still don’t believe he’ll pitch any this year. And that ball that headed straight for him last night into the dugout, ricocheting off the fence was just asking for an injury, but at least he still has his reflexes. Maybe he’ll prove us wrong and we can breath a very small sigh of relief if he gets through his first start.

The past two games seemed to be an appropriate brew for a very evil April Fool’s joke. Of course, they were not, unfortunately. Besides losing the first two games, and the Nationals being in first place, everything will hopefully be fine.

I saw Lauren T. do this and thought it might be fun to do. That and I was a bit bored, so here you go. I hope that you find out more about me than you already knew about me.

I was going to post yesterday before last night’s game, but decided I wouldn’t. I was slightly disappointed after that really bad loss because of all the excitement that had built up from waiting for the season to actually start. Can we just say that one didn’t count? No? OK, didn’t think so.