I found "Miracle Season," a book by the
Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the 1991 season and made just after it, at a thrift store today for about .65 and bought it. I figured some select passages would be humorous in retrospect. Just flipping through the book, here are some:
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Any Braves fan I've known has been patently scared when Cox sends for a reliever. (My best friend had to leave the room every time Chris Reitsma pitched because if he watched Reitsma would lose...) I decided to test whether the panic was justified in the Mazzone era off two main considerations: bullpen ERA relative to the league and bullpen W-L records. There's not a whole lot to say about the starters except that they led the NL in ERA from '92 to '02, which is utterly ridiculous. Sometimes it was by a full run over league average, which is utterlier ridiculous or utterly ridiculouser. Anyway, to the rankings (loss rankings are ordered fewest to most losses, so tied for second is good):
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A mixture of conventional reasons for the rise in strikeouts and my own thoughts:
A. Batters aren't taught as much to "just make contact" with two strikes - there' s much less going the other way, defensive hitting, etc. Hardly anyone chokes up to punch a ball over the infield on 0-2 anymore. Getting a strikeout in the old days was something like beating an enemy in RPG who's constantly guarding; you can do it, but it takes forever and you wish you could have just used some magic to finish them off. (Walter Johnson chanted the spell of HURTMORE. *flash of glorious NES light* The George Sisler took 50 damage. Thou hast done well in defeating the George Sisler. Thy experience increases by 40. Thy GOLD increases by 197.)
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As most sports fans know it is now illegal to participate in online sports betting in the United States. The brilliant people at centsports.com have found a way to let sports fans get their fix
WITHOUT violating the law or losing any of your own money.
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The Braves could stand to add a pitcher or two to both the rotation and the pen.
Tim Dierkes over at MLBTradeRumors.com has
this entry about the situation
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Now that I know that people will continue to ask about these posts until I complete them :-), here we go. It's about the '82 Braves because all 5 players requested were on the team and they can be discussed somewhat together.
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In ESPN's pregame writeup of the Yankees-Royals game (Ian Kennedy was a last-minute scratch), they were talking about the various Yankee injuries, including Jorge Posada's shoulder that forces backup Jose Molina into action. In that writeup, Joe Girardi said something entirely unnecessary and probably false:
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If the Braves are 21 games over .500 at any point this year, the franchise will have achieved a milestone: it will have a .500 record over the course of history, the first time it would be true since June 3, 1923, with the 17-25 Braves charting their usual course in doom. This would be a stunning turnaround for a franchise that hasn't seen much glory outside our lifetimes.
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Glad to be part of the coup, everybody. From what I understand, my job here is to go all historically nerdy with Braves stuff, which I hope to do with aplomb. I'm all right with stats (I managed to sneak some statistical analyses through to Baseball Prospectus - smoke and mirrors, all), but I have more fun with the history of the game, so the PECOTA you'll hear about is less the BP projection system as it is Bill the utility player of glory. My best friend being an obsessive Braves fan should also help out. (You know you've got a good friend when you can give them an autographed Rafael Belliard card for birthday and they like it...)
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Posted by Kyle James
Spot & Stripe — published on April 7th, 2008
Big news everyone, we would like to introduce to you our newest contributor and the biggest coup so far for S&S.
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The Braves' bullpen caught a break tonight and received some much needed rest as a result of severe thunderstorms in the Atlanta area. Atlanta is fresh off a three game series in which a club record for number of pitchers used was broken. Tonight's games has been rescheduled as a part of a doubleheader on May 20th. More on this
here.
Posted by Kyle James
Spot & Stripe — published on April 4th, 2008
The Braves open an early and important series with the Mets tonight and are looking to bounce back from a rough 1-3 start with the losses coming against the Nationals and Pirates (that is just painful to type).
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