But take a step back, take a deep breath (hell, get mad and wait until tomorrow to do it) and think about it for a minute. We’re coming off a 2008 season that was doomed because 4 of 5 projected starters were lost for two or more months due to injury. Right off the bat we know Smoltz wouldn’t be ready until at least May. And he’s been a health risk the entire decade. Can we really afford to take that kind of risk in 2009? Wren said going in to the off season that we wouldn’t be counting on Smoltz or Glavine returning. Didn’t we all applaud that?

Sure, Smoltz was brilliant in the starts he was able to make, but he was playing hurt, as he has been for years. The Red Sox are in a position where they can take that chance. The Braves aren’t and made Smoltz an offer reflecting that. It’s a good move for the Red Sox and it’s a good move for the Braves. And it’s Smoltz’s right to decide that going to the Red Sox is in his best interest.

Seriously, people. He made five starts last year. Five. We should have guaranteed more than $5 million on the chance (CHANCE) that he would be healthy for two thirds of a baseball season?

But this sort of underscores something else. Braves fans (and players, apparently) need to get over this notion of “loyalty.” Teams don’t owe the players a single bit more than the dollars they agree to pay on the contract for the period of time they agreed to pay. Players don’t owe teams anything more than to play their hardest and represent their team for the period they are under contract. Major league baseball players have fought hard to make sure they have their free agent rights and their guaranteed, multi-year contracts, so it’s a little jarring to hear them asking for loyalty as well.

What about players taking less money to play with the Braves in the past? Is that loyalty? We heard a lot about “hometown discounts” during our 14 year run (over 3 years ago, by the way). But that was never about, “I’m going to take less because I love the Braves.” It wasn’t selflessness. It wasn’t loyalty. If you signed with the Braves, you knew you were going to play in October. It was Mark Teixeira taking less with the Yankees than with the Nationals. It’s a lot easier being loyal to a franchise when you know they’re going to win. That’s worth something.

Notice Smoltz didn’t sign with some bottom dwelling franchise.

As J.C. Bradbury pointed out, we’ve already paid him $130 million (including a value I’ll leave someone else to figure out for ample time he spent on the bench injured).

We let him go to the bullpen when he decided that was the best place for him to pitch. We let him come back to the starting rotation when he decided that was best. We signed him for $14 million dollars last year knowing that he was playing hurt and let him call the shots on his offseason program.

The Braves have done right by John Smoltz. Here’s what the Braves offered, by the way:

The Braves would have paid Smoltz incrementally based on his health up to a maximum of $5 million if he remained on the major league roster for 60 days, and the guarantee was for no more than $3 million. The offer also included another $5 million in performance bonuses and $2 million in additional incentives. So Smoltz could have earned up to $12 million by staying healthy and pitching extremely well.

Who’s to blame here? No one is to blame. Things worked out exactly how they should have.

I wish Smoltz all the best and hope he has a fabulous season in Boston. Now let’s go sign Derek Lowe and a bat and get ready for February 14.

No, there likely won’t be many teams knocking on Hampton’s door during the offseason. But if he stays healthy the rest of this season, I could see the Braves offering him an incentive-laden contract. They’ve paid him a lot of money while he was idle the past couple of years. Why not take a small risk and try to at least be compensated for at least a fraction of the assistance their coaches and medical staff have provided him over the past few years?

As I talked about last time, more than anything, losing Hudson for most of next year really changes the outlook for the starting rotation next year. It means we’re not in need of just one proven starter to go along with the  youngsters, but at least two. Could Mike Hampton fill one of those spots? Mark Bowman thinks so, but I disagree.

I will agree with his premise that the best way to sign Hampton for 2009 would be to an incentive-based contract, with milestones for innings pitched and wins moving a nominal salary towards something respectable should he put in a full-time effort.

Yet, I don’t agree with Bowman that there won’t be many teams looking at Hampton when the year is up. Even with Hampton’s injury track record over the last few years, you can’t deny that he still has the potential to be a quality starter. He’s a great competitor, he has a ferocious breaking ball, and he can hit. Absolutely, he’s a risk. But he’s finally made it back to the mound in the majors and completed several starts without injury. If he can make it to the end of the season in a similar fashion and regain some of the dominance that he was showing in the months before he was injured so many years ago, he’ll definitely be someone worth looking at for a number of teams. Don’t underestimate how hard it is to acquire good starting pitching the major leagues.

Sure the number he signs for next year won’t approach what he signed for in 2000. But that will be part of the lure. A former 20 game winner who can still pitch at a bargain price.

Still, I don’t think it will be the dollar signs that will dissuade the Braves from pursuing another year with Hampton. I think the organization has probably succumb to the same kind of Hampton fatigue that the fans have. Not ill will. There certainly haven’t been any reports that Hampton’s situation has been a clubhouse distraction. Just that after learning over and over again that we can’t rely on Hampton, it’s going to be very hard to put ourselves in a position to do just that one more time.

When Mike Hampton of all people is the only Brave not currently on the DL, it FINALLY became apparent to management that this season was over. So, mark your calendars for Casey Kotchman bobblehead day sometime in 2009, 2010, and 2011.

With Kotchman we get some stability at first base for the next few years, a steady bat, though lacking Tex’s power, and someone who, from reports, is as able defensively as Tex. You know, so long as he is able to keep the malaise at bay.

When asked for comment on the trade, Scott Thorman responded, “Fuck.”

Duder McWhoeverstein, a AA pitcher, was also included in the trade. Like Casey Kotchman, he also has a better chance at playing first base for the Atlanta Braves than Scott Thorman.

Frank Wren had this to say about McWhoeverstein, “Look, we would’ve gotten two draft picks for Tex next spring if we’d hung on to him. So I’d look like a total jackass if I only got one guy back now.”

All in all, probably not quite the deal we were hoping to get. But still an improvement over draft picks as we get at least one body who we know can play quality baseball at the major league level.

That’s exactly where the Braves have been at the All-Star break the last couple of years. After so many years of winning, they don’t know what to do when they’re not.

Well, here’s my free (and worth every penny) advice to the Braves’ front office for the 2008 season: hang it up. Your goose is cooked.

You can say throwing in the towel makes me a bad fan, but my fan credentials are there. I was at the Ted for every inning of every game both times the Bravos got swept by the Phillies. I stayed for 17 innings last weekend. My girlfriend dreads each loss knowing the funk it puts me in. I want to see this team win. But let’s face it; it’s not in the cards for 2008. Rather than selling the future for the next Tex that will push this .500ish team towards a .505ish team, let’s start sorting out the lessons to learn from this year and start putting together the pieces for next year and beyond.

Sure, we’re only 6.5 back in an underachieving division. The Mets really aren’t as good as we should be. The Marlins and Phillies are playing way better than their pitching staffs should allow. And we’ve overcome bigger deficits than this in our long run.

But I was sucked in by that siren song last year and ra-ra’ed when we added an impact player whose huge impact didn’t impact our record much. The fact of the matter is adding a couple of pieces to fill in our holes – a big outfield bat and maybe another solid reliever – just isn’t going to cut it. There is something more fundamental that is flawed with the 2008 Atlanta Braves. This team is less than the sum of its parts. They don’t know how to win. What’s missing is more than any sabremetric is going to figure out. It’s confidence. It’s leadership. It’s all those intangibles that the numbers guys hate.

Of course, the folks in the front office won’t wave the white flag. They just don’t know how. Buckle yourself in for another second half in which we hang on until mid-September with the playoffs just tantalizingly outside of our grasps. We’ll pick up the Cubs’ fans’ old mantra of “wait ’til next year,” but next year and the next years to come won’t be quite as sweet as they could be had we decided to be sellers this year.

I cringed at our big win in San Diego tonight for just that reason. Maybe two straight series losses going into the break would tip the honchos to our fate. But just like that 5 game streak of huge wins after the break in 2006, just like Tex’s big entrance in 2007, we go into the week off with one tiny little straw to grasp at.

On Francoeur

I salute Bobby Cox and Frank Wren for their decision to send Francoeur down in spite of whatever bad blood it might cause. Francoeur’s reaction was incredibly childish, so let’s hope it was just a reaction and he sees the wisdom of the move. (Seems like he might be coming around to that.)

Frankly, it’s incredibly selfish of him if he thinks the Braves owe him the opportunity to sort out his struggles with the big club. If the Braves weren’t 5 games under .500 and 7 games back – all but out of contention for the second half – it would be one thing. If Francoeur’s struggles weren’t a big contributing factor to the team’s underachievement this season, he might have a case. Even a handful more clutch hits from Francoeur would have been enough to keep us in the hunt.

And up to this point, Francoeur is a superstar in marketing only. He’s a very good player who has yet to live up to his full potential. Does he have it in him to be great? Absolutely. But he’s not there yet. And until he is, he should get the deference his performance – not his hype – affords him.

On High Notes

Fourth of July: Atlanta 6, Houston 2. After a crushing sweep at the hands of the Phillies, it was great to see some excitement again at the Ted. The first sellout of the season watched the Braves win one the right way. Tim Hudson pitched a gem. Jason Perry, up from Richmond to fill in for Francoeur, hit a triple in his first major league at bat. Kotsay had a single, an RBI, and a defensive gem. And KJ went deep. What was particularly satisfying about this one was the 6 runs on 8 hits. We haven’t seen that kind of efficiency in a while.

On Low Notes

Thursday Night: Philadelphia 4, Atlanta 1. I was going to write a post on Thursday about how we can’t give up the season yet. About how the 1991 Braves were 9.5 games back on July 7 and came back to win the division. But then the Phillies completed their sweep, and took my remaining optimism with them. Now, the 1991 Braves reeled off wins in 9 of their next 11 games to bring them back within 2.5, and we’ll need the same kind of streak. And we’ll need Frenchy to come back from Mississippi with his head on straight to drive in some runs for us.

In the past, I’ve contended that the Phillies’ putrid starting rotation is going to sink them before the season is up. But damn, those guys can hit. We’ll need some help from the Phillies, too, if we’re to make a run in the second half.

Chipper Jones

Chipper will be the Braves’ only starter (you know, if he can play). He’s crushing the competition and that’s how it should be. He’s having a monster year, leading the league in average, chasing .400, hitting his 400th HR, and getting on base almost every other plate appearance.

Brian McCann

Due to the fact that Cubs fans are generally bad, foul-smelling people, Brian McCann won’t get the start that he deserves, but you can expect him to show up as a backup backstop. McCann and Soto are fairly close statistically otherwise, but McCann has 15 points on Soto in average.

On the other hand, the baseball gods may take this one away from him in retribution for his undeserved appearance last season.

Jair Jurrjens

JJ is fifth in the NL in ERA among starters with a 2.94, ahead of folks like Brandon Webb, Johan Santana, Carlos Zambrano, and Adam Wainwright. He’s tied for the team lead with 8 wins. He’s having the best season on the NL’s best starting rotation.

Your Also Rans

Those three are a pretty sure bet and that makes a pretty good contingent from the ATL. Here are a few more guys who deserve at least a look:

• Jorge Campillo – Campillo has been more than a pleasant surprise. Aside from one appearance, he was completely unhittable in the bullpen. He has 12 BBs to 53 Ks. As a starter, he’s second on the team in ERA behind Jair Jurrjens
• John Smoltz – Smoltz obviously won’t be able to play, but nobody in baseball was pitching as well as Smoltz before he got knocked out for the season. Love to see him get a nod.
• Yunel Escobar – Yunel’s playing some quality ball this year and will get overlooked because the NL is stocked with shortstops.
• Tim Hudson – Huddy’s 11th in ERA among starters, owns 8 wins including a complete game shutout. Hudson’s downfall this year has been inconsistency. He’s probably had a few too many forgettable starts to go along with a number of brilliant starts to make the All Star squad.

While Josh Anderson or Brandon Jones probably wouldn’t do better than Francoeur over the course of 162, they’ve both doing significantly better than Francoeur over the course of the half-dozen or so games they’ve been allowed to play. Sitting Frenchy for a few days, letting him work with Terry Pendleton on his swing, getting out of the public eye, might help break the vicious cycle of frustration that these bad at-bats are causing. Obviously, just stringing together more bad at bats is not doing the job.

Also, remember that a more disciplined approach helped him last year. Though his power numbers dropped off, his batting average put on 30 points. Coming in to this season with some additional muscle and his approach from last year should have primed Francoeur for an even bigger season this year.

Rather than dropping him in the order, another option that might help Francoeur this year would be to move him to the two hole. He’s hitting .230 with runners in scoring position and .105 with the bases loaded. So moving him to a slot in the order where we’re not so dependent on him to drive in runs would have the benefit of taking the pressure off of him while also giving someone who’s a little bit more clutch this year the opportunity to drive in some runs in key situations. After all, it’s not the .250 batting average that’s killing us, it’s the bases loaded double plays.

• The Braves started experimenting with mixing and matching caps and jerseys on the road.
• The AJC cribbed my story.
• The Braves started sucking everywhere they play.

So here’s an update on those numbers:

And, for the remainder of the season you’ll be able to keep track of these numbers using my handy Atlanta Braves Record by Uniform site.

For those more technically inclined or who like to hear boring, whiney, drawn out stories, click the read more link to read the sob story about how I finally got this online.

After compiling the first stats by hand, I decided that this would be really, really easy to track if I wrote a little application. Having a (very) little experience (i.e., I did the tutorial last summer) with the Django framework and a girlfriend who is a world-renowned Django expert, I used Django to write up a handly little application to keep track of the stats. That took about an hour and a half.

Then, I spent 10+ hours, over the next few weeks trying to get Django running on my web host. Finally, I gave up on that and decided to rewrite the application in PHP using CakePHP (which is crazy backwards). I spent about 3 hours on that and got as far as writing my models and getting the scaffolding up when I decided to take one more shot at getting Django running. And in about 5 minutes I figured out what was wrong in all the tutorials and missing from all the websites that I had been referencing.

Then I had to setup the databases, settings, et cetera for my production environment. That also took longer than it took to write the application the first time.

In the meantime, since the Braves started mixing and matching jerseys, I decided on taking Maura’s advice to change the application so that the uniform selections were a database field so I could easily add new combinations. That took an hour or two to add a model and rewrite my views to handle that.

Finally, rather than keying in the data by hand, I decided that I would import the schedule from the CSV file available at the Braves website. I spent a few hours writing a script to parse that data before I figured out that I couldn’t import games that hadn’t been played yet without rewriting the application.

So then I copied all of the games thus far from our schedule on baseball-reference.com and used NeoOffice’s (awesome) fixed format text importer to parse the data into opponent and score, added the date and time from the braves.com CSV schedule, tweaked the schedule for rain delays, and finally added in the uniform combinations from my original Google doc. All in all, importing the data took about 4 hours. (When I could’ve keyed it by hand in thirty minutes.)

So that’s what I’ve been up to the last three weeks instead of actually writing good blog posts or having a life outside of baseball games.

Most of the talk about moves the Braves would make this summer involve starting pitching. After the loss of John Smoltz and Mike Hampton to injury and the loss of the Chuck James Experiment to excruciating suckitude, we’ve been plumbing the depths of… well, all that depth that we heard about at the beginning of the season to find guys on the mound.

Let’s take a look at our starting five through Sunday’s game:

Tim Hudson

Hudson’s stepped into the role of solo-ace quite nicely. He’s had a couple of shaky performance but several more in which he’s been well-nigh unhittable. He’s also our only pitcher who’s reliably gone deep into games this year. Huddy’s our ace for the next several years.

Jair Jurrjens

Jurrjens went from competing for the fourth or fifth spot to being one of our most consistent starters. After a strong start, JJ has given up 14 runs in 15 innings in his last 3 starts. Don’t expect the club to give up on this one, though.

Tom Glavine

With Glavine, we got exactly what we hoped we’d get when we signed him over the winter. (Well, except that DL stint.) Not a Cy Young gun, but a fairly solid number 3. Glavine deserves better than has 2-2 record.

Jo-Jo Reyes

Jo-Jo Reyes made his first appearances last fall, having a brutal couple of months. After pitching well in Richmond this spring, he got another shot at the big club. Most of the damage against him this year has been in two starts (5ER at Philly, 7 vs. Arizona) and he’s starting to look a lot more comfortable on the mound. The BB/K ratio has vastly improved since last year (2007: 1.11; 2008: 0.38). The organization still has Jo-Jo in its plans, so I don’t imagine he’s going anywhere.

Jorge Campillo

As a starter:

Campillo is the big question mark. He’d been toiling in obscurity in Mexico and Seattle’s farm system until joining the Braves and posting a 0.99 ERA in his first 16 appearances. He’s cooled down since, but has still been stable. Can he keep up the good work? If the Braves decide to go after another starter, though, Campillo would still fit in well into the bullpen.

The Current Rotation

Barring injury*, slots 1-3 aren’t going to change, and I wouldn’t look for the Braves to give up on Jo-Jo just yet. On the other hand, while Campillo has been pitching very well as a starter, bringing in a new arm and sending Campillo back to the bullpen addresses not only the starting pitching but also adds another reliable arm to the late innings stable.

* Which is a possibility as Hudson has pitched hurt a couple of times this year, Glavine made his DL debut and is… well, old, and Jurrjens has been battling blisters.

Other Options In-House

Jeff Bennett and Buddy Carlyle are in the bullpen with the big club right now. Both have proven themselves to be capable, if not brilliant, starters at the major league level. Although Bennett has taken on the spot starter role a couple of times this season, Bobby obviously likes him in the bullpen for long relief. My Buddy did a tour as our number four starter last year, but there’s not much reason to think he’d do better than Jorge Campillo has, so I don’t imagine we’ll see him as a starter again this year.

In the minors, Charlie Morton has been heating up. Still, his record prior to this year hasn’t been impressive, and I think the Braves would like to give him one more season in the minors. He might be an option to fill in for a start or two, but not to take a permanent spot in the rotation. Meanwhile, Chuck James is just returning from a DL stint for a bothersome shoulder, so there’s no telling if we’ll ever see him again or if we’ll end up just demoting him to Kansas City.

Oh, yeah. Mike Hampton is hoping to be back by the All-Star break. In other news: WOOOOOLF!!!!

Potential Moves

Here are some names that have (or haven’t been) been bandied about as potential trade bait.

Greg Maddux – The Padres are looking to unload after knocking themselves out of contention with a poor start. Maddux is in the last year of his contract and likely the last year of his career. Maddux isn’t in the prime of his career, but he’s put up good numbers this year and gone at least 6 more often than not. Maddux would fit the bill, but don’t look to Braves to give up top prospects for 3 1/2 months of Maddux.

Rich Harden – I wouldn’t be surprised to see Rich Harden go to somewhere that is not Atlanta this summer. Billy Beane’s going to want a lot for him and the last thing the Braves need is another big paycheck on the DL.

C.C. Sabathia – Mark Teixeira to the Indians for C.C. Sabathia? Nah.

Freddy Garcia – Apparently, the Braves are watching Freddy Garcia as he’s rehabbing from injury.

Joe Blanton – Ken Rosenthal reported that the Braves talked to Billy Beane about Joe Blanton but were nowhere near the price. Blanton’s 3-8 with a 4.15 ERA, which really isn’t an improvement over anyone in our rotation. Obviously we’re not going to give up the farm for him.

Sidney Ponson – The Rangers cast off Ponson for being disruptive in the clubhouse. I know that stuff doesn’t fly in Atlanta (and apparently not in Arlington, either), but with a 4-1 record and 3.88 ERA, somebody is going to pick this guy up for cheap.

Kevin Millwood – Jayson Stark dropped this name, but don’t look for the Rangers to part with any more pitchers after releasing Ponson.

Prospects

Don’t count on seeing a blockbuster starting pitching move this summer. The cost/benefit in the long term is too steep to add another ace right now. Maddux is a good option if the price is right, but the price won’t be right. On the other hand, taking a stab at rehab project like Ponson or Garcia that wouldn’t cost us much just might be worth the shot.

But, I just don’t understand what Bobby Cox sees in Corky Miller. Is it his 0.087 batting average? His four-A resume?

Or is it because Corky Miller is a dead-ringer for Seinfeld’s David Puddy?