AUB1974 2 Posted February 16, 2015 Share Posted February 16, 2015 Worst season for Braves since 1990? http://markbradley.blog.ajc.com/2015/02/16/some-chilly-projections-for-the-new-look-braves/ As mentioned a time or two, the Atlanta Braves have changed. By design, they’re no longer Frank Wren’s team. At the minor-league level, this is surely an improvement. That’s the good news. The less-good: At the major-league level, at least for the here and now, they figure to stink. Pitchers and catchers report to Lake Buena Vista on Friday, and already the analytic-based community has turned thumbs-down on the Braves. Baseball Prospectus has them going 75-87 and finishing fourth in the NL East and 25th in the majors. FanGraphs sees them finishing 71-91 and being MLB’s second-worst team, ahead of only Philadelphia. David Schoenfield of ESPN’s SweetSpot rates the Braves 28th and figures they’ll go 68-96. David Purdum of ESPN offers the projected win totals of the Atlantis sports book: The Braves’ over/under is 73.5,which is tied with Houston for the fifth-lowest in the majors. Buster Olney, also of ESPN, figures the Braves won’t hit that mark because they’ll be dumping more players at the July 31 deadline. In sum, this could be the worst Braves season since 1990, when the team finished 65-97. Shortly thereafter, everything got a lot better for a very long time. Maybe it’ll happen that way again. Maybe, I say. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AUbritt 611 Posted February 17, 2015 Share Posted February 17, 2015 Ugh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
augolf1716 21,096 Posted February 17, 2015 Share Posted February 17, 2015 Yep could/going to be ugly I'm afraid. Got start sometime I guess. Better get better soon with the new stadium coming Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClaytonAU 4,606 Posted February 17, 2015 Share Posted February 17, 2015 Gotta start somewhere, pitching won us the World Series... Maybe it'll win us another one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cooltigger21 0 Posted February 18, 2015 Share Posted February 18, 2015 Worst season for Braves since 1990? http://markbradley.blog.ajc.com/2015/02/16/some-chilly-projections-for-the-new-look-braves/ As mentioned a time or two, the Atlanta Braves have changed. By design, they’re no longer Frank Wren’s team. At the minor-league level, this is surely an improvement. That’s the good news. The less-good: At the major-league level, at least for the here and now, they figure to stink. Pitchers and catchers report to Lake Buena Vista on Friday, and already the analytic-based community has turned thumbs-down on the Braves. Baseball Prospectus has them going 75-87 and finishing fourth in the NL East and 25th in the majors. FanGraphs sees them finishing 71-91 and being MLB’s second-worst team, ahead of only Philadelphia. David Schoenfield of ESPN’s SweetSpot rates the Braves 28th and figures they’ll go 68-96. David Purdum of ESPN offers the projected win totals of the Atlantis sports book: The Braves’ over/under is 73.5,which is tied with Houston for the fifth-lowest in the majors. Buster Olney, also of ESPN, figures the Braves won’t hit that mark because they’ll be dumping more players at the July 31 deadline. In sum, this could be the worst Braves season since 1990, when the team finished 65-97. Shortly thereafter, everything got a lot better for a very long time. Maybe it’ll happen that way again. Maybe, I say. What do they have in the farm system? Any promising players there? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jared52 4,354 Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 Worst season for Braves since 1990? http://markbradley.b...ew-look-braves/ As mentioned a time or two, the Atlanta Braves have changed. By design, they're no longer Frank Wren's team. At the minor-league level, this is surely an improvement. That's the good news. The less-good: At the major-league level, at least for the here and now, they figure to stink. Pitchers and catchers report to Lake Buena Vista on Friday, and already the analytic-based community has turned thumbs-down on the Braves. Baseball Prospectus has them going 75-87 and finishing fourth in the NL East and 25th in the majors. FanGraphs sees them finishing 71-91 and being MLB's second-worst team, ahead of only Philadelphia. David Schoenfield of ESPN's SweetSpot rates the Braves 28th and figures they'll go 68-96. David Purdum of ESPN offers the projected win totals of the Atlantis sports book: The Braves' over/under is 73.5,which is tied with Houston for the fifth-lowest in the majors. Buster Olney, also of ESPN, figures the Braves won't hit that markbecause they'll be dumping more players at the July 31 deadline. In sum, this could be the worst Braves season since 1990, when the team finished 65-97. Shortly thereafter, everything got a lot better for a very long time. Maybe it'll happen that way again. Maybe, I say. What do they have in the farm system? Any promising players there? Yep, but they aren't ready for the majors yet. Going to take 2-3 years to catch up to the Nats again. I'm taking the under this year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AUB1974 2 Posted February 23, 2015 Share Posted February 23, 2015 Here's a thorough look at returnees, players lost, and new guys.... http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2015/02/who_are_these_guys_know_your_2.html#incart_more_sports Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AUB1974 2 Posted February 23, 2015 Share Posted February 23, 2015 Hope springs eternal in spring... an optimistic view of the season from Braves beat writer in AJC http://atlantabraves.blog.ajc.com/2015/02/22/despite-predictions-braves-should-be-interesting-and-more-enjoyable/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AUB1974 2 Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 3 weeks til opening ...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
augolf1716 21,096 Posted March 17, 2015 Share Posted March 17, 2015 yes.................. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jared52 4,354 Posted April 5, 2015 Share Posted April 5, 2015 Braves just traded Melvin Upton Jr and Craig Kimbrel to the Padres. Welcome to 1982 folks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
augolf1716 21,096 Posted April 5, 2015 Share Posted April 5, 2015 Oh lord.... but are you sure you meant 1982 Braves won division. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
around4ever 4,139 Posted April 6, 2015 Share Posted April 6, 2015 Braves just traded Melvin Upton Jr and Craig Kimbrel to the Padres. Welcome to 1982 folks! How about the late 60s and entire 70s? I have no idea what the GM is thinking. Kimbrel is the best closer in the game, IMO. Melvin (BJ) Upton, should have been gone long ago and they should have kept his brother. Oh well, here we go. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jared52 4,354 Posted April 6, 2015 Share Posted April 6, 2015 Oh lord.... but are you sure you meant 1982 Braves won division. Just picked a random year in the 80s. I was 6 that year so I don't remember how they did. I just remeber that when I started watching them in the 80s as a kid, they weren't good. But TBS said they were America's team so I thought I had to be a fan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jared52 4,354 Posted April 6, 2015 Share Posted April 6, 2015 Braves just traded Melvin Upton Jr and Craig Kimbrel to the Padres. Welcome to 1982 folks! How about the late 60s and entire 70s? I have no idea what the GM is thinking. Kimbrel is the best closer in the game, IMO. Melvin (BJ) Upton, should have been gone long ago and they should have kept his brother. Oh well, here we go. Probably thinking there won't be a lot of save opportunities in the next 3-4 years. Wren was a terrible GM and the only way out is to invest in draft picks and young prospects. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AUB1974 2 Posted April 6, 2015 Share Posted April 6, 2015 From last year's 25 man roster on opening day, there are 6 players on the roster today. Going to be a LONG season. But glad baseball's back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SCTiger2011 1,277 Posted April 6, 2015 Share Posted April 6, 2015 As a longtime Padres fan (I was a huge Trevor Hoffman fan during my little league years and wanted to be the different kid pulling for a different team in Braves country), I'm as happy and excited for a season as I've been for a long time. Quentin and Upton Jr were obviously just human currency in this deal, but maybe Cam Maybin can achieve at least a fraction of what he was touted as a Detroit/San Diego prospect. Wisler is really the gem of this deal and, bad ERA aside from his first stint in AAA last year, is the Padre I'm going to miss most from our GMs maniacal dealings this offseason. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Auctoritas 2,826 Posted April 6, 2015 Share Posted April 6, 2015 I've been mulling it over since I heard of the Kimbrel trade. What bothers me is the fact that John Hart, the GM, doesn't seem to get the fact that while the team is a business, its customers are the fans. The thing is, the hardcore fans will be there no matter what, but all he has done for the last 5 months is alienate the lesser fans - some may call them fair-weather, I'll call them entertainment-seekers - and those are the fans that fill the rest of the seats. So, while the trade may be a good baseball business move, it's a terribly tone-deaf customer relations move. Then, I found someone's well-written rant on an AJC article and it pretty well summed it up. "Look, this is a completely defensible trade on the baseball merits. That's not the problem. The problem is that John Hart spent the last five months swearing up and down that the Braves WEREN'T going into a rebuilding mode, that they were retooling for two years hence but were committed to fielding a "competitive" team in the meantime. To me, "competitive" means "has a decent chance to play .500 ball," and, while I didn't love most of the moves made over the winter (especially the Heyward trade, which really isn't defensible), it felt coming into this last week of Spring Training like Hart had kept his word and this team really would play hard and, possibly, even improve a tad on last year's underachieving yawners. But this move, while the right thing to do, violates utterly the compact between the team and its fans -- not because it makes the team worse in the short term, but because it makes clear that Hart's insistence that the Braves weren't in rebuilding mode was nothing but a lie. He LIED to us with a straight face, over and over. That's the unforgivable sin here; that's the ill-advised betrayal the front office has committed. Now, Hart might respond that he wasn't lying, that he indeed had every intention of keeping enough of the Braves' best pieces to field said competitive team, but just got offers he couldn't refuse. If so, that excuse doesn't wash, because if he was open to such offers in the first place then he was not, by definition, committed to fielding a competitive team; he was, by definition, in rebuilding mode in his mind. The thought experiment that proves this is to look at the return he got in each trade. Were some promising pieces acquired? Certainly. But the smart exec gathers prospects by the bushel, well aware that only some will pan out. Hart knows this. He got a decent return in each case -- but in no case, save one (about which, more in a moment), did he get an overwhelming return. In no case, save one, did he get an offer he couldn't refuse. And here's the irony: that one exception is the trade made today. Kimbrel is indeed wasted on a team struggling to reach .500, but, more importantly, the B.J. Upton signing may well be, by dollars spent per run scored or saved, the worst such signing in Braves history. If the price of freeing the team from that anchor around its ankles was to give up a closer who was far more valuable in trade than wins for the team, especially given that the Braves are and will be paying Dan Uggla for years to come, that's a deal you make every day of the week and twice on Opening Day. So understand, the problem isn't today's trade per se. The problem isn't even the trade of Jason Heyward, who saves enough runs that he should be your right fielder even if the bat is super-glued to his shoulder, and whom Frank Wren should have extended when he had the chance. You don't trade that good a player, with that much upside left, especially when he's an African American from the area and your team is in America's black capital. You sign him, you keep him, you make him the face of the franchise (it's a moral obligation as well as smart business), and you never, ever let him go. But Hart did, though in light of today's trade he may well now regret it. No, the problem is that Braves fans understand the value of building for the long term -- we watched the team drag itself out of the gutter and win its division fourteen times in a row (no asterisks, Youppi) -- and would have accepted the wisdom of going into a rebuilding mode for the relatively near-term prospect of housewarming success in SunTrust Park two years hence... Except that John Hart didn't trust us to. No. No, John Hart lied to our faces. Even when we knew he was probably not going to be able to keep the team up to the standard he claimed, we wanted to believe what he said and we swallowed every spring interview and article about the passion of Gomes and Markakis and how the team was scrappier, more contact- and speed-oriented, better defensively, more intense and committed. We knew they could hardly be less of those things than last year's team, so why not? We were willing to swallow our doubt and buy in, much as the players themselves seemed to. A little team karaoke goes a long way, right? But not this far. This is unconscionable. And, look, I'm not here to bury John Hart. I called it unforgivable, but forgiveness is not just divine but human nature. But it's not going to happen until and unless Hart, and John Schuerholz and Bobby Cox and John Coppollella and Fredi Gonzalez all understand in their bones that there's a fundamental trust here that built up over the course of nearly twenty-five years and has been utterly demolished in the space of one afternoon. You lied to us. You burned to us. You will have to earn back our trust, every last bit of it. The onus is now on you, gentlemen. This plan better work, because you've taken almost every single part of this franchise that we irrationally love so much and shredded it. You've left us, for the moment at least, with Freddy Freeman and, as Jerry Seinfeld would put it, the laundry on his back. You'd better hope it's enough. This lifelong fan and consumer of the Atlanta Braves, in every sense, has little faith it will be. And your words of reassurance will no longer carry weight. Put that on a season ticket letter." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ClaytonAU 4,606 Posted April 6, 2015 Share Posted April 6, 2015 I personally like what John Hart is doing... He's setting us up for an incredible future. We have the best farm leagues in the game. The prospects will work out and we'll be competing for a World Series in a couple of years. Braves fans are looking at the present when we need to be looking at the future. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Auctoritas 2,826 Posted April 6, 2015 Share Posted April 6, 2015 I don't disagree. My point is, though, that a company can't turn a completely blind eye to what its customers feel. Whether or not these trades work and the prospects pan out or we draft well remains to be seen. But you said it yourself - braves fans are looking at the present. That's what happens when you are conditioned after 20 years of success - you expect the present to continue that way. It's why Bama fans are so irritated when Saban dares to lose 3 games - they're irrationally used to winning. The difference is, though, that bama knows they will fill their stadium and sell a ton of merchandise. The Braves, even through 20 years of success, have had trouble filling up Turner Field (for a variety of reasons), and systematically getting rid of fan favorites is not a good way to get the casual fans to show up. I mean, look at last year. The Braves were a sub .500 team, but they had a bunch of drawing power from Heyward, Kimbrel, Justin Upton (just for the power potential), Freeman, and Gattis (don't discount the cult followings). The attendance was not great, but it was pretty consistent with the rest of the past 10 years. Now, we've got...Freeman and a bunch of castoffs. It's not going to have the same drawing power, and that's going to affect revenue and league perception. I understand the "we will be good in a couple of years", but that doesn't make the intervening seasons any more attractive. My contention is that that is a bigger consideration than people are giving credit for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
augolf1716 21,096 Posted April 9, 2015 Share Posted April 9, 2015 Braves 3-0 well how bout that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
auburntiger1987 759 Posted April 9, 2015 Share Posted April 9, 2015 I will be there Saturday. Hope to finally see the Braves win a game while I'm in turner field. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AUB1974 2 Posted April 10, 2015 Share Posted April 10, 2015 I'll there Saturday night too. Got a Valentine's special -- 2 tickets to 4 set games @ $11/ticket. Never thought they'd be 4-0 or 3-1. They do seem to be a more interesting Hope and exciting team to watch in these 3 games than last season. Hope it continues... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AUTUmike 79 Posted April 10, 2015 Share Posted April 10, 2015 Atlanta's schedule seems pretty soft the first few weeks of the season. I'm curious to see if they can keep up the high level of play and take advantage in the early going. After this offseason I'm not expecting much, but you never know with baseball--and winning can have self-perpetuating effect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexava 6,973 Posted April 11, 2015 Share Posted April 11, 2015 "small ball" is working. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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