Series Thoughts: Mutts / Series Preview: Marlins
May 6, 2009 at 4:03 pm by Capitol Avenue Club under Atlanta Braves, Florida Marlins, New York Mutts, Series Preview, Series Thoughts, Transactions
Well, at least the Braves will be nice and rested for the Marlins series, because they completely took the day off on Monday and Tuesday. I’m not even going to talk about the Mets series because it’s just going to piss me off. I’ll just leave you 2 quotes. First is from Matthew Pouliot of Circling the Bases:
The Braves rewarded Garret Anderson’s refusal to go on a rehab assignment by inserting him right into the cleanup spot in his return from the disabled list. He went hitless — against Livan Hernandez of all pitchers — but he did make it through nine innings without being charged with an error.
We don’t know the circumstances surrounding Garret’s alleged refusal to go on a rehab assignment, but we do know that he sucks and shouldn’t be starting.
The second is from our back-up catcher, David Ross (per the AJC):
Ross said, “Schafer isn’t the only one struggling. I’m struggling. It’s a team unit. Schafer was getting some hits early. Everybody struggles at times.”
Ross makes a great point. I’ll take it a step further. Everyone on the offense is struggling. Our offense is just absolutely pathetic.
Looking forward, which is an easy thing to do given our pathetic preformance so far, we’ll be facing the fish down in South Florida for another 2-game set. It’s a quirky thing with MLB scheduling, but every team had a 2-game series on Monday and Tuesday and everyone has a 2-game series on Wednesday and Thursday. The people that do scheduling are a lot smarter than I so I’m sure they have a good reason for doing so.
Anyway, we’re sending Derek Lowe and Jair Jurrjens, our 2 best starters, to the hill for this series. They’re sending Graham Taylor and Anibal Sanchez, their 2 worst starters, to the hill for the series. If you’ve never heard of Graham Taylor that’s because he has a grand total of 8 and 2/3 major league innings under his belt. He’s taking the place of the injured Andrew Miller, who beat us at the Ted earlier this season. We need to win both games and you would think we’d be favored, but if our offense doesn’t start putting pressure on them EVERY INNING as opposed to 10% of the time, we won’t win 75 games.
We need another bat. We should’ve pulled the trigger on that Ryan Ludwick deal a long time ago. I supported it at the time and I still say not acquiring Ludwick was the biggest blunder of the off-season. Here’s how I would’ve approached the off-season if I were in Wren’s shoes.
Start with 45 million dollars. Non-tender (or trade for a box of baseball cards) Francoeur and Diaz for another 4 million. Trade Diory Hernandez and 2 other minor-leaguers for Scott Olsen and Josh Willingham before the Nationals can pull the same trade. Trade Kelly Johnson and Rafael Soriano for Ryan Ludwick and a minor leaguer. Sign Derek Lowe for 4 years 48 million (no way any other team is going to match that). Sign Orlando Hudson for 2 years 16 million to replace Kelly Johnson. Match the Red Sox offer for Smoltz (1 year, 10 million). Sign Kerry Wood for 2 years 22 million. Sign Will Ohman at 2 years 5 million. Sign David Ross, Infante, and Norton as Wren did.
Bullpen:
Ohman, Wood, Gonzalez, Carlyle, Bennett, Moylan, and someone.
Rotation:
Smoltz, Lowe, Jurrjens, Olsen, Hanson/Reyes/Morton/Campillo
Line-up:
Schafer, Willingham, Chipper, Ludwick, McCann, Hudson, Escobar, Kotchman
Bench:
Norton, Infante, Prado, Ross, and Josh Anderson.
That team is a lot better than this one.
But hindsight is 20/20, and I do think Wren did a fairly good job of putting the team together.
We need to win some games. Starting… Now.
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The Red Sox are intentionally holding Smoltz back. They said from the get go that their plan is to slow down his rehab and not allow him to pitch until June 1. In fact, if you look up the details of his contract, the bonuses don't start until June 1. They're completely geared towards post-season and using Smoltz only down the stretch and in October. I think this is a good plan for them, but Smoltz could have been ready to go already. I'll agree that my rotation is worse than our current one, but we still can't win because we're not a balanced team (awesome pitching staff, terrible offense). And while Wood currently has a 7.20 ERA, you can expect that to go down. As can you expect Olsen's ERA to drop down to the 4.50 range, a perfectly acceptable number for a 4th starter.
Morton and Reyes suck. Campillo has been injured all year. Hanson has a lot of promise but he's never pitched in the majors, so who knows how he'd do? You seem to have missed the fact that Smoltz hasn't pitched an inning for the Red Sox yet and likely won't until well into June. Scott Olsen has a Kawakmi-esque 6.54 era for the Nats so far. Kerry Wood has a 7.20 era. I'll take Wren's pitching staff minus Kawakami and Glavine over yours. I agree on Ludwick though.