Whatever Happens Tonight, It Has Been a Fun Ride
October 5, 2012 at 11:03 am by Ben Duronio under Atlanta Braves
The team will exit the season with two Cy Young candidates in Kris Medlen and Craig Kimbrel, which is awesome if I must say. Not everything went well in terms of the “young veterans” in the rotation, meaning Tommy Hanson and Jair Jurrjens, but the staff was able to battle injuries and poor performance and overall perform at a decently high level for a majority of the season, thanks to Tim Hudson, a midseason rebound from Mike Minor, an awesome stint from Ben Sheets, and some decent outings from Paul Maholm. The front office did a great job of working around the injuries to the staff that forced them to move pitchers in and out of the rotation for nearly the entire season, and they deserve credit for this team winning 94 games despite having no pitcher throw 180 or more innings.
All in all, this was a weird season in some places but a good one. The team had lackluster performances from some people they were counting on, suffered a huge injury in Brandon Beachy going down, but were able to battle adversity and put together some great stretches. This has been a streaky team all year, so let’s hope tonght starts one of those big long winning streaks that we have become accustomed to in 2012. And let us also hope that tonight is not the last time we ever see Chipper Jones play a major league baseball game.
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I agree it has definately been a roller coaster ride this year. we have been so inconsistent, we are either completely hot or not at all. Alot of the analysts says that our offense goes when mr bourne goes… Heres to hoping we can put up runs in bunches tonight.
hopefully we will all be happy come 8 oclock EST.
Shockingly, I have to give credit to Fredi Gonzalez this season. He took risks. He didn’t manage everything exactly by the book, and they paid off. The lineups were tinkered with and were effective. The bullpen wasn’t run into the ground. They exceeded their Pythag record. There was the temporary use of the six man rotation. He started to put in Wilson for Pastornicky in Hudson’s starts until Simmons came up. We even saw Kimbrel pitch in a tie game on the road!
True–Fredi of 2012 was far superior to Fredi of 2011. He’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he apparently is somewhat open-minded and willing to change. For all that was great about Bobby Cox, his stubbornness could be a great liability, and his in-game tactics did not seem to ever improve over the course of his career. But then, I didn’t see Bobby’s first couple of seasons.
I might very well get shot for saying this, but I’ve always said that for as great a manager Bobby Cox is/was, I firmly believe he cost us some games in the playoffs during the run through the 90s.
I still think he had a pretty big hand in our losing the 2010 NLDS.
I think this had an overwhelmingly bigger hand at the 2010 NLDS loss:
CATCHERS (2): Brian McCann and David Ross
INFIELDERS (7): Brooks Conrad, Troy Glaus, Alex Gonzalez, Diory Hernandez, Eric Hinske, Omar Infante and Derrek Lee
OUTFIELDERS (5): Rick Ankiel, Melky Cabrera, Matt Diaz, Jason Heyward and Nate McLouth
That team was just crumbling towards the end. Once Wagner went down it was just all over. The last month up to their last playoff game reminded me of the scene in Platoon where Willem Dafoe is getting shot repeatedly while running for the helicopter. You really think he might make it after taking so many bullets… and then.. Bobby puts in Mike Dunn. BLAMMO
Can we please just score 6 runs in the first off Lohse so that Fredi has an easy game to manage?
“And let us also hope that tonight is not the last time we ever see Chipper Jones play a major league baseball game.”
Think I speak for all of us in saying that none of us EVER want to see the last game game Chipper plays. Doesn’t really matter if it’s in a loss or in a World Series win. It will very difficult to bear.
True but if we could have Chipper’s last game be the World series clincher against say the Yankees, I think everyone will feel 1000 times better than if its a play in loss to the cards.