May 2009 Archives

  --Jon "Boog" Sciambi is prepared, knowledgeable and entertaining. A top-notch acquisition by the Braves.

  --Joe Simpson is insightful, well-spoken, occasionally funny. Could be more critical, an understandable shortcoming related to his long stay here.

   --Don Sutton, as an analyst, brings a most welcome pitcher's perspective to the booth. Well-researched, full of anecdotes.

   --Don Sutton, on play-by-play, is too chatty. Forgets he's calling the game and keeps telling his analyst's stories.

  

While wondering if the Atlanta Falcons' Quinn Ojinnaka wishes he had never joined Facebook nation...

So, the Boston Red Sox are scouting rightfielder Jeff Franceour as a possible trade acquisition. If I were the Atlanta Braves, I'd ask: Whaddaya want for him?
 
The Bosox, whose outfield is needy because of injuries and David Ortiz' decline, is intrigued by Frenchy even though he has reverted to 2008 form, now hitting .247.

The Braves, see, have an outfield that's far worse than The Outfield, a cheesy pop band from Britain with a fascination for baseball. At least they were in tune.

Garrett Anderson is up to .266 after a dreadful start. Injuries, however, have limited him to 84 at-bats. He time-shares left field with Matt Diaz, batting .288 but not looked at as a full-time.

Then there is, God bless him, Jordan Schafer, whose stellar spring training induced the Braves to drop Josh Anderson. (Ouch.) Schafer is treading water at .205, and his 59 strikeouts (in only 156 at-bats) ranks second in the league.

Kissing off Frenchy to the Red Sox won't solve anything, other than to free up dollars to acquire a reliable outfielder.

Not convinced yet of the need? We leave you with this stat: The entire lot has hit seven home runs. For the season.


Parting with a loved one would be painful. But if would help the Braves, au revior, Frenchy

For most clubs, a baseball season moves slow and easy, usually with minimal dramatics. Not the Atlanta Braves', whose season resembles the Batman ride at Six Flags. Take the past week, for example.

 Monday (May 18): Braves lose 5-1 to lowly Rockies and pitcher Jason Marquis, who entered game with an 11.45 ERA against his former club. Paid attendance of 15,364 is lowest ever at Turner Field.

Tuesday (May 19): Manager Bobby Cox throws names in his cap and draws them to set lineup. Not really, but that's what it seemed like in a major shuffle. Braves win 8-1. Team learns that Tom Glavine adopted a newborn son, the fifth -- and final, he vows -- young'un in the household. And that John Smoltz remarried Saturday. (Yeah, Smoltzie is an ex-Brave, but he is not forgotten.)

Wednesday (May 20): On your blogger's birthday, Braves pound Rockies 12-4 but lose utilityman Omar Infante for an extended period with a fractured pinkie finger. Another lineup juggling works as Martin Prado serves as the unlikeliest clean-up hitter since the DH was created. (He goes 2-for-4.)

Thursday (May 21): On your blogger's hangover day, phenom pitcher Kris Medlen -- called up from the Gwinnett Braves, where he was unbeaten with a sub-1.00 earned-run average -- can't find the plate with a homing device against the Rockies. He allows five runs and five walks in barely over three innings in a 9-0 defeat. Stop me if you've heard this before: Chipper Jones gets hurt. Right big toe, this time. A hundred or so miles away in Augusta, Smoltz hurls three effective innings for the Red Sox' Class A team. It is too dark afterward to get in a round at Augusta National.

Friday (May 22): Pitcher Kenshin Kawakami, the Japanese import who had struggled, drops jaws with a 1-0 win over Toronto, the American League's highest achiever to date. C. Jones sits. Cox says it's for a day or two. Yeah, right.

Saturday (May 23): Ace Derek Lowe beats the Blue Jays 4-3 as Yunel Escobar (strained hip flexor) joins C. Jones on the bench, forcing the utterly anonymous Diory Hernendez into the lineup. Up I-85 in Gwinnett County, Glavine's first rehab assignment is shaky as he allows three runs and five hits in three innings.

Sunday (May 24): C. Jones sits again -- until the seventh inning, when his bases-loaded pinch-hit single fuels a 10-2 win and a sweep of Toronto. "It's the at-bat of the game," he assesses modestly. In a golf promotion on the field before the game, Kawakami aims for a pin 110 yards from his ball and blasts it into the centerfield bleachers. If this were Wrigley, the ball retriever would have thrown it back onth the field.

Holiday bonus day, Monday (May 25): Braves hammered 8-2 by Giants. Brian McCann goes 3-for-3, raising his average to .431 since returning from the disabled list. Jordan Schafer's strikeout with the bases loaded is his 48th in the latest 38 games. Jeff Franceour, resorting to his bad habits of a year ago, whiffs twice with runners in scoring position. C. Jones sits -- next to Escobar.

When the smoke cleared, the Braves were 23-21, a game and a half out of first place. Tonight, in San Fran: the shaky Medlen against the Giants' magnificent Tim Lincecum. Crank up the roller-coaster.

Three cheers -- well, 2 1/2 -- for Atlanta Hawks general manager Rick Sund for not granting the semi-automatic extension to Mike Woodson with one year left on his contract. The notion that a coach operating without a longer deal is being hung out to dry? Ridiculous. Why commit millions of bucks to a guy whom you are not certain will be invited back?

Not that Woodson, by the NBA's standard operating procedure, doesn't warrant more job security. While his methods can be poked at and picked apart, the bottom line is 47 wins and a first-round playoff series win. This, with enough injuries to fall back on as an excuse.

His public head-butting with Josh Smith has caused considerable anguish in HawksLand, but Woodson appears to be getting a lot -- if not the most -- out of the petulant, occasionally air-headed prodigy.

Woodson's biggest failing in Atlanta was his inability to attach the pieces of an odd-fitting puzzle handed to him by Billy Knight. The former GM drafted players that did not match the old-school definition of guard, forward and center. Woodson could not make it work. Sund came aboard in the summer of '08 and handed Woodson a less-than-ringing endorsement with a two-year extension.

Now that (mixing metaphors here) he has round pegs to put in round holes, the Hawks are inching up the Eastern Conference standings. Operative word: inching. Just as last season's playoff scare of the Boston Celtics got the locals overly optimistic, so did this year's escape of the Miami Heat. As the Cleveland Cavaliers made clear to them, improvement in this league is incremental.

So, let's see if Woodson can keep the Hawks pointed north. If so, he earns a new deal. If not, he is sent on his merry way, with the club not on the hook for dollars that it could spend on players.

Smart move, Sund.

Woke up this morning, fired up the laptop and checked my main sports websites. The lead story on each  -- ESPN, CNNSI, CBS Sportsline? Michael Vick.

No surprise that the Atlanta Braves have summoned a pitching phenom from their feeder club in Gwinnett County.

Big surprise that it's not wunderkid Tommy Hanson.

Getting the call: Kris Medlen, a righty with a snazzy prospectus that seems modest alongside Hanson's.

Similarly, Hanson (1.99 earned-run average) has been dazzling for the G-Braves, but his stats pale next to Medlen's: 5-0, 0.96 ERA, .152 opponents' batting average.

Hanson might have been brought up had the Braves needed a long-term replacement for Jo-Jo Reyes, banished to the bullpen. But, with Tom Glavine and/or Tim Hudson returning soon from extended injury rehab, the brass decided not to interrupt Hanson's routine. So Medlen was da man. Or, da kid.

If this hasn't happened yet, it will soon: The 5-foot-10 Medlen, who looks young enough to be driving with just a permit, tries to enter the clubhouse, only to be told, "Son, you must wait outside for autographs."

If Medlen can master big-league batters as well as he has Triple-A, he'll be signing them. His scheduled debut is Thursday night against the Colorado Rockies at Turner Field.

 Rest assured, Hanson will get his turn before the season has been put to bed. But first, it's the major-league christening of Kris.

Few football coaches have built up superior job security than Mark Richt. Unless (or until) player arrests, suspensions and excessive mischief afflict more than half of the roster, Richt has settled in for a long enough stay at Georgia to see two invasions of the 17-year locusts.

So, when Richt tells booster clubs that he wants the annual Florida-Georgia game dislodged from Jacksonville, his bosses must listen.

But they eventually will just say no. They'll have no choice because Florida loves the venue, and uncompromising UF athletics director Jeremy Foley will insist on too many concessions from UGA before he would agree to a new setting.

UGA is understandably wowed by the wooing of Atlanta's Georgia Dome as a quadrennial site. Revenue would rise, and the substantial fan base in the big city would be delighted to hop MARTA to the game instead of driving four hours.

Georgia athletics director Damon Evans says the schools will decide in the next few months , given that the current contract expires following the 2010 game. These talks figure to be short and unsweet from UGA's perspective.

You can't blame Richt for trying. Georgia has won only thrice since 1990, a sorry record that the coach believes is rooted in a semi-home field advantage for the Gators.

Maybe negotiations will result in an occasional game at the Dome or on the schools' campuses. But the World's Largest Cocktail Party will remain, at least for most years, on the banks of the St. Johns River.

And Mark Richt can keep drowning his sorrows.

For more: http://www.examiner.com/x-2279-Atlanta-Sports-Examiner~topic129704-floridageorgia?selstate=allcat#breadcrumb

While wondering if the Orlando kid, whose father demanded a formal apology for the Celtics' Glenn Davis inadvertently bumping into Junior at the Magic playoff game, will grow up to be a brat like his old man . . .

There are two season in the NBA: regular and post. Players can excel in one, schlep through the other.

Which is why the Atlanta Hawks, for all of their immediate personnel decisions this offseason with a total of nine free agents, must at least tentatively determine the future of Joe Johnson.

 In the regular season, J.J. was A-OK, averaging 21.4 points, 5.8 assists and 2.2 turnovers. When the going inevitably got rough in the playoffs, Joe was a relative no-show, with 16.4 points, 3.5 assists and 2.9 turnovers.

Stars' numbers are supposed to rise this time of year. (See LeBron James. And marvel.) Johnson's went south, which partly explains why the Cleveland Cavaliers removed the shine off Atlanta's glorious regular season.

Johnson's contract has one season left, but the Hawks must ponder now if (a.) He needs a high-priced sidekick  -- or superior -- to relieve the scoring burden, or (b.) He is miscast in a lead role.
  
To retain Johnson, who pocketed $14.2 million this year, the Hawks would have to shell out upwards of $20 mil per. That's what perennial NBA all-stars command.

The Hawks are beyond being satisfied with mere playoff berths. This is a team on the come, with title aspirations. They must decide if Johnson is da man to deliver.

If the answer is no, Joe must go.

Well hell has frozen over, pigs are flying, and we're launching a BfD Sports blog. Not to worry, it will all be in the capable hands of veteran sports journalist Mike Tierney.

Mike has been chronicling and opining about sports doings in the A-T-L for 22 years, until recently with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He writes a few other blogs, namely Atlanta Sports Examiner and AJC Smart Spending blog. And he free-lances for magazines and wonderful gray-old-lady publications like the New York Times.

We're more than pleased to have Mike join our small, but ever expanding, blog team. Take it away Mike.