Game 2 starts in an hour or so…

2) The game finally started just before 11 pm local time.

3) Outs.

4) Dillon Gee drove in a run to put the Mets up 1-0.

5) More outs.

6) This:

They’re supposedly playing two games today, but the hour-by-hour forecast being what it is, they may want to wake everyone up and run them out there by about 11 a.m. Then take a nap break, then play the nightcap around 10 p.m. or so again. Seriously, Atlanta weather: there were very specific reasons I chose not to live in Florida. You can quit acting like Florida any day now. Florida sucks. So do the Mets.

So I’ve been on the road lately. I got home from the West coast Friday night and hadtime to do laundry and get some sleep before checking in (24 hrs ahead of time) for
my next flight. A wedding and a metro ride later, on back on the way to LA. All this is to say, I didn’t get checked into my hotel until the bottom of the 5th, just in time to
hear that I should be disappointed with a 2-0 lead. Weird, but that’s where our recap begins!

Turns out, Julio Teheran had something of a bounce-back game after a mediocre performance last week. When you go six and give up none and striking out 8, it’s easy
to forgive the last go-round. All I got to see was him load the bases after getting ahead of a couple of guys, then get out of it with some more nice pitches. I liked that Fredi stuck with him in that situation. I remain very optimistic about this kid. One the hitting side, there were already two runs on the board, and a third was added in the sixth when Jordan Schafer executed a suicide squeeze on a tough pitch. This after Ramiro Pena singled and took third on a horribly lazy error on SF’s left fielder. He just let the ball go right through the wickets. Maybe it’s just because I watch the Braves every day and therefore have some understanding of the way Fredi thinks, but I thought the squeeze was an incredibly obvious call there. The broadcasters were like ”WOW OMG SO SURPRISING NEVER SAW IT COMING!”, but literally right after they announced Schafer, I thought, “Squeeze play incoming” and I imagine most of you folks did, too. Looking over the game thread, I guess I could’ve just quoted Nick.Wait, I guess I will:

“I continue to be flummoxed at how opposing managers don’t seem to know that Fredi loves the suicide squeeze.”

But anyhow… The Braves would threaten a couple more times (Chris Johnson’s still hitting well above .300? What? It feels like I’ve seen him make a ton of outs lately, but he’s right up near .330. Good on you, NotTheRealCJ!) but get nothing. Lucikly, Luis Avilan and Jordan Walden did their best Venters/EOF impersonations, and Craig Kimbrel was vintage Kimbrel, taking 10 pitches to get two strikeouts and a flyball. It was a pleasure to watch.

And there you have it! A series won against the Giants.

In a game that promised from the get-go to be the kind of stomach-punch loss that we Braves fans know only too well – they get lucky; we do a handful of stupid things; they get lucky some more – somebody, at some point, rewrote the script.

First thing’s first: Mike Minor outpitched Chad Gaudin today, though you never would have known it from results alone. Both pitchers gave up 4 earned runs. Yet while the Braves’ ace struck out 7 in 6 innings, walking only 1 and avoiding the long ball, Gaudin struck out no Braves – seriously, how do you strike out no Braves? – while serving up 2 homers. For the afternoon, Minor posted a 1.23 FIP; Gaudin, an ugly 8.86 mark.

And yet Gaudin left the game with the lead. After looking absolutely wretched at the plate through two innings, the Giants plated three runs in the third on the back of some clutch (read: lucky) 2-out hitting and horrific Chris Johnson defense. They should have scored once at most in the inning. But that wasn’t all for the Giants. In the top half of the fifth, the Giants scored twice more after BJ Upton chased a Buster Posey fly ball up the center field wall, only to feel it hit him in the back as he looked for its path above his head. And that came after an Andrelton Simmons error, the first of 2 the suddenly shaky shortstop committed. After a Hunter Pence sac fly, the Giants found themselves with 5 runs through little agency of their own.

The Braves scored their runs with less… divine goodwill. BJ Upton hit a 450-foot monster in the first, and then helped manufacture a run in the fourth, as he stole second with two outs and scored on a Chris Johnson single. Not content, evidently, with those accomplishments – after all, he did arguably cost Minor a couple runs in the fifth – Upton then hit a 2- run homer in the sixth to chase Gaudin. I’d say he’s got the timing thing down again, and is primed for some second-half redemption.

Still, the Braves trailed to the very end. Both bullpens stabilized things a bit, even as luck began to favor the home team. The Giants managed to get at least one hit in each of the last four frames, but situational hitting is a fickle thing, and before you could explain the laws of probability to Joe Simpson, the Giants suddenly found themselves decidedly un-clutch: after stranding runners in each of the previous three innings, they managed not to score despite a single, double, and walk in the ninth. It was as if the teams switched jerseys.

They hadn’t, and the Braves won the game in the bottom of the ninth with a nice blend of patience, luck, and skill. After Sergio Romo struck out pinch hitter Ramiro Pena, better-pinch hitter Evan Gattis walked, Andrelton Simmons somehow coerced Joaquin Arias into committing an error, Jason Heyward singled, and Justin Upton watched ball four, only this time it was actually called a ball and the game was tied. And then Freddie Freeman hit a walk-off single.

I loathe the Giants. I dislike their fan base, their players, and their management. I hate that they have won 2 of the past 3 World Series; that their owner is preventing the A’s from building a stadium anywhere in the Bay Area; that Posey was, and remains forever, out. I particularly resent the fact that the Braves got their asses handed to them in San Francisco earlier in the year. Now, however, the Braves can win this series. All they have to do is have some patience, utilize their skill, and wait for the luck to turn towards them. It always evens out, or so they say.

(hi to all, i’m blazon and Alex has asked me to do Friday game recaps which is fine by me…i joined this blog just a few months before Mac died but it was time enough to see he had created something special and i wanted to hang around…i’m an expat Brit living the retired life in Appalachia on the tail end of a rural DSL line that ekes out a mighty 2MB, just enough to catch my beloved Braves each night….saw my first ever game of baseball at the old Comiskey Park in ’74 – had no idea of the rules and was puzzled why the home crowd was warmly applauding the opposing pitcher – Nolan Ryan’s no-hitter was broken up by Dick Allen’s infield hit in the 9th…living then in Florida Atlanta was the nearest baseball, that and TBS hooked me quick…)

i am of a generation in Britain, where Latin and Greek were on the syllabus from age 11 up, like it or not…to get into University, whatever your chosen field, Latin was mandatory….why tell you this? because this adds up to a lot of words, in three languages, where ours at its roots is based on theirs…you can fall in love with words, later on i did…thus the poets and the fine writers and in the last few years attempts to write limericks and parodies…baseball is a wonderful subject for the poet…high drama/pathos/anguish/delight all stretched out over three long hours at its own languid pace which, suddenly, can burst into action so fast and disparate you can’t follow all of it…so i enjoy writing rhyming stuff about baseball in general, the Bravos in particular, and Andrelton and Gattis all the time; to me Gattis is pure classical hero fresh back from the ampitheater, blood still dripping from his bat, and Andrelton an innocent naif out of Avatar – they both look their parts…i love them both…

while we wait for the first pitch…a word from Keats who few know was the first poet to empathize with the ails of the slumping slugger, an alliteration he particularly enjoyed…he would find rich pickings among our mighty men…

LA GRANDE SLAM? MERCY!

O what can ail thee brave Jay Up
alone and palely loitering
the tar is withered from thy bat
and no balls sing.

i see a frown upon his brow
the videos, the BP too
he tries to check, the umpires rule
thou goest, true.

Jay Up then showed his home run trot
such memories, he sighed full sore
and then he shut his wild, wild eyes
so strike outs, four.

so this is why he sojourns here
unhappily, two fifty two
go out with Fredi, reassess
and bunt a few.

******

to the game then…home cooking and it better be good, we’ve had enough of the other lately… looking forward to the renewal of the Georgia youth rivalry – in this series last year we only took one and when Buster made an out it was usually a smacked line drive at the right fielder, he seems to be a level above Jason at the plate and has two rings and an MVP to prove it…but who knows…he’s 2 years older and his defensive contribution is not on par…btw, it’s quite likely you know more about baseball than i do, in some cases a lot more – don’t let that bother you, it doesn’t me…)-

games like these, to watch, sheer punishment…someone has suggested an alternative…

a sabermetrician we know
suggests we don’t bother to go
he could tell in advance
that we don’t have a chance
the hell with the ebb and the flow.

cheers and thanks for your patience. Better luck tomorrow. Some ebb and flow please!

Hi, everyone. My name is Tom Abernathy, a.k.a. Hotspur, and I’ve been asked, apparently on the strength of the deceptively lazy Waiting for Godot parody I posted a few days ago, to take on the Kal-Ellian task of doing game write-ups for Thursday games here at Braves Journal. Knowing as I do that Thursday is the weekday during which a team is most likely to sit fallow – as indeed it does today – I snickered and cheerfully accepted the offer. (Yoink! Maroons.)

A little about me: I’m a writer (film and video games) living in Seattle for the past five years after a fourteen-year stint in Los Angeles, but I was born and raised in Atlanta. In fact, both sides of my family have been in-or-around Atlanta as far back as anyone knows, although my mother’s side, the Lees, are descended from a brother of the Civil War general and so I assume they were in Virginia at some point in the distant past. I am, as I told my fellow inductee, “blazon,” the other day, your average, garden-variety Southern Scots-English-Irish-French mutt. (I married a black and Puerto Rican Californian whose parents are from Harlem and Brooklyn. It’s possible I’m overcompensating.) Also, for those of you who may frequent Sandy Springs, Abernathy Road at one time led to the small farm in my father’s family; the legend is that his great-grandfather lost it in drunken card-playing adventures, but that’s entirely hearsay and I cannot corroborate it. (Print the legend.)

Point being, I was born to be a Braves fan.

Problem was, when I was a kid (the Seventies and early Eighties), the Braves were pretty wretched. Sure, there was 1982, which saw the hometown nine muster a 13-0 start that set a new MLB record for wins to start the season. (Won the division; swept in the NLCS by Ozzie Smith and the Cardinals.) But for the most part during those decades in Atlanta, the unlikeliness of any given potential occurrence was oft summed up with a phrase along the lines of, “Yeah, that’ll happen when the Braves win the World Series.” Such an eventuality was universally considered to be slightly less likely than that of a chimp taking home the Tony for Best Shakespeare Adaptation or the prospect of unpowered porcine aviation.

Luckily, Our Mister Turner’s need for cheap programming for his fledgling cable network meant that, wretched or not, Braves games were being piped all over the nation as an alternative to pirated late-night Cinemax soft-core. Many of you, like Sir Reginald Dwight, may have come to your Braves fanaticism via this outlet. As for me, I flew my Braves beach towel (a game giveaway) in my Ohio college dorm room as a banner of fealty to my hometown and occasionally caught games when I was back visiting my family, but going to a Braves game back then was what I assume going to a Cubs game is like now: something you did because it was part of the city’s cultural landscape, not because you expected to see good baseball. And certainly not because you expected the Braves to win.

And then 1991 happened.

I was living in Philadelphia, sleeping on a friend’s mother’s apartment floor and working odd jobs. (Spent a year-and-a-half there, and managed never to go to a Phillies game, a fact of which I remain absurdly proud.) I remember coming in, late one September weekend afternoon, from my waitron job at the Main Line T.G.I. Fridays, grabbing a beer, and flipping through the channels on the ginormous seventeen-inch Zenith. I pop the top on the beer, prop my barking dogs up on the coffee table, close my eyes, and just flip the channels on the cable box, listening for something worth pausing for.

And then I hear it:

“WHOAAAAAA-OHHH-OHHHHHHHH…”

What the hell?

“WHOAAAAAA-OHHH-OHHHHHHHH…”

Not one voice. Not five voices. A multitude. Echoing across a vast expanse.

“WHOAAAAAA-OHHH-OHHHHHHHH…”

My brow furrows.

“WHOAAAAAA-OHHH-OHHHHHHHH…”

I open one eye at the screen… and see something I have never, ever seen before: Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium filled to the rafters. Fifty thousand people, all wailing this eerie, haunting sound and moving their forearms in an arcane motion fraught with intense, portentous energy.

And then Ernie Johnson’s voice, introducing the TBS audience to this evening’s game between the hometown Atlanta Braves and the Los Angeles Dodgers, the team they’re currently two games behind for the division lead.

If I had ever given credence to the reports of my eyes and ears, my faith in them was now shattered. This could not be. And I’m not just talking about the team being in the race – although, to be sure, that was farfetched, if not utterly without precedent. I’m talking about the stadium filled with fans, chanting, chopping, cheering, as one Hydra-headed behemoth of passion and hope. I had heard the word “spirit” used before in a sports context, but until now I had never experienced it. If that flying saucer of a stadium could have risen on the sheer emotional power of the people in its seats and levitated off to Saturn, I believe it would have done so on national basic cable television before my very eyes.

I was a Braves fan before that moment. But that was the moment I fell in love.

I will not here recount the events of that postseason, nor document for you who remember it well the outrageous highs and lows of that greatest, Scream-Machiniest World Series ever played. Neither will I tell the tale of how, a year later, squatting on yet another friend’s apartment floor in Jenkintown, I sat alone and watched Game 7 of the NLCS against the Pirates in glum and mounting resignation, until that incomparable moment at the end of all things when suddenly, incredibly, the entire universe phase-shifted in that way that it can only in baseball. (Skip Caray: “He is…SAFE! BRAVES WIN! BRAVES WIN! BRAVES WIN! BRAVES WIN!…” and finally, exhausted, “…Braves win…!”)

I will not tell you the myriad ways in which these memories are precious to me as breath, for you have your own, and you know.

I cannot join, even if I wanted to, in the merry round-robin from a few days ago when everyone was recounting the first time they went to see the Braves play in person. The truth is, I don’t remember my first time. I know it was during the Seventies – possibly 1976, since for a long time I kept the pillbox hat they gave out at the gate during a day game I saw in that bicentennial year. Eight years old, I was. First time? I’m just not sure.

But I can tell you about the game I saw in person that meant the most to me.

One of the things I’ve come to love about baseball is the way that, when I squint, I feel like I can see the connections, what Lincoln called in a bit of poetic appropriation the “mystic chords of memory,” between the players I see on the field and those who played the game 150 years ago or more. I feel as if I can almost make out their world lines, the ways in which the game exists across time and space and history. I see Brooklyn Excelsiors and Boston Bees and Homestead Grays and Atlanta Black Crackers out there, like those cinematic scenes in the Iowa cornfields where Shoeless Joe and Moonlight Graham return to take BP and shag some flies. (Never use that phrase in the UK, by the way. Means something TOTALLY different.)

Anyway, the end of that movie has always had a strange effect on me, because my dad was rarely around when I was a kid, and even when he was, baseball wasn’t part of our relationship. He was, from high school athletics onward, a football guy. So I never had that “You wanna have a catch?” feeling.

Instead, the main person I shared my Braves fandom with was my grandfather, my mom’s dad, Joseph Samuel Lee. It was he who took me to that summer-of-’76 game with the pillbox caps. As I got older I predictably rebelled against many of what I saw as his staid, old-fashioned ways and ideas, and often our time together degenerated into squabbling, mostly good-natured, over politics and the like. But the one thing we could always talk about in harmony was the Atlanta Braves.

On Wednesday, September 15, 1993, my grandfather and I took MARTA to Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium with a bag full of Chick-fil-A sandwiches. (Do they still let you do that, bring food in from outside?) As those of you old enough will surely remember, the Braves were locked in a mortal struggle with the San Francisco Giants in what was even then being called “the Last Great Pennant Race,” with realignment on the horizon for the next season. No longer a perennial hometown joke, the Braves were fighting for their third divisional crown in three years; by now, greatness was expected of them. But Matt Williams and his ilk were toe-to-toe with our Bravos at every step.

We now know that the Braves would take the West with 103 wins to SF’s 102, culminating with the giddy sight of Tommy Lasorda dancing in the dugout as his boys in blue kept their hated rivals from the postseason. But on this September night that outcome was entirely in doubt; there seemed every chance that the Braves’ desperate push to actually WIN a World Series might die before October could arrive, despite our four-game lead on Los Gigantes. (Nobody called them that then.) For those who don’t recall it, the euphoria of almost winning rings in ’91 and ’92 had given way in ’93 to the nagging fear that the old Braves curse was still around, just ratcheted up to an exquisitely painful irony: What if this is all there is? What if we’re fated always only to come close, but never to win it all? What if, deep down, we really are the losers we seemed for so long to be?

And so my 81-year-old grandfather and I climbed the ramps of that ridiculous, beloved old saucer stadium and took our seats high in the upper deck behind home plate. The Giants had already done us the service of losing to the Cubs in a getaway-day afternoon tilt at Candlestick Park, so the air was full of expectation; a win would pad our slim division lead.

But that air of expectation soon soured. With Jose Rijo on the mound, the Reds took leads first of 1-0 and then 3-1. Kent Mercker pitched five-and-a-third and did a respectable job, but by the middle of the ninth the Cincinnatus had added three more runs off a pre-closer Mark Wohlers, and, given the offensive lethargy of the team this night, the 6-2 deficit going into the final half-inning felt insurmountable. (This was before steroids and HGH, young’uns; a four-run deficit meant you could all but put it in the book.)

Reds reliever Johnny Ruffin, who had gotten the last out for Rijo in the bottom of the 8th, came out again to try and close it out. Atlanta backstop Damon Berryhill had other ideas, however, and smacked a 1-2 pitch to left for a double. Interesting, yes, but not a game-changer. Atlanta manager Joe Torre (oh, right!) sent Bill Pecota in to run for him, in a move Fredi Gonzalez might want to study a little. Young September call-up Chipper Jones, then little more than a glimmer of hope in Bobby Cox’s eye, was sent up to pinch-hit for RP Pete Smith, but struck out swinging. Ryan Klesko, he of the prodigious power but questionable on-base skills, was up.

And, after spitting on two balls, launched a moon shot over the right field fence.

The crowd perked up; we were still going to lose, of course, but at least now we could feel a little better about it. Gave ‘em a fight there at the end, didn’t we?

Ex-Brave Jeff Reardon (traitor!) took over for Ruffin on the mound to face the even-then drug-bedeviled Otis Nixon. Otis saw the count even at 2-2, decided he was bored, and promptly legged out a double to right-center. Perpetual weak link Jeff Blauser followed with a (0-2!) single that sent Nixon to 3rd.

By now, the joint is rockin’. And by “the joint,” I mean all 48,825 people stuffed into the Launching Pad. After two-plus hours of growing melancholy, this thing has started to feel almost…well…possible. I mean, you know, not really. Things like coming back from a four-run deficit don’t happen in 1993, and even if occasionally they do, they certainly don’t happen to the Atlanta Braves, whose entry in the Oxford English Dictionary is accompanied by a picture of Charlie Brown lying flat on his back while Lucy laughs her snotty little head off.

But everybody is standing up, just the same, because we’re starting to forget that we’re probably cursed; we’re starting to believe, just a little, that maybe everything ISN’T written; that maybe our best days are still ahead, not behind; that maybe this nice little two-plus-year run of almost-bestness might not be about to end in ignominy after all. Thus buoyed, everybody in the place is on their feet – everybody, that is, except Sam Lee, my 81-year-old grandfather, whose knees and legs just can’t take that at this point. So he stays seated and I tell him, over the mounting noise and vibration, that Jeff Reardon is coming out and coming in is the closer I hate above all closers to this very day:

Rob Dibble.

I have no words to express my hatred for Rob Dibble, nor explanation for my extreme antipathy beyond the twin facts that he is both an incredible closer and an incredible jerk. I look at him and I want to punch his giant square jaw. He is Death and he’s unbeatable.

Warm-up tosses over, Dibble climbs the hill to scowl across sixty feet and six inches of grass at the last, best hope for Los Bravos, left-fielder Ron Gant. And throws.

And Ron Gant smacks that first pitch down the left-field line, straight as a laser and not high enough, not high enough, not high enough, now it gently starts to arc down –

It hits the yellow line on the top of the wall and skips, like a stone on a lake, out of the ballpark and into the visitors’ bullpen.

The stadium erupts in a release of pent-up hope and fear. Gant jumps up and down all the way around the bases, and 48,824 people in the stands jump up and down with him… everyone except my grandfather, who just looks at me, waiting for me to tell him what’s happened.

I mouth to him, because I could never hope to be heard above the din: ”HOME RUN!”

A beat, as he makes sense of what I’ve mouthed… and then a big grin spreads over his face, and he starts banging the arms of his seat as hard as he can, which isn’t very hard because did I mention he’s 81 years old, but still it’s like he’s jumping up and down and screaming his head off in the only way he can.

I look down at him, at this old man who helped raise me in the absence of my father, a huge smile on my face, and it hits 25-year-old me in the way that occasionally such things do as you get older and stop being such a self-involved ass: I love him. He loves me. This moment is perfect. I will always remember this moment.

And I always have. I can see that grin, spreading across his face as the fans around us whoop and leap for joy, right now as I write this.

The following August, on the night of the 12th, my grandfather and I talked on the phone. We argued, as we often did, about the labor situation in baseball, cued now by the strike that had begun the previous day. As usual, I argued the viewpoint of labor and he took the side of the owners. It was still good-natured, though, and at the end of the conversation, before I hung up, I told him I loved him and would come over in the next couple of days to see him and my grandmother.

That didn’t happen. Early the next morning, Sam Lee had a heart attack while brushing his teeth and died before the EMTs could arrive. It was sudden, but, given his age, not shocking. Of course, I had a lot of time in the ensuing days to think about his life, and about his presence in my life. He was complex and imperfect, but he loved me and my mother and sister more than anything, and he unquestionably helped to form the man I am, even if sometimes mainly by giving me a wall to bounce off as I figured out who I wanted to be.

And to have that brilliant moment with him, to leave behind for an evening the things that separated us and instead embrace, in that instant of improbable victory, this thing that bound us together… it’s impossible to express what it meant to me as it happened, and what it means to me now. Put simply, it’s everything that matters… a fact of which I’m reminded, these days, when my own seven-year-old daughter sits down with me and asks me to explain the game on the screen to her, to tell her about the people on the field, to tell her their stories. Because when I do so, of course, I am telling her my own.

That’s who I am, and that’s why I love the Atlanta Braves. And I’m humbled to be asked to contribute to this community Mac built. I hope to honor his memory, and your goodwill, in the process.

So, for those of you who are interested in coming to a Braves game with your fellow Bravesjournalers — we’ll be in Atlanta for the July 26th-28th series against the Cardinals — we were looking for tickets, and there is a big question to ask: do we want cheap seats, expensive seats, or somewhere in between? There are 12 different options, but the real question is, do we want:

a) Cheapest available — $13 or $24
b) In the middle — $36-$48
c) Higher end — $52-$65

Which would you prefer?

a) Cheapest available — $13 or $24
b) In the middle — $36-$48
c) Higher end — $52-$65

Which would you prefer?

That’s really all I have for you. From the box score and San Diego slanted write-ups, it might have been one of those nights you just tip your hat to a guy who has his A-game going, but I know how much you guys hate that sort of thing. Nonetheless, if the Braves had a converted reliever who was 4-1 at home and consistently lowering his mid-3s ERA with every start we’d talk about his skill rather than the batters’ failures. Oh well. Such are the vagaries of fandom.

Paul Maholm attempts to right the ship this afternoon, take at least one in San Diego and bring us home with a 3-4 road trip, rather than 2-5. Edison Valquez and his 6-something ERA go for the Pads so the offense really should be able to get something going there. Game time is 3:40 PM, Eastern. This is our last tilt west of Kansas City for the rest of the year, so going forward we should be able to actually watch the games and make it to work the next day.

Consider this your game thread as well…

Here’s the record:

2007

1st round: Jason Heyward, Jon Gilmore (compensation for losing Danys Baez)

Notable picks: Freddie Freeman (2), Brandon Hicks (3), Cory Gearrin (4)

Analysis: The Braves had three picks in the first two rounds, and picked two stars and a bust. That’s a ratio you’ll take to the bank every single time. Danys Baez never did a thing in a Braves uniform but he gave the Braves a very favorable-looking draft board in 2007; shame that they couldn’t do much with the picks that they got for him, nor with any of their lower-round picks. (The Braves did have another second-round pick in 2007, and selected Josh Fields The Pitcher, but he didn’t sign, and the Mariners took him in the second round in 2008.) But, again, a draft with Jason Heyward and Freddie Freeman is a pretty good draft.

2008

1st round: Brett DeVall (compensation for losing Ron Mahay)

Notable picks: Zeke Spruill (2), Craig Kimbrel (3), Paul Clemens (7), Brett Oberholtzer (8), J.J. Hoover (10)

Analysis: A reverse of 2007, the Braves didn’t get anything out of their top two picks, DeVall and second-rounder Tyler Stovall, but they managed to get a number of tradeable pitching prospects in other rounds. The Braves actually lost their 18th overall pick to the Mets for having signed free agent Tom Glavine; the Mets took Ike Davis, which looked like a good idea at the time, and the Braves got DeVall with the 40th overall pick. Spruill went to Arizona in the Justin Upton deal; Clemens and Oberholtzer went to Houston in the Michael Bourn deal; and Hoover went to Cincinnati in the Juan Francisco deal. And the Braves decided to hang onto Craig Kimbrel, which seems to have been a good move.

2009

1st round: Mike Minor

Notable picks: David Hale (2), Aaron Northcraft (7)

Analysis: Mike Minor was a controversial pick at seventh overall, but he has proven his worth and then some. However, not much in the rest of the draft has panned out. Hale still has a live arm and has made it to Triple-A, which is more than you can say for other draft picks from that year. This is not an auspicious-looking draft beyond the first round.

2010

1st round: Matt Lipka (compensation for losing Mike Gonzalez)

Notable picks: Todd Cunningham (2, compensation for losing Mike Gonzalez), Andrelton Simmons (3), Joe Leonard (3), Joey Terdoslavich (6), Brandon Drury (13), William Beckwith (21), Evan Gattis (23)

Analysis: The Braves lost their 20th overall pick in the first round after signing closer Billy Wagner, but they got a pick 15 spots later, 35th overall, for losing closer Mike Gonzalez. Outfielders Lipka and Cunningham may not turn into much, but the Braves were able to get value from Drury by sending him to Arizona in the Justin Upton deal, and Joey Terdoslavich is hitting well in Triple-A. Many of the others show up somewhere on an Atlanta Braves top 25 prospects list, which basically means that prospect hounds think that they have a nonzero chance of having a breakout year. Of course, it’s hard to imagine any of the other players being more valuable than Andrelton Simmons or Evan Gattis.

2011

1st round: Sean Gilmartin

Notable picks: Nick Ahmed (2), Kyle Kubitza (3), J.R. Graham (4), Cody Martin (7), Tommy La Stella (8), Navery Moore (14)

Analysis: The Braves wasted a 19th-round pick on Brian Snitker’s son Troy, which is suboptimal, considering that they were able to get Craig Kimbrel’s brother Matt in the 31st round in 2012. No one from the 2011 draft has made the majors yet; the best pick of the draft was looking like J.R. Graham, but he’s currently on the disabled list with a shoulder strain, which frightens the hell out of me.

2012

1st round: Lucas Sims

Notable picks: Alex Wood (2)

Analysis: It’s hard to know exactly with this draft — maybe catchers Bryan De La Rosa or Josh Elander will put it together, or someone else will emerge. But the top two picks are likely to stay the top two. Wood has already made his major league debut, of course, and he looks like he’ll have a career as long as his arm stays attached to his body. Sims is on track, too. But the Braves will have to hope that someone else emerges.

Overall Analysis: The Braves are a pretty good drafting team, especially when you compare these drafts with the Red Sox record from 2007 to the present. Really, in almost every aspect of baseball, the Braves look good when compared to almost any other team. You just have to remember to keep those comparisons in mind.

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These drafts don’t look all that impressive, but you realize that the Braves are fielding quite a few of these draftees as integral parts of their team: Jason Heyward, Freddie Freeman, Craig Kimbrel, Mike Minor, Andrelton Simmons, Evan Gattis, and now Alex Wood. That doesn’t even count international free agents like Julio Teheran or amateur free agents like Brandon Beachy. So don’t get bent out of shape if the Braves have a first round bust. If you can turn one player from a draft into a core part of your lineup, or a couple players into role players and trade chips, then you’ve had a successful draft.