Alternated in his callup between looking like the answer to everyone’s righthanded setup man prayers and, well, a 20-year-old rookie who wasn’t ready yet. Vizcaino had 17 major league appearances last season. In eight of them he did not allow a hit, in six no baserunners, in three he struck out three men. He also had three outings in which he walked two men, including a disastrous four-hit, two-walk, five-run escapade against the Dodgers Sept. 2. He allowed only four other runs in his other sixteen appearances combined, though he did have to get bailed out a couple of times when his control deserted him.
Vizcaino has the ability to be a frontline starting pitcher, and as the Braves already have what looks like a frontline closer for the next several years there’s reason to not lock him into a bullpen role just yet. However, Vizcaino has a history of arm problems, which may keep him from being a rotation anchor. Moreover, he’s really a two-pitch pitcher right now, fastball and curveball. He threw his changeup just 2.2 percent of the time, and if it doesn’t develop he’s going to have to stay in the pen. The assumption is that he will start the year in the major league pen, but it might be best if he was in the rotation in Gwinnett. If Medlen is ready to go, Vizcaino wouldn’t be needed in the big leagues. If he’s not… Well, then you’re working with the Lisp, Anthony Varvaro, and/or Jairo Acencio as your righthanded setup men. In that case, they’ll need Vizcaino.
Arodys Vizcaino Statistics and History – Baseball-Reference.com.
The best thing is for Arodys to start in Gwinnett. We can always use him as in relief in the second half. Last year was the first time he was completely healthy for the full year, and I hope he will build on that and throw more innings this year.
Good summary, Mac. I would love to see Vizcaino develop a third pitch (and the durability necessary to be a starter), but at the very least he should be a good-to-excellent reliever, and you can never have too many of those.
Carry-over from the Bonds/PED/”natural player” discussion previously:
Do you draw a distinction between those 2 — autograft (from your body) vs. allograft (cadaver)?
In this case, I don’t draw a distinction. My point is that the distinction between “natural” players and “unnatural” PEDs is completely arbitrary. Dan Uggla can live in the gym all off-season, take 1000 different supplements and crank out forearms the size of torpedos, and that’s “natural.” But if he takes one supplement that’s on the “banned list” all of a sudden his workout process is “unnatural” and his accomplishments are suddenly suspect? I don’t get that.
I understand why, emotionally, people would say “if you’re fixing an injury, it’s okay.” (i.e. Tommy John, or ligament replacement.) But that’s all that is, IMHO – an emotional response. I mean, go resurrect George Sisler or Ty Cobb and ask them if they think having a doctor cut a ligament out of your leg and magically attach it to you arm is “natural” and not a special advantage, right?
PEDs, in that they are often untested with unknown, unhealthy side effects, should be monitored and regulated. But with that said, the top end athlete has *always* been willing to push the envelope and risk long term health loss in order for immediate glory. Hell, you can’t play football at any level above Pop Warner and not expect to be exchanging future mental functionality for the big hit on the field today. The willingness to exchange health for glory is in fact part of why these men *become* super-athletes.
If Barry Bonds is so driven to be the best baseball player since Babe Ruth that he uses The Creme after workouts, so be it. If Chipper is so driven that he allows doctors to graft a dead man’s ligament into his knee, so be it. I have no problem with any of it. I love Chipper, and I still stand in drop-jawed awe of Barry Bonds. (My dislike of John Smoltz has nothing to do with his medical history, per se.)
But I don’t get this great fooferaw that always comes up about PEDs in baseball. Mostly I think it’s just old men pissed off that angry, snotty, piss-headed Barry Bonds had the audacity to break the records of their childhood heroes’ or something.
There’s nothing “natural” about Tommy John surgery.
Eric O’Flaherty injects pig insulin into his body every day to maintain his ability to play. How is that “natural?”
I’m okay with all of this, I just don’t understand why some people draw arbitrary distinctions between one kind of Frankenstein and another.
I would like to see him work with Glavine on his change up
I know that Luke Scott has been described as a bit of a dipshit, but will someone please explain to him the definition of “crocodile tears”?
http://tinyurl.com/7wf6v52
Luke Scott is not smart. Film at 11.
I have to say, the image of a ballplayer rolling down his car window to taunt the crying fans of the team his team had just knocked out of the playoffs is striking me as pretty damned funny at the moment.
Eric O’Flaherty injects pig insulin into his body every day to maintain his ability to play. How is that “natural?”
Nobody uses pig insulin anymore; it’s human insulin that is synthesized and then sold.
Treating a medical condition and using performance enhancing drugs are not the same. End of discussion.
@9
I bet it’s not.
I feel more justified in my undying hatred of the Saints
http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/7638603/new-orleans-saints-defense-had-bounty-program-nfl-says
Ha, it is for me.
@9 – I wish it were. The only reason that Sam isn’t labeled a trolling nihilist is that he’s been at it so long. Let’s please move on.
@11
I hope Adam Schefter knows he’s disrespecting the city of New Orleans by daring to say something unflattering about the Saints. It’s a bloody outrage, it is!
Scouting Comparison: Andrelton Simmons vs. Tyler Pastornicky | FanGraphs Baseball.
@11
Geez. That’s ridiculous.
“I got to see a priceless thing driving back to my apartment,” Luke Scott continued. “I see all the Boston fans walking around, and I mean they were crying crocodile tears. … It was like someone shot their dog. I rolled down the window and I’m like, ‘Ah, hah, sucks doesn’t it, when someone laughs or makes fun of you when things aren’t going your way.’”
Hilarious.
It’s a shame that Luke Scott doesn’t know what “crocodile tears” are. Of course, he probably never listened to the Mumps.
I suspect there are a lot of things Luke Scott doesn’t know.
I’m personally stunned that the Saints were incentivizing dirty play. I mean, they’re such a happy, upbeat story of overcoming adversity and shit, right? This has to be a lie, because, you know, Katrina.
@19
Simple addition? That Pluto is no longer a planet? That Pluto was ever considered a planet? That the sun isn’t a planet? That when football announcers talk about “space” they’re not referring to the infinite frontier.
@Sam
I’m personally stunned that your sorry ass is still allowed on this blog. I’m done holding my words back to someone that constantly tries to enrage the audience.
It’s funny that last thread it was me that was accused of taking things too seriously. Good lord.
Of course…say what you want to stir the shit pot then hold your hands up and back away. You’re a classic case of the Eddie Haskell effect.
Dude. I made one comment about a link someone else posted. I haven’t even taken the bait about being a “nihilist troll.” You’re being absurd.
Mac, the comp of Pastornicky to Willie Bloomquist is interesting. A cheap Willie Bloomquist playing plus D at SS is not to be thrown away lightly.
Can he play plus D at short?
@25
Classic Haskell.
Sam: “Verbal excrement.”
Someone else: “Please stop saying stupid things.”
Sam: “Who, meeeee? I would never!”
Braves Journal, in a nutshell, at the moment.
@28
Seconded. Since he’s not leaving, I just don’t address him. It’s easy if you try!
I love the headline: AJ Burnett broke his face trying to bunt and is out 2 to 3 months.
Maybe Coach, NY METS and ILoveEmmaStone can all come back and join Sam?
Don’t forget Landogarner!
I still think “Huckleberry” when I think of Adam Laroche.
Saints are despicable. Players and coaches should be suspended. Their free ride has gone on long enough.
If the officials had called some of this shit, instead of going all Sgt. Schultz all the time, it might have not matured into a part of every one of their game plans.
Good lord. The groupthink here is pathetic.
Thanks Bethany for the link. Ths Saints story is indeed shocking and it has a chance to become bigger than even the recently exposed debacle at Penn State. If the NFL has a ‘death penalty’ it should considering using it. Suspending some players, using fines and firing a few coaches will not get the job done–it will look more like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titannic….
I pretty much agree with what I think Sam is arguing about. PEDs didn’t give Bonds the incredible pitch recognition and hand to eye coordination required to hit 763 home runs. They didn’t magically grow muscles for him, he had to work extraordinarily hard to get them. People who bitch and moan about how dirty Bonds was while completely ignoring the fact that previous generations of players used every advantage at their disposal to get better are engaged in a ridiculous game of moving the goal posts to try and justify their rationalizations.
Bonds might be terrible at making sports writers like him, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t one of the top 5 players to ever play the game of baseball. And that’s really what this is about, sport writers don’t like Bonds because he isn’t nice to them, so when given the opportunity to crucify him, they jump right in, meanwhile plenty of other players who are better liked basically get off scot-free when the commit remarkably similar offenses. Hank Aaron admitted to using greenies, but since everyone (rightfully) loves him, he gets held up as the patron saint of career home run records.
Hank Aaron admitted to using greenies.
“using”? Yeah, sure. This is what he said:
” It was the first time since my rookie year that I didn’t drive in or score 100 runs. I was so frustrated that at one point I tried using a pep pill ”a greenie” that one of my teammates gave me. When that thing took hold, I thought I was having a heart attack. It was a stupid thing to do”. ”
Thanks, Tom.
Arguing about the effect of steroids on Barry Bonds’ numbers is problematic because he was such a gifted hitter to begin with.
I’ve always thought using Bret Boone’s power spike was the better argument. The only other possible explanation that I can think of would be the “juiced ball theory” – remember that?
“Treating a medical condition and using performance enhancing drugs are not the same.”
Erectile Dysfunction is a medical condition. If treated with viagra then isn’t that using a performance enhancing drug?
I don’t think it can be so cut and dried as some want to make it. I have had surgeries to repair injuries which were technically not needed in order for me to live a “normal, healthy” life but I had to have the surgeries to continue to participate in the sport I was playing. Since the surgery was not technically needed did it cure a medical condition or was it enhancing my performance? I would say it did both. I am pretty sure the same argument could be made about a lot of baseball surgeries: not needed to continue to live a normal life but needed to enhance the performance of the person to the point where they could continue to compete. Sam makes good points (sometimes) but too many people are hypersensitive to the way he says somethings to be able to see through to the point he is trying to make. Whatever happened to “stick and stones may break my bones…”? The world has become entirely too sensitive to what is said.
Off topic, but I hear and read commentators bloviating about how the new playoff format is great because ‘The Yankees even admit, they didn’t care about winning the division last year.’ Then I hear how exciting that last day of the season was, and man, we can have that every year!
I haven’t read anyone pointing out that if, last year, there were two wild-card teams, sure, the Yankees would want to win their division. But the Red Sox and Tampa Bay wouldn’t have been tooth-and-nail for THREE SOLID WEEKS.
There’s a pennant race or there’s not. You can’t force it, you can only kick the can up or down the road (rather, up or down the standings.)
Today is the first game of Spring Training and marks the beginning of the time of year when I become ticked off that almost all of the Yankees games are broadcast and almost none of the Braves games are shown. Sigh.
Baseball players aren’t allowed to used PEDs but models can be photoshopped until they’re unrecognizable. Discuss amongst yourself.
Not sure what Sam has said here that has everyone so worked up. His argument about the artificial–or better yet, cultural–distinction between “natural” and “unnatural” performance enhancement is both smart and sound. And he’s not being inflammatory. Saying “end of discussion” doesn’t really mean anything. I can all but assure you that a new generation of environmental historians, cultural theorists, and legal scholars will be writing about just this very issue for years to come. What makes something “unnatural,” and thus unacceptable, is much more interesting than whether Barry Bonds cheated or not. Indeed, it’s the question that must be answered before making the latter determination.
Moreover, The Saints are awful, and they’re particularly annoying because of their post-Katrina bandwagon. I can say that without actually, you know, degrading the memory of Katrina’s victims. (Indeed, how many of the white officers who refused to help the drowning black victims–“we take care of our own”–are also Saints fans?)
Mac, have you considered renaming the site “meta-Braves Journal”?
Adam, apparently it’s not what I say. It’s that I say anything at all.
Spike, I’d rather talk about baseball, or sports, personally. I didn’t start this train wreck.
@44, I a mild issue with the idea that a sport designed and marketed around mayhem for corporate profit can with a straight face complain about the practice on an individual basis. And apparently, it’s not just the Saints.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/redskins/washington-redskins-offered-bounties-for-big-hits-under-former-assistant-coach-gregg-williams/2012/03/02/gIQAH0RlnR_story.html
Seems like it was Gregg Williams who brought it to the Saints, but they continued it after he left and didn’t stop when the NFL told them to.
ST game underway! Minor Ks the side in the first.
No, but it is just Gregg Williams. (I’m not sure I actually believe that, but it was a good line.)
Maybe now NFL officials will start paying attention to the Saints instead of ignoring everything they do.
Well, the MLB.tv blackout debacle is going to continue this year, it seems. Absolutely ridiculous that they are using the origin of my cell phone plan instead of my IP address to determine where I am physically located.
@51, Have you tried a VPN?
@52 I’ve tried proxies with no luck, but not VPN. I just sent them another email, maybe this year they will be more helpful.
Just tuned in. Is that Dale Murphy’s voice I’m hearing?
Yep, that’s Murph.
Braves being no-hit.
Wish I could see this game. Sounds like some of the balls hit by braves hitters have been hit hard, but have been unlucky!
And no-hit through 5. Glad to see we’re picking up right where we left off last year.
Base hit, whew.
DOOOOOOMED.
Good to see our new hitting coach has made an immediate impact…
The Astros are now ahead of us in the Grapefruit League standings.
I seriously doubt the issue in the NFL is contained to one defensive coordinator. I suspect it’s near universal around the league to some extent, and certainly universal to all teams who are known for their aggressive, attacking defenses (the Giants, the Saints, the Ravens, etc.)
It’s probably true of every team for the most part. Except the Falcons. The Falcons are beings made of pure light.
Why, yes. Yes, they are.
Hey, I actually agree with Sam on a lot of his points. He just makes me want to reconsider my opinions.
Glad to see the team has picked up where it left off.
Mac, have you considered renaming the site “meta-Braves Journal”?
ooooh, don’t get my hopes up…
Awesome news: MLB.com won’t make me fork over an additional $15 bucks for the smartphone app this year. All I had to do was download the “Lite” version and sign in with my MLB.tv premium account, which already cost me $120.
Last year I was so incredibly pissed off that they charged me extra for the app. This is nice.
“Braves being no-hit.”
If September 2011 was any indication, there is going to be a lot of fifth inning posts here saying this.
I seem to recall reading an article where Chipper says one of the new hitting coaches is very much into using video: both of the hitter and his mechanics and of the opposing pitchers. If this is the case then maybe as the coaches get up to date scouting video of the opposing pitchers we will see improvements in the hitting. Fingers crossed.
It is a meaningless spring training opener.
That said, getting one hit by the tigers with Verlander nowhere to be found…..not the first impression you want to make after how last year ended.
Completely meaningless game though.
My only takeaway was Mikey hitting 94 on the gun several times in the 1st and Arodys hitting 96 at least once.
Meaningless, yep. Still nice listen to a game, though. Nothing like the promise of spring…
/Go Braves!
j- smooth with a HUGE night tonight.
Not a huge hawks fan, but that was a fun game to watch tonight.
Pastornicky play today?
@73
Yep. He was 0 for 2, but so was basically everyone. Didn’t have any balls hit to him at short.
Pitchers are always ahead of hitters this early.
Let’s see …
Joe Johnson out. Hawks beat the team with the best record in the NBA.
Coincidence? I think not.
Come on Kentucky! (I feel gross saying that)
So, so Mets.
I’m curious about this Ernesto Mejia who is playing first base today. He had a monster year in AA last year. Why isn’t anyone talking about this kid? Is it his age?
Holy cow, 6 home runs off of Teheran in 2 innings?
Things looking great so far for your 2012 Atlanta Braves.
Teheran to the Indians for Derek Lowe.
Well, pitchers are always ahead of Atlanta Braves hitters this early.
So the Vols end up #2 in the SEC. Quite an accomplishment. Really like the way Cuonzo has them playing – hell, even Golden is playing team ball. Sometimes.
———-
Prediction: Medlen ends up in the rotation very soon.
From what I’ve seen, MLB hitters are just sitting on the pitch they want from Teheran and teeing off.
Wait, Bethany, are you able to watch the game?
DOB says Terdoslavich is in at 3B, Simmons at SS.
@86 No, but I’m just reacting to what I saw of him last year and the news from today. DOOOMED and all that jazz.
MLB emailed me back and said to try it again during the week, because there were more blackout restrictions on weekends. It’s not going to change anything… When that doesn’t work I’ll try calling them and see if they can work something out. I’ll gladly pay for the service if they can get it to stop being stupid.
Can’t read anything into a spring training game, let alone an early. Then again, I have long thought that both Teheran and Delgado need more minor league seasoning. This game has done nothing to change my mind.
Last year Kimbrell got torched in his first appearances. but 6 homers? Geez. You’d think Gonzalez would protect the kid a little bit
If any team would have a member catch a potentially dangerous illness that I’ve never heard of, it would be the Mets.
Conor Jackson had Valley Fever in 2009. to date, he has not recovered his stroke.
Why would you “protect” a kid throwing in his first ST game? He’s out there to get reps and work on pitches. He’s not going to figure out what’s wrong by getting pulled early.
The groupthink on this blog is disgusting. I can’t believe that you morons actually think the Braves are going to win a game this year. Open your eyes. We can’t pitch, we can’t hit, our brilliant right fielder can’t stay healthy, our first baseman just got injured, our rookie shortstop “has a chance” to be Willie Bloomquist, and our top prospect just gave up six home runs today. Listen, cretins, we’re going to go 0-162. And anyone who thinks different is an imbecile and a sheep.
Ah, that felt better. Sorry, I don’t know what came over me.
@84
Getting the two seed was huge. Adding Stokes was a big lift. I have been down on Martin, but he really got these guys to buy in.
I think it is down to Miss St and Tennessee for a tournament spot. One win in the SEC tournament makes it possible for UT, two and I think they get in. If Miss St looses their first round game, one Tennessee win may do it.
There could be a situation where UT and Miss St play. I would think the winner goes to the Dance.
Still a few things need to happen for the Vols. But it has been fun.
@94 – Bwahh hhahha hhahha!
I like the idea of being able to fire people, soooo fire Fredi Gonzalez, fire Frank Wren, fire both hitting coaches, fire Roger McDowell, fire the training staff, then hire Bobby Cox and fire him. If you can’t get a team ready to play the first spring training game, you suck.
I had a female athletic director in high school who we were sure had a 12-inch schlong.
Internet Tourette’s?
Excellent tagline, Mac.
Here’s to another great baseball season with Mac and the boys. Heading to Steinbrenner Field in Tampa for some Braves/Yanks action on Friday with the fiancé. She’s starting to love baseball (especially Brandon Beachy). She’s a keeper.
DOOOOOOOMED.
Seriously though, six home runs.
I couldn’t see the game myself, but Jim Powell kept saying over the radio that there were “gale-force winds” blowing out to right field, and that “anything high in the air to medium right will carry out of here.” He made it sound like some of the home runs were would-be-routine fly balls.
http://blogs.ajc.com/atlanta-braves-blog/2012/03/04/teheran-six-hrs-rocked-in-braves-18-3-loss/?cxntfid=blogs_atlanta_braves_blog
As Mac has always said (and I agree with him), spring training games are meaningless. Let’s not read too much into this.
I won’t be reading much into it. But you have to admit, it’s funny that these winds didn’t help us hit one measly homer, while they hit nine.
I dont think it can be totally ignored.
@105 Well, Mr Minor wants to stay in the major league. I am sure he feels better after today.
The Braves now have a 7 game losing streak counting the end of last year. Oh, when will it ever end?
What I want to know is why the hell do defensive players that are making hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars need bounties to hit someone? So, maybe you need to pay pitchers extra who throw strikes?
New post.
@107 We will be a dozen games behind everyone before the season starts. DOOMED