Houston Astros vs. Atlanta Braves – Box Score – August 3, 2012 – ESPN.
I’m not saying we take Tim Hudson for granted, exactly, but I’d wager that he’s caused us less heartburn than any other pitcher — and maybe any other player — in the post-Smoltz era.
Now, the Astro are awful, so it wouldn’t be right to take much pleasure in victory. But we can take pleasure in the fact that Dan Uggla had a hit and an RBI, as he has done for five out of his last six games. He’s still not quite as dangerous a hitter as Carlos Zambrano, but he’s showing signs of being better than Ben Sheets.
Was anybody besides me not entirely sure that Paul Maholm and Tom Gorzelanny were not, in fact, the same person?
I’m still not completely certain. And I think he may have other aliases.
Felix Hernandez was almost Maddux-like today in The Bronx—a complete-game, 2-hit shutout on 101 pitches.
Total command on every pitch, it seemed.
Johnson got 2 hits vs Natspro last night.
On the 44 Greatest Atlanta Braves list, would you say that Chipper has passed Niekro for #3?
Also, Tim Hudson has certainly moved up a ton from where he was when Mac wrote it. He’s probably top 15-20 now.
Since coming back from Tommy John surgery, Hudson is 46-24 with a 3.15 ERA (125 ERA+). Before his surgery as a Brave he was 54-38 with a 3.78 ERA (114 ERA+).
Oh, Hudson has certainly passed Kevin Millwood, who was #18 and the 5th highest pitcher at 75-46 and a 3.73 ERA. Hudson is 100-62 with a 3.50 ERA.
Someone asked about Tim Hudson’s Hall of Fame case on the last thread. Right now, he has 192 wins and around 50 WAR. He’s 37, and he probably only has a maximum of three more years left of pitching effectively
Because he’s never won a Cy Young Award, he’d need some pretty compelling counting stats. It’s going to be hard for him to pull away from the pack. Just for comparison:
Roy Halladay: 192-98, 63.0 rWAR
Kevin Brown: 197-134, 61.2 rWAR
John Smoltz: 199-137, 59.4 rWAR
Andy Pettitte: 243-141, 53.9 rWAR
Kevin Appier: 168-133, 52.7 rWAR
Tim Hudson: 192-101, 50.9 rWAR
David Cone: 155-109, 50.8 rWAR
Hard to believe Juan Cruz, Charles Thomas, and Dan Meyer were the best Billy Beane could get for Tim Hudson.
Yeah, the A’s got it in the butt on that trade.
They really didn’t get much for any of those guys. Haren was good for a year or two, Calero same, Barton one year, and Zito walked (Sean Doolitle and Corey Brown, comp picks)
Wait a minute, you kidding? Haren had a 120 ERA+ over 3 years in Oakland, and then they traded him for an absurd haul of prospects, including Brett Anderson and Carlos Gonzalez. (It’s not Haren’s fault that they stupidly got rid of CarGo in the Holliday trade.) Mulder turned into Haren who turned into a boatload of goodies.
WTF. Haren was great. They just traded him during his prime. Now, if they’d kept Carlos Gonzalez, that would’ve turned out quite well for them, too.
I’m sure many of you have seen this, but this is a nice article about the Sheets signing: http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/atlanta-braves-pitcher-ben-sheets-great-under-the-radar-acquisition-080212
I’d say the tope five Atlanta Braves are:
Aaron
Maddux
Chipper
Niekro
Glavine
Chipper is closing the gap on Maddux
The Lemmer never got hit by a pitch at the major league level, according to that article on ESPN.com about HBPs (sweet read, btw). Just popping in to drop that nugget of info on you.
@17: If you memorize everything on this blog, you’d have known that already: http://bravesjournal.us/?p=2754#comment-83564
I’ll be handling the recap of tonight’s game; it will probably go up in the morning sometime.
Yeah, the A’s won the Mulder trade, lost the Hudson trade. So it goes.
Freddie never takes the first pitch, but it’s still an awesome commercial.
Maholm apparently got #17 away from Constanza. I’m not sure who the most famous 17 for the Braves is, but it was pretty famously worn by Andy Messersmith when he signed a (then) big dree agent contract. There are pictures of him with “Channel” instead of “Messersmith” on his jersey (for WTBS). MLB didn’t much care for that.
Way to go, Jason! man, he crushed that.
Man, Freddie has been very unlucky lately.
I can’t wait to hear Brian Jordan stumble over pronouncing “Maholm” tonight.
Whew, I thought that was gone for a second.
That was not close to being a strike.
“Wait until you see…my penis.”
Nice job Bravos.
Blah.
Did Frank keep his receipt?
Ok, runs please.
@31 Don’t let the illusion of the last few weeks fool you. The starting pitching on this team is not going to only give up 1 a night for the rest of the season.
So I go away for 30 minutes to play wiffleball with my grandson and this is what I come back to? C’mon people… I can’t do this by myself.
This is what we got Maholm for; he’s pitched very well with one exception. Now let’s get this guy some run support, eh?
Geez…Lucas Harrell or Cy Young..this clown is carving them up
COME ON DAN
But now here comes Struggla…need to bust out of this right now
I think I’d take Janish over Uggla with the bases loaded at this point.
Burn in hell, Chip.
@40 Yep
Reverse jinx!
HE DID IT!!!
Struggla no more? Huge 2 out hit
Sluggla
40- What’d he do this time?
Yay Struggla! I can’t say I had much hope for that at bat.
WTH? Does Janish use bats made of balsa wood? Dude would break one hitting a wiffle ball
@46 … when Uggla pulled it foul, he screamed as though he’d just knocked home the game-tying runs. Chip wasn’t nearly as exuberant over the actual 2-RBI swing.
In other words, just another typical Chip misjudgment.
Nats down 5-3 in the 6th…
Uggla hit a slicing liner foul and Chip cranked it up a few. To be fair, it was hit pretty sharply and landed reasonably close to the line.
I think maybe we shouldn’t pitch to him anymore.
Hang another to Maxwell
I was just thinking that Maholm should just hit Maxwell or intentionally walk him.
Oh, goddammit.
That was a blast.
Well, at least Houston will be in to their bullpen now, and we start ph and then the top
Maybe Maholm should have hit for himself
Prado swings at ball 4
It’s not looking like our night.
“Every Game” Cory Gearrin? Fredi’s riding him and why not; he’s pretty close to fungible.
The Astros are a pretty arrogant team for having 35 wins
Don’t worry, Uggla and Janish are due up. We’re saved!
Anytime you give up 850 feet of HRs to Justin Maxwell, you deserve to lose.
damn Marlins…pissed away their lead
2 games back has the feel of a high-water mark.
Wow, 10-6 Nats now. What a great night for the bats to go silent and for Maxwell to beat us by himself.
DOOOOOOOOOOOOMED.
In fairness, Justin Maxwell has the kind of baseball name that would make you think that he was actually a good baseball player. Like Chris Dickerson.
If you can’t beat the Astros, you deserve to lose a game in the standings to the first-place team.
A great thread…
http://bravesjournal.us/?p=5094#comments
Javy Vazquez went on to suck.
Melky Cabrera, as we all know, ate 1/4 pounders daily and random objects from his bat, and went on to suck.
Dunn was packaged for Uggla who has been fairly terrible and expensive since becoming a Brave.
Arodys Vizcaino has been injured.
Who would have ever thought that in 2 years and 8 months time, the most valuable asset in this deal would have been Boone Logan?
I could get used to the idea of Gattis in LF if it meant Wren were able to extend Prado, re-sign Bourn, go hard after Greinke, and start locking up some young talent. Kimbrel, Freeman, and Heyward are going to be hellacious arb-cases. On the surface, Gattis looks like he has all of the tools to become a great hitter. This year, he’s struck out only once every 9 plate appearances, while walking 1 out of every 10 plate appearances, and has 31 XBH in 180 ABs. Compare his success this season to a 150 game season average and he’d have 10 triples 41 doubles 45HR 156 RBI. Even scaled down by 25%, that would be some hefty hitting in LF.
72,
Hmmm… as much as I hate to say it, the most valuable asset in that deal, today, is probably Melky Cabrera. Followed by Vizcaino.
I’m extremely giddy over Gattis. I freaking love him. But it seems like everyone that actually has an idea of what they’re talking about (Fangraphs, CAC, Klaw) says that there is nothing special about a 25 year old (26 year old in two weeks) putting up those numbers in Hi-A. I’d love for him to become something, anything; but, I think I’ve tempered my own expectations.
Recap is up.