Braves Report

Here’s just some thoughts about Week 1 of the regular season for the Braves.

Any more questions about Escobar?

All offseason, all I heard about was that Escobar was just a utility infielder at best, but over Spring Training and the first week, Escobar has been nothing short of the World’s Greatest Cuban. With a .316 BA and a team-leading 5 BB, Escobar has had a solid start, and he added his first double today with his first HR the other day. He’s also the first Brave with a cycle on the season. As for his defense, he’s been solid with only one error and some nice plays. I’d say we won’t miss Renteria too much, but this is only the first week.

Stop worrying/ being excited over things that have happened over 7 days.

I’m really ashamed to see Braves fans and baseball fans in particular already fretting/ cursing/ yelling about things that have already happened. We can’t win close games. Our bullpen is terrible. IT IS ONLY THE FIRST WEEK. Stop worrying. We had that great start last season and then finished badly. Maybe this year, we won’t be so great to start and then finish strong. Every baseball fan knows the season is 162 games, so just relax. Wait for September to get worried. I’ve looked at chats on AJC.com and some other sites, and you’d figure we had already lost 100 games instead of 3.

Kotsay looking good.

I just saw Kotsay make a double play by throwing the guy out at first. He’s done fairly well offensively (.286 BA and added a double today). In center, he’s been great, and it doesn’t seem as though we’ve lost a lot between him and Andruw (except for the power). Hopefully, Kotsay will stay healthy all season.

Hudson being the ace.

Two starts down, and Huddy looks the part of the ace. 13 IP and a 3.46 ERA so far, and he should be 2-0. The most incredible thing may be the 0 BB (I hope I didn’t just jinx him). He’s looked really good, and his clutch 6 IP last night was huge for a tired bullpen. If he can continue to throw this way, we’ll be just fine.

The good and bad about the bullpen.

This seems to be the hot-button issue among Braves fans so far. In our bullpen, either you ERA is below 3 (Moylan, Soriano, Ohman) or 6 and above (Acosta, Boyer, Ring, Resop). Bennett has a 4.50, but he’s started a game (effectively I might add) so I don’t count him right now. You have to take this with a grain of salt on both sides. The guys with a 0 ERA will give up runs, and the opposite guys will hold. After about 10 IP, then you can start to worry about having a 9 ERA, but not before.

Did Jurrjens remind anyone else of Maddux?

I was absolutely amazed by Jair the other night. He pitched very effectively until tiring in the sixth, but I imagine that his intensity on pitching his first game aided his tiring. He was great otherwise. Throwing strikes, backing up his 2-seamer to get LaRoche a couple times. Absolutely outstanding. Again, we have to take this with a grain of salt. It was only one outing and it was against the Pirates, but he did really well handling the pressure of being 0-2 and stopping the losing streak.

Bye-bye Hampton.

Well, we all worried about this. Hampton is on the DL. On the bright side, James will be ready for that start in the rotation. Honestly, let’s see if Jair and Chuckie can be the heart of the next big rotation in Atlanta. However, it is bad to see Hampton already hurt, and in the bullpen no less. At the beginning, I thought we might try to re-sign him for 1-2 years and around $5-7 million per season, but now, there is almost no chance (maybe a 1 year, $3 million if Hampton’s lucky). At this point, I just hope Hampton stays down. I just can’t take anymore disappointment from him.