Let's talk Atlanta Braves baseball..

[Tex]

Man are these guys not tearing shit up or what? Furcal, Giles, and Sheffield are absolutely on fire, and with Chipper and and Andruw behind them.....this is a devastating lineup. Only thing that does worry me a bit though is the middle relief. I'm not sold on Ray King and Roberto Hernandez just yet . Hodges has pitched well and Bong has done well too, but I just get the feeling this bullpen is more similar to the one we had 2 years ago than to the one we had last year. Of course, once we get to the 9th inning...

[Mondak]

And yet they have the most fickle fans in the world. A beautiful new stadium, easy to get to and a winning team. they get like 50% at playoff games.

They are not winners. They cannot finish and they are just a good regular season game.

You have to love to watch Smoltz pitch, but overall - I wish he was on a decent team that could win it all.

[gov135]

Yeah. I always hate the no sellout for playoff games. I mean, geez. I'd go. And I hate the stupid Braves.

Seriously, though. Bullpens can be bought later in the season. They are pretty easy to shore up.

I still can't get over the resigning of Maddox at the expense of young pitching. And then trading one of the better pitchers in your division to a division competitor. (?)

But they'll be fine. The Mets stink and the Phillies are still several years away.

[jmf1234]

they'll get in the playoffs every single year until the mets shape up.

[fearofmear]

<i>Let's talk Atlanta Braves baseball..</i>

Okay. I hate the Braves as much if not more then the Yankees. All those regular season titles and one lousy World Series ring. Can you say C-H-O-K-E.

[teph]

Yeah, some Atlanta fans are fickle, but I'm not. I've got season tickets, and I go whenever humanly possible. I always have and will love the Braves, win or lose (and believe me, they've done some losing, too).

Keeping Maddux looked like a mistake early on. And while Moss and Millwood are tearing things up right now, Glavine was beginning to get washed up towards the end of last season, and he's not much of a loss - though it was disappointing to see him go to the Mets, we've always known where his motives lie anyway <ahem> baseball strike <cough, cough>. I don't know that we really have much reason to regret keeping Greg Maddux for a little while longer, though; our current starters are doing incredibly well, and most of them we're hardly even paying. Whenever we seem to have a mishap in our pitching, our hitting comes through quite nicely. Though this doesn't happen all of the time, it's doing well enough to keep us in first in our division by four games and to give us the best record in baseball by a few games, atm.

You can't really insult the braves' hitting; they lead the league in batting average, runs, slugging %, hits, and RBIs. How this may change later on, I don't know, and I'll still be here talking good about us and other teams, should we just fall off the leaderboards in the next few months (I do enjoy watching Montreal and San Francisco almost as much).

Our bullpen . . . well, it's doing . . . ok. We're getting the run support we need right now, so it's not much of an issue. When slumps start hitting, I'm hoping ol' Leo can have them squared away so they can keep us in the running.

As for our playoff hopes, sometimes we're up; sometimes we're down. I can't really explain it, but we at least have some good months to enjoy before they get here. Oh, and if anyone from Florida really wants to get into an argument about team strengths, someone else will have to handle that; I've got better things to do.

That's all I've got.

[warrrreagl]

It was a perfect weekend for a Braves fan; the Braves sweep and the Yankees were swept at home.

Ahhhh......