A Season of Upset

Well.....if you scroll down the screen a bit you'll find a blog or two toting what was to be (hopefully) an amazing baseball season for the Atlanta Braves. With John Smoltz, Tim Hudson, the return of Tom Glavine and the back to back power combo of Chipper Jones and Mark Teixeira, the Braves seemed to have all the necessary components to glide their way through the season and into the post. Well...we all make mistakes. Not only did all 3 ace starters go down (for the season/possibly career), but Mark Teixeira found himself putting on an Angels jersey right before the trade deadline. So where does that leave a team which had every opportunity to take back the East??? how about 20 games below .500 and 19.5 games out of 1st place...disappointing? you bet. thankfully though we have the Washington Nationals in our division so that we can be better than someone.

While this hasn't been an enjoyable season by any stretch, there is hope on the horizon. Several rookies and normal back-up players have all stepped up and proven that they can in fact handle themselves when the big guys go down. HUGE kudos to Martin Prado, Omar Infante, Jair Jurrjens, and Gregor Blanco. Not to mention Brian McCann filling up to the power position left open by Tex. And SOMEHOW, while all of this has been going on, Chipper Jones managed to have a truly landmark season. While his power numbers weren't necessarily note-worthy, he has still hit 20 homeruns which puts him as one of only 2 players in the game to hit at least 20 homeruns in his first 14 seasons. Not only that, but he passed the 400 hr mark earlier this year and has a rather nice 9 point lead for highest batting average in the majors. There was a point where he was hitting over .400 for well over a month. Yet, despite all of that, the season will go down in record books as one of the Braves worst. Many people were expecting manager Bobby Cox to call it quits after such a dismal display, but not being a quitter, he signed an extension putting him on at least til the end of 09.

Looking ahead to the future, this season will hopefully be long forgotten. Next season promises to be a somewhat fresh start in many ways. Hopefully we can avoid the injury bug that has decided to camp around Atlanta this year. The offseason will be a good time to regroup, refocus, and reevaluate what needs to be done. Hopefully Smoltz and Hudson can return healthy and with all the brimming confidence coming from our younger guys, I think we will see a completely different team come March 09. At least, I hope so.