A win is a curious thing in baseball. Alongside strikeouts and ERA it is part of the triple crown of pitching, which are the stats given most publicity as to who is leading them. Similarly in match previews, historical analysis and seasonal reviews, a pitcher’s overall success in matches is first judged by his win-loss record. Despite its common usage, wins could be said to be as much about luck as they are about skill. A reliever could come in to pitch a shaky third of an inning and see him credited with a win if his team put up some runs and take the lead the next inning. The same night could see another game where a pitcher has lights-out stuff, allowing just a couple of hits but nothing close to even a sniff of a run to the opposition, but have his offensive go to sleep on him. Maybe a reliever comes in to pitch the final inning and get through it still keeping the opposition quiet, but then finds his offensive suddenly come to life and he will be credited with the win rather than his team mate who has got them through the rest of the game. It could even be the case that the same starting pitcher ends up being burdened with a loss if one of those couple of a hits he gives up turns into a run.

And so is the life of a pitcher. He can work his ass off every start, but without his team backing him up, he can find himself with a win-loss record worse than someone with half his ability. That’s how baseball goes.

The list of those who are expected to top the home runs charts at the end of the year are normally the same from one year to the next, aside from a couple of players who might drop off the radar and a couple who will newly appear on it. It is likely that many of the same names will also appear on the list of expected RBI leaders, but predicting RBIs is very different from predicting home runs. It is a safe assumption to make that those with the greater ability to hit for power are more likely to get RBIs due to the basic fact that their hits go for more bases on average and so push baserunners around further and quicker. The volatile nature of RBI in terms of both predicting leaders and using it as a measure of a player’s production comes from the fact that though a player can control his own destiny in terms of racking up the hits, he has on control on what the players around him do. One player could hit three home runs in a game and only score 3 RBIs. Another player may hit 3 singles and get 5 or 6 RBIs or even more.  RBIs are a stat lovers dream, as unlike the more concrete nature of home runs and even batting average (to a certain extent) there is so much to be analysed behind an RBI. A player on a weaker team may have his RBI total hailed to a greater extent than one who finds himself on a stronger one. In many ways baseball is a game of team of individuals, but in the RBI a player’s reliance on others around him is highlighted.

The strikeout is the pitcher’s act of revenge. They are a passive weapon, if they hold the team scoreless then they have just done their job and get few plaudits. If they allow runs then they are held up as a pariah, a failure. The only real thing the pitcher has to fight back is the strikeout. He can make the batter feel the same way he does every time he has a pitch go sailing over the fence. When a batter is struck out swinging, he has the shame of knowing that he thought he was unable to face up to the pitcher’s challenge, that he has come off second best in the dual. Striking a batter out looking is ever so slightly different, but just as sweet for the pitcher. In this case the batter is left humiliated, having been outthought, tricked by the pitchers wiles into thinking the ball sailing towards him is harmless. But then the ball hits the catcher’s mitt and the umpire shouts the called third strike. The batter’s slow, cursing trudge back to the dugout is what all pitchers live to see.

The home run is the sexy side of baseball. Home runs nearly always make the nightly highlight reels and it is the faces of perennial home run hitters that you will see adorning posters in kids’ bedrooms and outside stadiums. Baseball fans love a good statistic, but the home run counts of players garner more attention than most. Within a career, a season, a month, a match fans compare player’s totals against famous names and records and watch on avidly as players square off against each other in often epic duels to end the season above all others in the home run column. It is the home run that gets fans off their seats and cheering. Whether it is the elongated revelry of a surefire dinger as soon as bat hits ball or the agonising wait building to sudden eruption as a baseball seems to crawl its way into the first tier of the crowd, the home run is what keeps baseball fans happy.

The home run is everything that people love baseball for; it’s big, brash and beautiful.

ERA is the equivalent of batting average for pitchers, insofar as it is the statistic that is most often listed alongside their name in any kind of analysis. In the same way as batting average, there are other stats that may give a more rounded and accurate measure of a pitcher’s performance, but ERA is still the most accessible. A 3.00 ERA is generally accepted as the mark that pitchers should aim for, and anyone with an ERA below 3, and especially below 2 is considered among the elite. ERA has a number of things that must be considered when using it to judge players’ performance. First of all, ERA is very susceptible to skewing as a result of a single bad performance. Relievers who only pitch small numbers of innings at a time may be lumbered with inflated ERAs as a result of one appearance in which they give up a large number of runs. The other main aspect of ERA that I find interesting is that pitchers remain responsible for runs even once they are pulled for a reliever. So if a pitcher has allowed the offensive team to load the bases against him, if another pitcher comes in to replace him and gives up a grand slam, the 3 runs that score from the bases would count against him. Obviously on the one hand he has allowed those men to reach base, but it means a pitcher’s ERAs can just as much depend on the performance of those that relieve them as their own.

Batting average is the most recognisable and often used of all statistical measures for offensive output. In recent years other measures have superseded it as more accurately showing a player’s offensive production. It is difficult for players to escape their batting average, and it is nearly always listed alongside their name in lineup displays, seasonal reviews and historical analysis. The reason for this is that batting average has become more than just a number. Most baseball fans will no longer see a set of digits, instead they will automatically compare a batter’s average against the three totems of .200 .300 and .400. These in turn represent a bad average, a good average and a legendary average. By seeing how close a player’s average is to one of these, it gives fans an instant indication of whether a player should be lauded or hounded for his batting production. Anything close to .200 and they will be calling for him to be dropped, close to .300 and he will be must-have player in the lineup, and any player who hits near to .400 (a level not hit since 1941) then his name will be spoken in hushed whispers as a possible history-maker. But these numbers are strangely fluid. Fans may not worry about a player hitting towards .200 if those hits are routinely home runs, or if he saves the runs he fails to score with exemplary fielding performances.

Batting average represents the love and devotion baseball has to statistics and how they are so much more than a simple set of numbers.

• Javier Vasquez, Jair Jurrjens & Tommy Hanson

 Undoubtedly the biggest positive to come out of the 2009 season for the Atlanta Braves was the performance of its starting rotation. Some people might argue that it was not an overperformance, as everyone was aware that these three pitchers had the potential to be dominant. In the case of Vasquez, the quality of his stuff has never been in doubt, but it is the mental side to his game that has routinely been questioned and been the reason for his failure to jump up to elite pitcher status. In the case of Jurrjens and Hanson, one was coming off a highly promising rookie year, but still with the threat of a sophomore slump hanging over him.

So all of these pitchers promised much, but no-one could have predicted that they all would have delivered up to these expectations and beyond them. Vazquez became a strikeout machine, they like of which Braves fans have not seen for many a season. He would come out and dominate the opposition, powering through them with ease to the point where his name on the team sheet became an intimidating prospect up there with the Lincecums and the Wainwrights. He seemed to grow with confidence as the season progressed, as most importantly for Vazquez, grew mentally into the role of ace of the staff, rather than crumbling under the pressure of expectation that grew with every impressive start he put up.

Some of this pressure was also alleviated through the emergence of Jair Jurrjens from prospect to all-out-pitching-badass. Unlike Vazquez he is not an overpowering pitcher who racks up strikeouts, but he is in the same mould as Glavine and Maddux. None of his pitches are extraordinary, but they are all plus pitches, and combined with an extremely mature approach on the mound.

Jurrjens will have to prove once again next season that these first two have not been flukes, but his performances put him up towards the top of many statistical measures of good pitching, while he also began to give off a presence of the mound that showed that he believed in his own ability as an elite pitcher, and I can only hope that he carries on fulfilling his potential next year.

The final pitcher of the Braves three-headed ace-beast in a certain Thomas Hanson. He came into the season with top-prospect billing, and an excitement the like of which has not been seen for years around a Braves prospect. Even though we had to wait for a while before he appeared in a Braves uniform, it was definitely worth it. Tommy showed a poise on the mound that belied his rookie status and demonstrated why there was so much hype surrounding him. While all his pitches can be said to be plus, his curveball is the kind of pitch that could push him to stand at the forefront of the team for years to come. Although Hanson is not a prototypical power pitcher, he combines his pitch with lethal effects, which resulted in his strikeout numbers being very impressive. The most lingering memories that I will have of Braves’ pitching from this season is the way that time and time again Tommy threw that curve in for the called third strike looking.

He developed a real swagger about him, and although he did show some weaknesses in giving up home runs and not controlling the running game, he rapidly established himself as a fixture in the rotation and provided some of the great promise that fans and pundits alike see in the team that is being built in Atlanta. I can only see Tommy getting better next season, he has a very projectable throwing action and he will only grow into his body further and could add a physical presence and increased power that will go to making that curveball all the nastier.

The pitching staff was not perfect this season, but these three players did just about all they could to haul the team into the playoffs. Trades needs may demand one of these players being shipped away, but if they can remain together and perform close to how they performed this season, then even a slightly improved offense will see the Braves being serious contenders.

• Martin Prado/Matt Diaz

Both of these players have been filling in for the team in a kind of super-backup role. Prado was the go-to guy when someone from the infield was down, and Diaz the same for the outfield. In the 2009 season both of these player saw more regular action as a result of first-team players poor form.

Prado stepped into the gap that was left in the offense by Kelly Johnson and filled in admirably. In the weeks leading up to and immediately following his replacement of Johnson he was one of the hottest hitters in the majors. The impressive thing about Prado was that unlike what we usually see with players who step up from a backup role to a starting berth, he did not fade back to offensive obscurity as the season went on(see Willie Harris). In fact it could be argued that while he is not a fireworks hitter, Martin Prado was the most consistent hitter for the Braves, seemingly not going through any extended slumps and providing a guarantee of offense in a team that was rife with inconsistency.

Matt Diaz has been a fan favourite for years now. He has never really stepped up to being a regular starter in the lineup. This has often been because he is seen as a prototypical platoon player and therefore has become stuck in that role coming into a season. The other main reason is that he has suffered from unfortunate injuries. He had just about made the left-field job in the 2008 season when he dived into the left field wall in foul territory, and put himself out for the season.

It is the kind of hustle that caused that injury that is the exact reason that Braves fan love Matty. He will never give up a fly ball, will always run hard on the basepaths and genuinely seems like a nice guy. But there is also substance behind all this, as whenever he is given any kind of opportunity in the lineup, he seems to just flat-out hit. Again he is not the kind of player that will make the headlines, but he grinds out hits and you will not often see Matty have a bad day at the plate.

In 2009, he was the perfect antidote to Garret Anderson in left field. Garret’s poor displays in the field were exacerbated by him giving the impression that he was coasting out there, seemingly not putting in 100% to make the out. Matty began to see more games out in left field and did what he does best, putting up a solid average with the occasional big pop off his bat.

As Anderson began to pull his season around and put up more respectable offensive stats, Matty found himself back on the bench. But he was still ready to take up his mantle of the solid gap-hitting gap-filler when Church succumbed to injury and was putting up disappointing numbers, Matty stepped up in right field. He was not a great defender, but still continued to go all out in the field, and finished the season still hitting solidly above .300.

In a season that saw the offense swing between stuttering and slumping, these two provided some much-needed consistency and a demonstration of what being a professional hitter means.

Players of the like of Prado and Diaz are not the players who will make the headlines and the highlight reels and the interviews with ESPN when a team wins the playoffs. But without them, it would be very unlikely that the team would have ever made it there. The A-Rods and Pujols of this world are said to be the difference makers, but I believe it is the Diazs and Prados around them which make those players truly great.

• The Front Office

The front office had already made a splash last season with the hugely one-sided trade of Renteria to the Tigers that spawned the Braves the great Jair Jurrjens. This season the front office showed strengths on two fronts. They showed that they were not scared to ship out prospects if there was a chance for a decent return that would push the team forwards. They also showed a ruthlessness that could have been seen to have gone to far, but equally demonstrated a willingness to do what is required for the team to succeed, even if difficult decisions must be made.

The acquisitions of Javier Vazquez and Nate McLouth saw many of the Braves’ top 20 prospects head for pastures new. Both trades demonstrated a desire on the management’s part to put out a team with the best chance of success.

The Javier Vazquez trade was particularly bold, as the Braves were already seen to be among the frontrunners for a number of free-agent starting pitchers, and so filling their gap via trade while continuing to pursue the free-agents showed a commitment to reinvigorating the rotation. The choice of Vazquez was also a canny move, as he had the potential to be a front-line starter, but was viewed as damaged goods. This meant that the package to get him did not need to include elite prospects, but Vazquez was not so damaged that the FO did not still need balls to pull the trigger.

The highlight of the Braves side of the trade was catching prospect Tyler Flowers. This trade was made when Flowers’ stock was at its highest. He was coming off a good minor league season and an outstanding performance in the AFL. While he had added to his resume in this way, the reality was still that his path to the majors was blocked by Brian McCann. Like Jarrod Saltalamacchia before him, even though it was clear that he was a promising prospect and would likely turn into a solid major league player, if there is no room for him in the lineup, then trading him away when his value is at its peak makes perfect sense.

By including Flowers in the deal, the Braves were able to get Vazquez for a relatively weak set of other prospects in Lillibridge, Gilmore and Rodriguez. Even if Flowers does become an everyday player for the White Sox, the Braves still come out on top in this trade, given Vazquez’s performance in the 2009 season and the fact that Flowers did not have a real future with the Braves. However the bravery of this trade at the time cannot be overlooked, with the Braves giving up a player who was of great value and could have been enticing for many other teams, and Vazquez being a high-risk player due to his history of mental lapses and unproven ability to be a pitching leader for a team.

In Nate McLouth the FO proved that they were not prepared to sit back and settle for an average season. The Shafer experiment in centre field had not worked, and while the Braves had options in Blanco and Brandon Jones that could have probably filled up the outfield spots, they still went out and got Nate McLouth.

Nate did not have that great a season. He showed lots of promise, and generally looked good at the plate, but his speed and consistency were definitely lacking. However, the trade still showed a certain ambition in the team, and once again, even though there were some promising prospects given up, none of them are likely to be sorely missed.

Jeff Locke was a promising prospect who’s stock had been falling all season up to the trade, while the same could be said of outfield Gorkys Hernandez who was showing the prototypical signs of an outfield prospect living up to the hype that his athletic ability promises. The player who many would have said to be the centrepiece coming from the Braves was Charlie Morton, who had put in some good pitching performances even at the major league level, but was looking too much like a quad-A type player to get excited about. In both the pitching and outfield positions, the Braves had other players that were better prospects with greater chance of making the big league team in the future, so essentially the Braves gave away nothing close to important in this trade.

The fact that McLouth then went on to have an average season is not important when we judge the Front Office on this trade, as at the time the Braves had seemingly filled their need for both power and potentially a lead-off hitter. Also Nate McLouth provided them with a player used to playing in a young team who was going to be cheap for years to come, and considering the wealth of outfield prospects the Braves had coming up gave fans an enticing image of their outfield for the future.

The fact that the Braves had acquired a highly useful piece in the makeup of their team made this trade a great one, the fact that he was practically stolen from the Pirates made it an outstanding one.

The other side to the Front Office’s achievements this season was their ability to not allow emotion to cloud their judgement in the matter of players.

In both John Smoltz and Tom Glavine, extremely difficult decisions were made to not give them undeservedly large contracts purely out of loyalty. While many slated the management for their attitude towards these two Braves legends, I think too many people saw loyalty as being a one-way street. Both of these players complained that the Braves’ offers to them were insulting and belied the years of service that they gave. The reality for both though, was that they were in the sharp phase of decline and there were no guarantees that they would be able to pitch consistently and with any kind of effectiveness. The Braves had made rich men out of both of these players, Glavine even taking the Mets’ dollars for a couple of season to more greatly fill his coffers, and so asking them to pay amounts that could only hurt the rest of the team by reducing available resources seems to be highly selfish and short-sighted of these great players.

Now of course the Front Office could have handled both situations better, but by not giving these players loyalty-fuelled contracts allowed money to be spent where it was really needed and reinforced the idea that this Front Office has the wider teams best interests at heart and showed the kind of ruthlessness that we are used to seeing in the most successful of businesses and individuals.

The final act by the Front Office that deserves a warm round of applause was to get any kind of return for Jeff Francoeur. As Francoeur continued his abhorrent performances at the plate, the Braves’ fans rose-tinted view of him was beginning to fade. The reality was setting in that he had been among the absolute worst players playing regularly in the Major Leagues. Not just bad, the WORST players. It seemed as though it was preposterous that any team who had not lived through the rising of Francouer from uber-prospect to uber-disappointment would be able to see him as anything other than that league-worst player. But Frank Wren and his team managed to get a player for him. And not just a low-A-semi-prospect-but-really-just-minor-league-filler player, Ryan Church, who up until a concussion in 2009 looked like a half-decent player. Ryan Church, who would not swing and miss and every third pitch like Francouer seemed to.

Now once again, Church did not play especially great for the rest of the season, and Jeff Francouer actually played at around the league average for the Mets. However, once again the relative values given and receive by the Braves and their trading partner was absolutely undeniably in favour of the Braves.

In their actions this season, the Front Office proved that they have a great combination of business sense and sporting sense to fill needs while not emptying the coffers of prospects. More importantly, they are building up a reputation as a team that makes good trades, which only seems to be increasing with each trade made.

That is the end of my analysis of the Braves 2009 season, there are many things that I have not covered, there are honorable mentions for Peter Moylan and Adam LaRoche in the overachievers column, while the LaRoche trade can also be added to the Front Office’s achievements in the trade market. Ultimately, the balance of the team unfortunately saw the stuttering offense unable to be bailed out by the brilliant pitching. The by-word that would sum up the failures of the 2009 Braves was consistency, as too often the team would win against mighty opposition, only to then get swept by a basement dweller. If only a few of the underachieving players can pull their act together, and if the overachievers see their performances retained at a high level, I can only see great things to come for the Braves of 2010.

The greatest theme for the Braves’ 2009 season is one of underachievers vs overachievers. To analyse these two dichotomous groups is to analyse where the season was almost won and where it was lost.

Underachievers

• Chipper Jones

Chipper did not have a bad season, just an average one. But the effect of a league-average season for a player who has consistently performed well above that is huge.

The Braves missed Chipper’s tangibles. He has managed to constantly deliver in just about every offensive statistic, so when these all fell to league-average levels, there was a hole left in the Braves’ offense that they were unable to fill. While some players were able to compensate for his drop in consistent hitting, the Braves missed his power most of all. Without another legitimate top-tier power threat, and without the mindset to play small-ball, the Braves found consistent offensive run production a struggle without the guarantee that Chipper has provided in past seasons.

Possibly more than any of this, the Braves also missed Chipper’s intangibles. They have been able to rely on him to haul them single-handedly through and out of offensive slumps. This season as his production continued to underwhelm, he was no longer the go-to player who they knew would raise them at their moment of lowest confidence. At the same time, he was no longer the player that would frighten opposition pitchers. Admittedly, Chipper did suffer from a lack of lineup in the protection, but as his struggles continued, opposition teams would no longer come at him with the mindset of damage limitation, he was making easy outs.

The Braves’ offense no longer had the solid foundation in Chipper Jones this season. While his underperformance is a large reason why the Braves did not quite realise true success, there are some positives to be drawn from it.

He is heading towards the end of his career, and there are other players who stepped up this season to fill the gaps he left, and as a result, player such as Brian McCann and Yunel Escobar demonstrated that there is a future in the Braves offense beyond Chipper.

The other major plus is that Chipper acknowledged his own disappointing performance and public stated that he would work hard in the offseason to rectify it. Most admirably though, he also said that if he could not lift his performance then he would not play on regardless of his effect on the Atlanta offense.

I think everyone will hope that the real Chipper is revealed to still be the offensive monster that we know he can be, rather than the superstar in decline we fear he may be.

• Kelly Johnson & Jeff Francoeur

 Jeff Francoeur was meant to be the player that would take over Chipper’s mantle as the face of the franchise and offensive leader for the Braves. Kelly Johnson has long been touted as a player who may not have the potential to be a top-tier player, but should be a solid fixture in the Braves’ offense for years to come.

2009 saw both of these players fall from these lofty perches, Frenchy falling so far he was eventually traded to the division-rival Mets, and Johnson being reduced to a benchwarmer. For both players the demise had been predicted by a few, with the many having the pessimistic vision clouded by that promise of greatness that we so wanted to believe in.

It seemed that for the first few months of the season, these two players were competing for the title of worst-performing everyday player. They both hovered near the bottom of every offensive stat in the league, including the most illustrious of unillustrious stats, the Mendoza line. Their struggles may have been excused, and in the case of Francoeur’s past couple of seasons, have been excused for the same reason Mendoza was, excellent performance in the field. However, Johnson made gaffe after gaffe at Second, and Francoeur’s radar in right field seemed to have diminished so far that his range fell to levels that not even his cannon of an arm could rescue.

While any player performing at such poor levels as these two would have a detrimental affect on the team, Francoeur’s was especially damming. There was the off-the-field problem that the team had invested a lot in Francoeur, putting him on a pedestal as the future face of the franchise. It had become extremely difficult to drop him, despite his shocking statistics, and so he remained a fixture in the lineup.

The on-the-field problems were exacerbated by Francoeur’s ubiquitous appearance in the lineup. The fates seemed to be against the Braves, as time and time and time again through the early months of the season, it was Jeff Francouer who would step up to the plate with the bases loaded and two out. Or a man on third in the bottom of the ninth. The effect of this is that he did put up some fairly impressive RBI numbers at first, but this was purely as a result of the chances he was getting. The dual effect of this was that it gave the Braves management an excuse to keep playing him, papering over the cracks that were there. Yes he was getting RBIs, but with the chances he was getting, if he was anything like the player of his early scouting reports, then he would have been putting up record-breaking numbers.

And eventually things evened themselves out. The swings and misses became more pronounced, the apparently ‘fixed’ approach he had at the plate was nothing more than a continuation of the shambles of the previous year. All the while Francoeur was in the spotlight of shame and retribution from the fans, Kelly Johnson sailed on, continuing to post his own limbo-heighted line of stats.

So what could the Braves do? With Francoeur they had a player who they didn’t seem to dare part with, and with no ready-made replacement in the wings. In Kelly Johnson, however, there was an in-house solution. Martin Prado began to get more at-bats, and did nothing but hit, and he continued hitting whenever he got the chance. Eventually Johnson was moved to the bench and Prado promoted to an every day role. And so once again a large negative in the Braves’ season also provided a positive. In being subjected to the fall of Kelly Johnson, the Braves fan’s got to enjoy the rise and rise of Martin Prado. He became a real threat in the Braves’ lineup, and one of the most consistently productive player over the season as anyone in the league, let alone the Braves’ team.

So while Kelly Johnson the Kelly Johnson story was becoming a mere subtitle to the Martin Prado story, the Jeff Francoeur fairy tale was thrown out altogether.

As the trade deadline neared, there suddenly began rumours of a trade in the offing, and then it had happened. Jeff Francoeur had left the Braves. His replacement Ryan Church did not perform anything close to spectacularly, but he was not abysmal either.

By allowing Kelly Johnson and Jeff Francoeur to remain in their lineup for as long as they did, the Atlanta Braves gave their opposition two at-bats that were almost guaranteed to end in at least one out. This left the team in a mire both mentally and in terms of the division, that only a late-season surge almost salvaged.

While we would all wish that neither of these players had the seasons that they did, the only saving grace is that maybe both performed so badly that they could no longer be ignored, and so the tough decision, heart wrenching for some, in the case of Jeff Francoeur couldn’t not be made.

• Derek Lowe

I won’t spend too much time analysing how bad Derek Lowe’s season was, as out of all of these players, his underperformance probably had the least affect on the team overall.

He was pretty bad across the board, with hits allowed and ERA among the league’s worst, and when this is combined with his coming to Atlanta with the billing of the team’s new ace, the disparity was very large. He didn’t go deep enough into enough games and his name being chalked up on the teamsheet did not strike fear into opponents as a proverbial ace should.

And yet he still posted a joint team-leading 15 wins. What this demonstrates more than anything is that he received an extremely unfair share of the offense. The reason the team did not suffer too much as a result of Lowe’s poor season is that the rest of the pitching staff picked up the slack by putting in consistently ace-like performances themselves. What this means in reality, though, is that if some of the offensive support that Lowe received was given to a few of the stellar performances by others that went unrewarded, the Braves may have had those few extra games in the ‘W’ column that they needed.

• Bobby Cox

Now it may seem sacrilegious to criticise the great Bobby Cox, but I believe that for a few years now, in the limited capacity that managers can genuinely affect a team’s performance, Bobby has provided more negatives than positives. Admittedly we never really get to see the more personal, man-management side of his game through which I am sure he squeezes an extra few percent out of every single player. However, the side that we are able to observe and pass judgement on is where I see a weakness in the Braves’ manager.

In both team selection and in-game substitution, the manager has a hand firmly on the tiller of where the team progresses through a game and through the season, and while he cannot actually make a difference once those players are out on the pitch, his decisions are still key for deciding a team’s success or failure.

In the case of the 2009 Atlanta Braves, I believe that Bobby Cox made bad decisions in both his lineup, pinch-hitting and pitching relief selections.

In the case of the lineup there are the obvious cases of sticking too long with the offensive black holes of Kelly Johnson and Jeff Francoeur. It seems that it was obvious to fans and pundits alike that these two players were one of the reasons that the Braves’ offense experienced a slow start to the season. Now I have already gone over the diplomatic difficulties surrounding Francoeur, but even with that taken into account, these players were given far too many opportunities to make easy outs for the Braves. It may have taken some brave or creative management to find a replacement for Francoeur, but the lack of change when he was such a liability demonstrated loyalty gone too far and a lack of conviction to putting out the best possible team. The continued selection of Kelly Johnson through his offensive woes was more inexcusable due to the ready-made replacement in Martin Prado.

It may be the case that there were unexplained ongoings in the clubhouse, or a dearth of alternatives that genuinely seemed to Cox to be worthwhile bringing in, but in both of these players Cox seemed to show poor judgment in allowing their presence for far too long in the lineup.

As well as these more high-profile underachievers, Garret Anderson also proved to be a sticking point for me in this lack of dynamism in Cox’s management. Throughout the early parts of the season Anderson seemed to be playing hurt, or just plain badly, while proving to be a complete liability in the field. If Anderson had been a rookie coming into the season, and he began as he did, then there is no question that he would have been dropped faster than some of the fly balls that came to him were.

While there is something to be said for waiting for a good player’s quality to show through, and letting a player hit their way through a slump, there is a point when it seems more like an unwillingness on the part of a manager to make the difficult decision. In Matt Diaz, Bobby had a player who has had a history of being an all-effort player who leaves it all out on the field, and is by no means a poor hitter. In fact Matty seems to put up more than just decent numbers when he is called upon.

While the consistent inclusion on Francoeur and Johnson was bad, Anderson’s selection became even more baffling when it is considered that Cox often slotted him in hitting 4th or 5th. These are not the places for a player who is struggling to be put into, and I believe that this exacerbated Anderson’s poor performances to the point where he became as relatively big a weight on the offense as Francoeur’s and Johnson’s despite Anderson’s numbers being merely below average rather than abysmal.

The other side where I believe Cox was poor this season, and has been for a few seasons, is in his deployment of the bullpen.

It has been a real bugbear of mine that in recent seasons the Braves seem to have averaged only a couple of complete games per year. Now it could be said that the often ineffective and unpredictable starting rotations of the previous 3 years have not been conducive to regularly going deep into ballgames, but this year’s was so strong that it seems peculiar to me that they still put up low numbers in the CG column.

There is a complex argument about the merits of pushing players too far during a season, and its effect on their performance down the stretch and their long-term health that I will go into elsewhere, but I strongly believe that Bobby Cox has not achieved a succesful balance in his pitching strategy.

In Javier Vazquez, the Braves had a pitcher who could regularly go deep into games, and he achieved as many CG this season as the entire Braves staff managed in the last 3 years. On the one hand this shows the quality of performances that Vazquez put up, but also the dearth of CG the Braves have suffered from in recent years.

The problems all come down to the bullpen. This season Bobby had the luxury of three quality relievers who could pitch the 7-8-9 innings. The problem was that he seemed to have so much faith in them that he would too often automatically go to Moylan Gonzalez and Soriano for the final three innings. The result of this was that sometimes a dominant starting pitching performance would be halted at the 6th inning, purely because it was a close game, and even sometimes when the Braves had a clear lead.

The result of this is that it would often be the case that Braves relievers would pitch multiple days in a row, which can be seen in the fact that Braves had many of their relievers towards the top of the innings pitched rankings. The effects of this are bad in both the short and long-term.

By going to his bullpen with an alarming frequency, Cox was playing the stretch with relievers who had been worked almost to breaking point. My gripe with this is that the imbalance that Bobby shows between placing the work on starters and relievers means that while he would be going into the stretch, and then potentially the playoffs with his rotation still fresh, the relievers overwork negates any benefit.

With the reluctance to push starters into going deep, they will more than likely be unable physically or mentally to be able to suddenly adapt to doing so, and the bullpen will therefore inevitably have to be called on when the game is still in the balance. By taxing them so hard, Bobby would not be able to rely on them as would have been able to do so if they were more rested.

Beyond this season as well, the team may experience a hangover of this use of the bullpen. In the case of Peter Moylan, he made a team record number of appearances in a season coming off Tommy John surgery. While his sidewinding action means there are slightly mitigating circumstances, this remains alarming and it may be until next season when we see the full effects of Cox’s

What we have been witness to in the past few seasons is a strategy that is waiting to blow up in the team’s face. The fact that the Braves have not made the playoffs may have been the only thing that saved this from coming to a head. However, with the team heading in the right direction, I hope that Cox does not stick with this same strategy as I can only see it harming the team as a whole in their search for playoff glory, as well as possibly individuals their careers.

It is a wonder that the baseball manages to travel the 60′6′ to the plate, as each pitch is laden with such a weight of psychological substance. Each time a batter steps up to the plate, the whole history of his baseball career steps up with him. Scouting and sabermetrics, each swing, each hit, each whiff. All will have been scrutinised beforehand and be running through the pitcher’s head. And the batsman will be doing the same, he will have studied in depth each of the pitcher’s various pitches; the velocity, the location, the movement. Of course this is not even scratching the surface of the cerebric pressure on each moment of a game of baseball. Once you get beyond the cold hard facts that can be logged and studied, you begin to uncover the idiosyncrasies of each batter-pitcher duel. Whether the batsman knows that if a pitcher bends his arm in a certain way it means that he is going to throw a certain pitch, whether the pitcher knows that the batsman always looks at the first baseman and taps his foot twice if he is going to bunt. Some players make it their business to study and log every minutia of other’s behaviours and it is rare that these players do not make it to the top of their field either playing or eventually in management.

So all these things and more may be going through the two combatants heads even before the very first pitch of the whole match; zeroes across the scoreboard, a blank slate. From that point on things only get more complicated.

At 0-2 does the pitcher always throw a ‘waste pitch’?

With a full count, the bases loaded and a known free-swinger, does the pitcher risk throwing outside the zone?

If the pitcher throws three fastballs in a row, is a fourth inevitable or impossible?

Should you always intentionally walk Albert Pujols?

What makes baseball so quicksand-like in its escapability once it has a fan lured in is that like the players themselves, these individual questions and battles are gradually revealed and enjoyed to those watching as well. Over the course of a match the effect becomes even greater. The nature of baseball allows for these individual battles to be played out numerous times over the course of a single game, with each new meeting drawing on those that have preceded them to further heighten the tension.

Each time the batter faces the pitcher, he will have to wait another 8 batters before he gets his chance to do so again. For the pitcher it is the waits between innings that he is left to stew and contemplate his approach for his next foe. Once the pitcher reaches the second or third time through the innings there is immediate history as well as those statistics stretching back into the past. The pitcher may desire revenge after he was taken yard the first time they met, or maybe it is the batsman that is seeking to get bat on ball after swinging and missing last time.

So for all its brashness and bravado, behind the big-money contracts, the towering stadium and the loud, proud screaming fans, behind all this there is the understated quiet of cold, considered calculation.

It was the middle of the night, around 3 in the morning. I knew this because when I turned on the TV, there was baseball on.

9 Innings and one gradually brightening sky later, and I had fallen in love.

I have something deep within me that means I am unable to remain impartial when watching sports. No matter how casually I begin watching it, after a short while I will inadvertently rooting for one side. And not just rooting, I will really care, I will shout and cheer and boo, feel my pulse quicken and my heart fall with every passing moment.

So happened with baseball. The game was Atlanta v Philadelphia. I don’t know why or how, but I found myself willing the Braves to win. Now it may be some kind of subconscious masochism, but this spur-of-the-moment passion that I feel in sports more often than not leads me to throw my emotional weight behind the side that eventually loses. In this game it appeared to be the case. But a ninth-inning rally (a phrase that would have been nowhere in my spheres of thought at the time) saw the Braves earn a come-from-behind win. It may have been the thrill of this unexpected victory or even the slightly inebriated state that I was in, but baseball had insinuated itself into my thoughts, and would be there to stay.

The most likely, and truly honest reason for baseball becoming more than this one-night-stand for me, was my annoyance at not knowing things. Upon watching the game, I was faced with a sea of terminology, numbers, statistics, a whole world essentially, that was totally unknown and incomprehensible to me. RBIs, oh and one, tagging-up, pinch-hitting, warning tracks, ground-rules, sidewinders, barehanders. It seemed like this sport was mocking me, testing my resolve as to whether I would fall by the wayside as a casual occasional watcher, happy to watch the bright colours and flashing bats and zipping balls in a state of happy confusion, or whether I would climb down the rabbit hole on a journey of discovery that would leave me forever embroiled in this bizarre cultural phenomenon.

I of course chose the latter.

The next few months involved painstaking perusal of the internet, regular visits to mlb.com and grabbing any chance to watch games when they were screened twice weekly at ungodly hours on TV. Each game would bring a raft of new unknowns to me and so each game would bring a return to that cycle of unravelling the web of jargon that would only reveal more tangles as one was undone. But inch by inch I realised that I was understanding what I was watching, and I was nearing that moment when I would be able to consider myself a fan, a term I would not apply lightly, as those that I think undeservedly call themselves fans to teams in other sports I hold dear are the subject of suprising levels of anger from me.

At the end of the season, I discovered that this virgin season for me was a significant one for the Braves. It was the season that their spectacular run of division titles finally came to an end. What an unhappy coincidence. Football is one number one sport, and the two teams that I support are my club team, Tottenham, and the national team England. In the course of my lifetime, aside from a couple of (fairly minor) domestic cups, I have experienced little to glory. Occasional hope of glory, but this always turns slowly or abruptly into disappointment.

It was only once the season had ended that I really found out about the Braves’ storied recent history, so at least there was no fall from a great height of expectation. But still, upon hearing of this significant news, I knew for sure that I was a cursed supporter.

However.

Rather than fuelling some kind of depression and abandonment of the sport, instead it stoked the fires of my passion. This was another test of the resolve of my fandom, and I was not going to be found wanting. It was a trial of whether I was a true fan, or a casual, fairweather supporter, who would abandon his team in their darkest moments. I was not going to fail this test.

If anything the Braves’ failure in this season marked a moment in which I truly felt like baseball and the Atlanta Braves could have a real place in my life. There was something comfortingly familiar about the team that chance had picked for me turning away from the glory of success the very year that I begun to follow them. Of course it was later that I learnt more about the Braves’ history of falling at final, or near-final hurdles of the playoffs year after year and so, surely we had always been made for each other.

Maybe this is a very British reason to feel close to a sports team. But then that is what this blog is all about.