Offensive MVP & LVP of the Month:

MVP: Kelly "Scooter" Johnson - apologies to Chipper Jones, Edgar Renteria, and Jeff Francoeur.

LVP: Ryan Langerhans - apologies to Craig Wilson.

Take many of the stats from this first month of 2007 with a grain of salt. While it's 80 degrees and sunny outside right now, for much of the first three weeks it was brutally cold and never got above 50 degrees. Nothing really excuses the batting box stink that Ryan Langerhans produced as possibly the worst hitting performance in baseball, but it was the cold that seemed to affect several other batters such as Andruw Jones, Craig Wilson, Scott Thorman, and even Chipper Jones early on.

Some of these players have emerged from their funk to actually post some decent April numbers. Thorman spent the first two plus weeks of the season with a batting average stuck below the Mendoza line, but with several multi-hit games in the past week he ends the month at a respectable .288. He's also one of the few Braves for which strikeouts have not been a problem - 9 Braves have racked up more K's than Thor.

Andruw Jones also poked his head above the Mendoza line around the same time Thorman did. Andruw's recovery is witnessed in his OPS over the last seven days of the month which is 1.048. Chipper Jones never dropped below the dreaded line of Mendoza, but he did waffle around the low-200's over the first week. The best news about Chipper, besides his team-high eight homeruns and .640 slugging percentage, is that like Andruw, Frenchy, and Edgar, Chipper has played in every game this year. At this point last year, Chipper had already missed 13 games due to injury. A healthy Chipper usually equals a winning ball club, and it's no coincidence we're on top of the NL East at the close of the season's first month.

There have been holes in our lineup - big holes. Thorman's production is beginning to close one of them, and the other may have been taken care of by the early season trade slash dump of Ryan Langerhans on the A's. Langy's complete and utter lack of contribution with a .068 batting average left a gaping hole in many a lineup this year. Couple that with the current .170 average of Craig Wilson and two gaping holes were often a constant occurrence in the seventh and eighth spots in the order. Considering the lack of production we got from these two, and even Matt Diaz, it's actually amazing that we do lead the division right now. That's a testament to the rest of the team's superior play to this point.

Another area in which the team has languished is the pinch-hitting department. The Braves are a combined .159 as pinch hitters, with just a .208 on-base percentage. This represents the struggles of Pete Orr and Chris Woodward as well as the struggles of Wilson, Langerhans, Diaz, and Thorman when being used off the bench. Someone or several people need to step up in this department and produce at a higher level.

On the other end of the offensive bubble, include in the very helpful category this month the bats of Edgar Renteria, Brian McCann, and Jeff Francoeur - each has contributed greatly to the cause. Edgar is once again the April batting average leader for the Braves, and McCann was one of the few batters hitting early in the month despite his cooling off in the past week or two. Jeff Francoeur has been all-everything in clutch situations and any run-scoring situations in general, and is currently tied for the league lead in RBI.

Given that there were so many good performances this month, one would think it would be hard to pick just one April MVP, but the decision really wasn't that difficult. The kid we've dubbed Scooter was definitely the offensive standout of the month. Kelly Johnson leads the team in runs scored, triples, walks, stolen bases, on-base percentage, and OPS. Look at his line and where he ranks among the rest of the league and he has been as good as the top leadoff men in baseball; measuring up to Jose Reyes, Hanley Ramirez, Jimmy Rollins, and Juan Pierre. The most amazing thing about Kelly has been his patience at the plate, a key ingredient of a good leadoff hitter -  and something Giles never figured out. Scooter is third in the league in on-base percentage behind Barry "intentional walk" Bonds, and Todd "batting .384" Helton, with an amazing .473 OBP - our new and untested leadoff hitter is getting on base almost half the time. Couple all of his offensive awesomeness with the fact that's he's made only one error in his first month ever playing second base and it's a slam dunk that he's our MVP so far.

Tomorrow I'll take a look at the pitching.