"Broken Braves"

by Smoltz's Beard on May 1, 2008 3:48 PM EDT

Will Carroll over at Baseball Prospectus writes a colum called "Under the Knife" which is basically an injury roundup. This weeks he writes about two of our boys...Smoltz and Hampton. Gondee normally shoots me the /evileye when I paste entire articles, so I'll do some light paraphrasing:

Smoltz - "Smoltz's shoulder isn't better served by his being in the pen, and in fact Smoltz had just as many problems while in the pen, fatiguing at the end of the season just as he has as a starter. The real problem is that we're in May and Smoltz is experiencing the same kinds of problems—inflammation, impingement, and pain—that he has at the end of the season."..."Asking him to recover from shorter outings might appear to be different enough to allow him to stay more productive, but there's no evidence to support it; a sprinter and a marathon runner do vastly different tasks, but their bodies fatigue the same. Pitching isn't the enemy; fatigue is, and until we get a better understanding of that in both general and specific ways, we'll be talking about this again and again."

Hampton - "I realize that the Braves can't just toss Hampton into the rotation and hope it works, risking a long day for their increasingly thin bullpen, but that's where pairing him up with another starter, especially one like Jair Jurrjens who needs to be inning-limited and has relieved in the past, would make sense. Hampton could "start" the game, go a set number of innings, and then give way to the real starter. Brewers GM Doug Melvin has discussed this same scenario in hopes of getting starters, theoretically the best pitchers on your team, into the high-leverage later innings without increasing their pitch counts significantly. I think it's a brilliant idea, and certainly worth a try."..."The Braves should be taking notes on this. Hampton's simply too fragile at this stage—coming out of his rehab work with a recurrence of his pectoral strain—to risk losing any value he may have working in the minors, so getting creative might get them something for the money and roster spot he's been taking."

What do you guys think?

0 recs | Comment 6 comments

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Comments

Jair

Jair doesn’t need the relieve Hampton shouldn’t be allowed to take up a roster spot because he is so unreliable he sets our team back and he really isn’t a brave

N. Tyler Ayers

by TMAC85 on May 1, 2008 4:04 PM EDT 0 recs

I wouldn’t mind seeing hampton pitch like 3 innings and that is an interesting idea, putting starters in later. but it will never happen in ATL cause Bobby is old school and does not adapt well to new ideas like Tony La Russa and the new young managers.

by yondaime4 on May 1, 2008 5:12 PM EDT 0 recs

I would love to see...

On every Hampton start, have him pitch 3-4 innings, and pull him before crossing into the 5th. Then, put in Smoltz, so that when the game crosses the 5th inning, he can be the pitcher of decision. This way, Hampton is worked back into the rotation slowly, Smoltz can recoup all the wins that he’s been screwed out of by incompetent bullpen work throughout the last three years, and it eliminates the problem of having to get rid of Gonzalez or Soriano, since we’d still need either or both of them to close out the games.

I can wish, right?

one more time ... for sting!! a sports blog written by two opinionated males

by royhobbs on May 1, 2008 9:09 PM EDT up 0 recs

Re: Hampton

I have wondered why teams don’t do this. Especially us right now. Put Resop up there in the first three innings to hopefully keep things reasonable, then bring in your real starter like the surgeon. Because let’s face it, you can’t seem to trust the pen when its crunch time, so at least this way we know what we’re up against late in the game. Plus, our starters have been solid. Things only fall apart once they leave or when we can seem to buy a run.

by jug on May 2, 2008 11:41 AM EDT 0 recs