I’m not counting us out just yet, as stranger things have happened. But assuming at some point I wake up and realize we actually are f$%#@^ this year, I agree with you. Start building the future.

I especially like your comment on finding the next Smoltz, Glavine, and Maddux. I feel like that is one of our major problems, the lack of (healthy) pitching stemming for our rotation. We haven’t had a solid, consistent rotation for a few years and that has taxed our bullpen, forced guys to be overworked and rushed back all of which may have contributed to some of the injuries we’re faced with today. I think we do need to get back to vintage Braves of the mid-90s and get a solid rotation for next year that includes another proven guy and some up-and-comers at whatever the cost.

Damn gondeee, I forgot that when you stop drinking Wild Irish Rose from a paper cup in the back alley, and decide to post, its pretty good stuff.

Let me clear up the past as it relates to Tex, first. We gave up five (5), not six prospects to get him. We get two (2) draft picks (the acquiring team’s first rounder if unprotected and a sandwich pick, or both of the later kind if the former is protected) if he walks away in free agency, not one. When we got him, we also got Ron Mahay, whose free agent contract with KC this offseason gave us our sandwich pick in this year’s draft. So, the math is 1.5 seasons of Mark, 0.5 seasons of Ron and three high draft picks for the five prospects we dealt to Texas. When you factor in the money his departure will free up and the context of the trade, I’d say that’s a fair deal.

As for Tex’s immediate future: we will not get two quality prospects for this guy at the deadline for several reasons, not least amongst which are the facts that he will definitely test the free agent waters and none of the big market teams really need him (thus keeping other big market teams from trying to get him to keep him away from rivals). Look at what happened with Johan – the best pitcher in baseball, by most accounts – this offseason and, even then, the Mets needed him to sign an extension before pulling the trigger on a trade they absolutely had to make.

The other guys you mention are either injury prone or mediocre players (with the exception of Will Ohman) so I doubt they’ll have much value in a trade anyway. Finally, you make this remarkably either/or, as though we’ve been blocking surefire prospects with overpriced veterans or neglecting our farm system in favor of trades and free agency; that is simply not true. We have plenty of high-caliber prospects, a very young major league roster and never blocked a true, ML-ready youngster with a veteran acquisition. I’ll get into some other stuff later, but that’s what I just had to get off my chest right away.

Are you going to trade him also?

answer to very first question: Never, I hope.

I think ejruiz kind of hit the nail on the head. The only realistic commodities the Braves could offer are Tex and Ohman.

Diaz wasn’t hitting for shit prior to his injury and is a platoon/bench bat at best to prospective buyers. Kotsay is a huge injury risk and impending FA. Not too appealing. Mike Hampton is a bum and shouldn’t even be in the discussion. Chipper isn’t going anywhere (and rightfully so). Kelly Johnson could be a possibility considering he’s got a solid bat at a traditionally weak-hitting position, but he’s a terrible defensive player and is still under team control for a couple more years (which is both a pro and con, in that we’d like to keep him for payroll reasons but that fact ups his trade value).

The Braves are gonna have to ide out this horrific run of injuries and see where they stand mid-July before they become buyers or sellers. It would be great to pick up an innings eater starter at the very least (would’ve been nice to pick up Kyle Lohse in retrospect, huh?) to stabilize the rotation somewhat, but the bullpen is an absolute mess right now and it’s debateable how much effect that would really have.

In fact, last night I posted:

We’re hopeless this year. We need to:
1)Dump Acosta and Soriano since they don’t have the stones to pitch. DFA them beofre they hurt us any further. Let some of the kids from the minors face big league hitting so we know what we have.
2)Trade Tex. He hasn’t shown any interest in resigning with us, and most everyone in baseball agrees he’s going to let the big market teams get into a bidding war over him which we aren’t going to be able to compete in. May as well trade him for a couple of prospects before we lose him for nothing.
3)DFA Hampton, or reach an injury setlement, whatever, just get him off the 40 man roster. He’s an albatross around the neck of this team and has been for 3 years now. Even if he makes a start this year(I actually laughed while typing that), it won’t help us. That start needs to go to Morton, JoJo, or some other prospect.
4)Bring up the young outfielders. Lets see what we have with Anderson, B. Jones, and the HGH Kid. Yes this would mean benching FYF, Greg White, and Gnortony on occasion. They deserve to ride the pine, although I bet the mere suggestion of that would give Booby C. a massive coronary.
Time to face the facts. Philly could out hit us with their AAA club right now, and Florida is legit. We have to start planning for next year, kind of like Lou P. did with the Cubs last year.

I got some of the same “well then trade Chipper and McCann” stuff back too. Huge difference. Chipper is still a huge part of our team, and isn’t looking to leave for an extra million per year. McCann is one of the top catchers in the NL, and is locked up for several more years. I’ll disagree on dealing Gonzalez only because he’s proven to be the gamer that much of the rest of our bullpen isn’t. We should hope for him to be our closer of the future, if his arm can withstand it. KJ & Yunel are going through growing pains for sure, but I think we could have a pretty decent middle infield with those 2 if we let them develop. Ask Florida if they want to trade away their “below-average on defense” second baseman. It would be nice to get both of them out of the lead-off spot in the order, since neither of them seem to like it much.

Is the statement “So if, come July 20th or so, we are below .500 and no where near the top of the league”

As we all know, a lot can happen between now and then. For some strange reason, as frustrated as we all are (and the players too; see Chipper’s comments from last night’s game recap), I feel like this team could still reel off a big win streak. That, combined with the rest of the division not looking all too impressive (yes the Phils have a good record but I’m not sold on them), leads me to believe we could get right back in this thing, pretty quickly.

I don’t think Boston would trade him away. He’s too valuable and can slide over to 3rd whenever Lowell gets hurt. Of course, we could use him in that role too…

If by July 15, the Braves were out of the race but Chipper was still batting above .400, would management be tempted to keep Tex solely for the purpose of providing Chipper protection in the lineup? I doubt McCann or even Frenchy would garner the same kind of respect that Tex has in the cleanup spot, and without him there, the chances of Chipper hitting .400 are even more remote.

I know it’s a silly thing to think about when compared to the future of the Braves, but I want Chipper to have every opportunity at getting to .400, no matter how minuscule the chances are.

As a Houstonian native, I’m more than a little worried about the status of the Braves future. I, too, was filled with optimism coming in, thinking that a rotation anchored by Smoltz and Hudson combined with a deep bullpen would be a good balance to the powerful line-up. But with injuries decimating our ballclub, here’s a scary side-by-side comparison with the ‘Stros.

Offense
- Established out-of-this-world slugger: Chipper/Berkman
- Two solid middle of the order bats: Tex & McCann/Tejada & Lee
- Young superstar potential player: Frenchy/Pence
- Solid supporting pieces: KJ, Yunel, Kotsay/Matsui, Wigginton
- Black hole: LF (Blanco, Diaz, Josh Anderson, whoever..also applies to CF with Kotsay out)/Bourn & Towles/Ausmus
- Pretty worthless bench

Pitching
- One good, top of the rotation starter: Hudson/Oswalt
- One young solid starter: Jurrjens/Wandy (young-ish…people in Houston still think he’s full of potential.)
- Bucketful of crap: Campillo, Bennett, whatever/Moehler, Backe, Chacon, whatever
- Bullpen: Soriano and Gonzalez are decent if they ever get healthy/Brocail and Valverde are a nice 1-2 at the end, otherwise both teams have spare parts all around

The Braves have got the Astros beat on the major league level because a lot of their hitters are younger and thus have more development potential; meanwhile, the Astros are paying their starters 4-5 mil a year, and getting just serviceable work. Meanwhile, KJ and Yunel are just in the hundred-thousands, and still have room to improve.

What’s especially problematic about the state of the Astros is they have absolutely zero top-tier prospects in their system, and even absolutely zero high level prospects to bolster the team (unless you count JR Towles, who did nothing the first two months of the season). On offense, the Braves have got Brandon Jones, who I’m not too excited about. They’ve also got Schafer and Heyward down the road, but that could be a while away.

Even more disturbing is Houston’s complete lack of pitching prospects. It’s Felipe Paulino and that’s it. They traded a couple mediocre prospects (Matt Albers, Troy Patton…think Kyle Davies) for Tejada, but they’ve got almost nothing. On our side, we perhaps have Tommy Hanson and Charlie Morton, but we’ll see.

While the Braves farm system is substantially better than the Astros, the problem the Braves face is that they’ve developed almost no quality starting pitching from their farm system. With the dearth of serviceable, let alone quality, starters for acceptable prices in the free agent market, developing your own pitching is imperative. And let’s face it, calling Chuck James and Kyle Davies your success stories aren’t going to cut it. Look at the top teams, and you’ll see that they’ve done well to supplant their teams with young pitchers. Here’s just a sampling from the NL: Dodgers (Kershaw, Billingsley, Kuo), D-Backs (Owings, Scherzer), Cubs (Marmol, Hill-struggling this year, admittedly, but still), Phillies (Hamels, Kendrick). Meanwhile, struggling teams like the Mets, Cardinals, and Padres haven’t gotten the pitching they need from their farm system.

From the Braves standpoint, they desperately need someone(s) from their farm system to step up and anchor their staff. Trading for Jurrjens looks like a step in the right direction, but unless Hanson, Morton, et. al. can get their act together on a major league mound, all the young, quality hitting on our team isn’t going to help us.