I’d love to have him back as well…but we can’t say for sure now how he’ll recover from his surgery, and whether he’ll still be the same pitcher. If everything goes well then I think he’s worth excersizing, but who knows?

Agreed. He’s one of my favorite Braves who didn’t come through the system. If I’m not mistaken it’s a mutual option, correct? I would imagine if Hudson comes back strong from the surgery he’d probably decline the option b/c he’d make alot more than $12mil on the open market. Of course if he doesn’t perform well after the surgery the Braves probably wouldn’t exercise the option…I just don’t see a scenario where he’d end up staying. Maybe someone can point out something I don’t see.

According to Rotoworld…option is for 2010: link

you’re seriously not comparing jojo reyes to greg maddux.

Andruw constantly batting cleanup was Bobby’s fault for sticking with him for so Pujols-awful long. It was an embarrassment to see a lineup of the .300 Renteria, .300 Chipper, .300 McCann, .300 Diaz, .290 Francoeur, and seeing Andruw Jones sandwiched in between Chipper and McCann with his abysmal .193 or comparable average.

I’m good with Swish. He brings a little more athleticism and versatility (compared to Dunn) to the outfield, his switch-hitting would get lefty/righty hard-ons to STFU, and I’m on board with thinking last year was a legit fluke. And he too, would bring a bombshell companion with him.

Swisher’s season was more due to bad luck he had like a 250 BABIP or somehting

Your comparison of their seasons is warranted. But it’s interesting to look at Swish’s stats for the last three seasons:

2006 – 14.9% BB/9, 27.3% K/9, 0.64 BB/K, 19.3% LD, .287 BABIP
2007 – 15.6% BB/9, 24.3% K/9, 0.76 BB/K, 17.5% LD, .308 BABIP
2008 – 14.2% BB/9, 27.2% K/9, 0.61 BB/K, 20.9% LD, .251 BABIP

There doesn’t appear to be any major deviation from those stats aside from the BABIP. You’re right about his defense though, he’s a wizard out in LF. If we were to put him in CF or RF, however, he’s going to be below average according to UZR. His contract is very attractive as well.

doesn’t give Dunn much credit. Not that Dunn is a “great” player, but Swisher certainly is only average to a little above average at best. If you look at only hitting production per-at-bat, I think Dunn is miles above Swisher. I would say we already have a (hitting only) Swisher on the club. His name is Greg Norton. I’m not in any way saying we use Norton as a starter, but as hitting goes, they are both about the same. Same power and slugging per-at-bat, and I think Norton is a better AVG hitter. Swisher obviously is younger, and is much better defensively. Not to mention he plays CF (not really sure how good though?). If we are looking for defense though, we have that in the minors. Just don’t think Swisher is the answer. Nady would be, but I wouldn’t want to give up anything of value to get his one-year-rental. I think if we can’t trade for a .270 .350 .440 20-25 70-90 or something close to that, we should just go with a Diaz/Jones platoon. In all seriousness we probably are the 3rd or 4th best team in the NL East on paper. Why give up anything of value for just this season, or for a guy like N.Swisher who’s production could be matched with one of our bench guys. Maybe I’m way off base.

I do like our new look rotation though. No true ace but we have: Lowe (1.5), Vasquez (2.5), Jurjjens (2.5), Kawakami (2.5-3.5), and Morton (4.5) and I’m low balling Jurjjens/Vasquez a bit IMHO.

Don’t post much, but I do read what my fellow Braves fans are saying, and for the most part are equal disappointed and excited about Wren’s offseason. We’ll see where it takes us.

You may want to ask Tim Hudson if having a good closer is important because Bob Wickman blew like 4 games for him alone in 2007. All kidding aside, if you look at the Braves since 2004, I think that it is pretty clear how a dominant closer can vastly improve a team.

2004:
Total Saves = 48
Team Leader – Smoltz with 44
Also with saves – Chris Reitsma and Kevin Gryboski

2005:
Total Saves = 38
Team Leader – Chris Reitsma with 15
Also with saves – Dan Kolb, John Foster, Kyle Farnsworth, and Macay McBride

2006:
Total Saves = 38
Team Leader – Bob Wickman with 18
Also with saves – Macay McBride, Ken Ray, Tyler Yates, Jorge Sosa, Chris Reitsma, and Mike Remlinger

2007:
Total Saves = 36
Team Leader – Bob Wickman with 20
Also with saves – Peter Moylan, Tyler Yates, Rafael Soriano, Oscar Villarreal, Chad Paronto, and Mike Gonzalez

2008:
Total Saves 26
Team Leader – Gonzalez with 14
Also with saves – Will Ohman, Blaine Boyer, Jeff Bennett, Manny Acosta, Rafael Soriano, and Peter Moylan

Since 2004 the Braves haven’t had a closer save more than 20 games and I believe the inability to close out games has been one of the biggest faults of this team since 2005. We only saved 26 games last year, and we lost about a billion 1-run games during the course of the season, granted our team wasn’t very good but how much better would we have been if we would have been able to trot out a healthy, dominant, closer last year?

Closers are crazy, they get all hyped up, go pitch an inning and hopefully go home with a save. If they lose a game, they have to forget it immediately because they might be out there again the next day. If you have a good one I believe that it effectively shortens the game. It takes an interesting person to do that, hey perhaps it is all psychological, but I think they are important none the less.

Past World Series Winners: Lidge with 41, Papelbon with 37, Isringhausen with 33, Hermanson with 34, Foulke with 32, Looper with 28, Percival with 40, you have to go back all the way to the Diamondbacks in 2001 to find a World Series winner with a closer under 20 saves (which is what the Braves have been doing the last few years) when they had Byung-Hyun Kim with 19, but then you have Rivera with 36, 45, and 36.

So yeah, in sum, I believe that closers are important.

He’s still trying to get healthy. In four pro season he hasn’t even pitched a full season’s worth of innings. If he can pitch throughout 2009 as a starter and finally put some innings on his arm, they might be willing to throw him in the pen in 2010 and let his electric stuff move him up quick.

I try to temper myself on how Vazquez will pitch because I know I’ll be cursing him and his immediate family members some time during the season due to all of the gopherballs that he gives up…but yeah, I would say that he probably gets the hat tip over Jurrjens as the #2 due to experience.

No he didn’t, and yes, apparently he is. He can still sign with the M’s up until a week before the draft because he didn’t have any eligibility left. He’s going to play Indy ball and see if he can up his stock. I just don’t see why a team would want to spend a pick higher than where he was last year (20th overall) on a guy who hasn’t signed two years in a row. Especially when there’s a better reliever (Aaron Crow) with the same issues.
It’s like Bobby said, “Some guys want to play, some guys don’t.”

Well, my point was that even if we would’ve signed Fields this wouldn’t have “absolutely solved our "closer issue"” due to the fact that Devine was pretty similar in terms of development and he was not able to put it together for us (for whatever reason I won’t get into).

What gets me is how small he is. I was shocked when I saw him with MB. 5’11" 205 is just a straight up lie.