Ah, yes. As Mac Thomason wrote at Braves Journal, there's "nothing like a dose of the Astros to cure what ails you." Rain loomed for a while Saturday at Turner Field but never came. Eventually, we got some sunlight, but it was never a truly comfortable day. However, the baseball was superb. The crowd was fairly tranquil and tepid early on, except when Jason Heyward came to bat. The guy can't legally drink and Turner Field is already crazy about him. Troy Glaus received some moans and groans early on, but we warmed up to him today. :)

I want to say how ANNOYING the idiots with the quad drums and other conduits to noise-making racket are in front of the stadium. Thank you and goodbye. Here you are trying to enjoy some pre-game conversation, purchase your tickets, and check out some of the monuments, but you can barely process your thoughts because we've got some people thinking we've just showed up for a varsity football jamboree! End of rant.

A beautiful yard. 

A good reason why I should have gotten in shape and practiced baseball every day. 

Meet Stoney.

So, I made one-sided buddies with this dude I named Stoney. 

Stoney tossed back a few beers and enjoyed some pizza on his Saturday out at Turner Field.

Stoney caught Heyward fever shortly after the first inning and returned with a jersey!

Seventh-inning stretch time! 

And here we have the worst haircut I think I've ever seen.

View from the seats! 

What's a trip to Atlanta without hitting Fogo de Chao?

I was about to burst this time around. Laughing was legitimately difficult, yet so worth it.

And, finally, for the guys of Talking Chop:

royhobbs one-upped.

This is my first comment on TC but read it often and enjoy pacgnosis and gondee's insights so thought I'd throw this out for general discussion and hope for a follow up research stats article to disprove this next sentence.

Chipper got old quick and may be done.

It pains me to say it since I have the utmost respect for how he has played and carried himself as a ballplayer.  A switch hitter with Hall of Fame numbers are rare and I've enjoy rooting for him.  For the sake of brevity let's keep the injury history out of the equation and see if there is gas in the tank.

The genesis of his current mediocre play was ironically during the chase for the batting title.  Let that settle in. He quit hitting for power and became a singles hitter.  I'm no coach but he appears to approach each swing with a two strike mindset.  Instead of driving the ball hard somewhere, often over the fence at Shea, he now picks his spots to swing hard.  Is it he obliques or muscle memory?

He's swung a heavy bat since Hank told him too early on and this year switched to a lighter bat.  I'm no Jack Lewellen, but his slump, age and dropping bat weight suggest he knows he's slower to the ball... what does he think now that using a lighter bat didn't pay off.  Where does he go now?

I'll hang up and listen.....

When it comes to hate, we're out in the grapefruit league. The Bravos are a no show on the "Top Ten List of the Most Despised Teams in Baseball" as rated by the Nielsen Company.

As detailed In Wednesday's Wall Street Journal (Subscription required), Nielsen uses an algorithm and "various keywords to find out whether people have positive, negative or neutral reactions to different brands and products."  The most hated team in baseball is.... wait for it ...

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I'd love to know why.....you love baseball? What makes you a fan? What keeps you coming back...again and again and again??? The winning times are easy to understand....the times like this are a lot harder. (and ohboy!!!! is everyone grumpy about this.....).  Had an interesting conversation today with someone about this topic, so I'll be curious to see what you all have to say.  Plus, it might be nice to read something HAPPY for a change!!

RBravesfan

(my first post with no photos...this feels wierd....)

Hello again, everybody.

This post will be taking a look at the teams the Braves will face in May. Thankfully, it (should) be much easier than April was. Here is the preview of April I did a couple of days before the season started. At the time of that post I figured the Braves would struggle with the ridiculous amount of quality opponents, but never thought we'd lose 9 in a row and finish the month of April at 9-13 (Yeah, we're winning tonight.)

May should be a different story though. Much different.

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 I have a calculus project and have (finally) completed all of the content, and now learn that we were supposed to put a theme completely unrelated to math. I want to do the braves, but i have had a problem finding logos/images i am looking for, so i was wondering....could you, the tc community, post alll braves pictures, logos, amazing moments/ (diving catches etc) that you have. Thank you so much and Lets bust this streak. GO BRAVES!

Alright, a saturday NAHWAL!! By the time I score this, every NAHWAL that I haven't scored in the past week will have been scored, and if I recall correctly, this is the second to last NAHWAL in the series, so get your picks in! Today's topic- math. Um, yeah, its not math. Acutally, math shows us that Heyward is a god and we should all bow in his presence.

1. Attendance

2. P2C

3. How will the bench fare today (H, SO, BB, RBI)? (4 points!)

Hmm... I really don't have anything to talk about. So, I'm going to think of the first thing that comes to mind and talk about it. Should you not really care, go make your picks. Umm, puppies. Dogs, specifically puppies are cute things, and now I've got such writers' block that I can't even talk about little, cute, puppies. Apple Pie.

1. Attendance

2. P2C

3. Lumberjack's K:BB ratio?

Let me begin by saying that this post is not a "we demand change now" rant against the Braves; on the contrary, it is a legitimate questions that I recently debated with another die-hard Braves fan. I know that 22 games is a very short amount of time (13% of the season if my very poor math skills are proving accurate). But the simple fact is that our new aquisitions to the lineup arent panning out. Troy, Melky, and Nate (who I'm adding since he hasnt played a full season with us) are batting a combined .179; .200, .189, and .148 respectively. They've combined to hit 3 homers and drive in 15 runs; J-Hey has 5 and 17 alone. I trust that you all already know these stats, and I am simply including them to highlight my point; they are playing terrible. I fully agree with Frank Wren when he says, in so may words, that it's way too early to shake up a team. I've been hesitant to even pull off a trade for my struggling fantasy team this early in the season. But this leads us back to my original question; how long do you wait? Can we have our clean-up hitter batting .200 for 20% of the season? Can our center/left field platoon play this poorly for 1/4 of the season? When do you make a move to try to shake things up? Because I'm sure we all agree that this caliber of baseball simply isnt gonna cut it. Now I know that B-Mac, Chipper, Yunel, and Matty D are all struggling as well, but I'm fairly confident we can know what to expect out of them. I look forward to hearing yalls thoughts.

After an insanely horrid road trip, the Braves return to Atlanta for a weekend series against the Houston Astros before heading out on a nine-game road trip starting Tuesday in Washington. The unofficial pitching matchups are as follows:

Friday: Tommy Hanson (1-2, 2.14 ERA; 1 start, 0.00 ERA v. Houston) vs. Brett Myers (1-1, 3.81 ERA; 4-9, 4.52 ERA v. Atlanta); 3:10 p.m. EDT

Saturday: Tim Hudson (1-1, 3.28 ERA; 2-0, 1.16 ERA v. Houston) vs. Wandy Rodriguez (1-2, 3.65 ERA; 2-1, 4.89 ERA v. Atlanta); 7:35 p.m. EDT

Sunday: Derek Lowe (3-2, 5.79 ERA; 4-3, 3.57 ERA v. Houston) vs. Bud Norris (1-2, 5.60 ERA; never faced Braves); 1:35 p.m. EDT

 Matchups may change, now let’s bust this slump!!

UPDATE: Wandy Rodriguez was originally scheduled to pitch Friday, but was bumped due to back spasms. Brett Myers will pitch Friday while Rodriguez says he'll likely pitch Saturday.