Down Payment?

Just when I was about to get into the Hawks and Thrashers in something approaching detail I was ambushed, blindsided really, by Frank Wren and his band of highway attention grabbers down Capitol Avenue. After completing their winter business at the back end of fall the Braves front office then completed the big task of October 2011 in January, only 10 months ahead of time. By signing Dan Uggla to a whopping 5 year, $62 million deal the team has, to all intents and purposes, tied its immediate future to; A) A 38-year-old third baseman returning from blowing out his ACL, B) A young offensive catcher who has had eye problems, C) A 31 year-old power hitting second baseman and D) A potentially dominant starting rotation. If all goes to plan for the Braves Chipper Jones will return from his serious knee injury and be the offensive force he hasn’t been since 2008, Brian McCann will fully develop into a .300/20/90 middle of the line up hitter who improves his defence, Dan Uggla will produce like he did in 2010 for at least four years of his contract and finally that Tim Hudson repeats his 2010, Tommy Hanson and Jair Jurrjens continue developing into superstar pitchers and Derek Lowe is the D-Lowe of September and October and not the months preceding it. Should the plan fail the organisation will have mortgaged its future to aging hitters and unproven young pitchers. Frank Wren will either come out of the next two to three years looking like a genius or looking like a man without a job.

The contract that Wren awarded to Uggla does bring about some interesting questions about players who have actually played in a Braves uniform before. If a 31 year-old Uggla who is a career .263 hitter then what is someone like Martin Prado worth to the Braves organisation. In two full seasons in the Braves line-up Prado has been hit .307 while being the most flexible player in the organisation, playing every position on the infield and now moving to the outfield to accommodate the newly arrived Uggla. This year is Prado first arbitration year and, should it end in court, will be his first receiving a pretty large pay rise, and one that he has fully earned in his five years with the team. Prado is just one of a handful of players also including Jason Heyward, Tommy Hanson and Jair Jurrjens that the team could soon have to make a decision on: extend long term and pay the price or potentially lose stars of the next 10 years without getting the most out of them. We saw what happened for the Texas Rangers when they acquired half of the farm system, this cannot happen again.

The Hawks managed to squeeze another road game onto the schedule while on their western trip, and like against the Clippers Sunday they managed to pull out another tough win this time against the floundering Kings. For the first time really in quite a long time Joe Johnson, Josh Smith, Al Horford and Jamal Crawford all played well on the same night. Crawford dropped 31 points, JJ had 29, Smoove had another double double while Al came up big on the defensive end. It was really an evening when the Hawks executed Coach Drew’s game plan offensively and managed to hang on at the other end of the court. Crawford’s second big night in two games once again raises questions in my mind as to who should start at point guard from now on. I understand the nature of Mike Bibby’s role and why he continues to get more minutes but the team simply seems to respond better to Crawford being at the point. It would certainly be interesting to see how it would work should Larry Drew give Jamal some time in a starting role.

The Hawks complete their four game road trip tonight with a tough one against a very talented Utah Jazz team, after that they will play four of five back at Phillips where they have won 9 straight games. The Thrashers also head back to the ice down in the Sunshine State in what could be a pretty important divisional match up. Hopefully the couple days of rest and chance to get some real practice will have helped Coach Ramsay to have reproduced the fluidity and style with which the team was playing with a week or two ago.

I’m not sure if I’ll get anything down this Friday but I hope to until them however I still no real sign off so y’all make one up for yourselves!