Braves Beat- The Braves wrapped up the recent home stand with a series win over the New York Mets behind the strong pitching during Saturdays double header. Derek Lowe was good once again throwing 6 innings while giving up 5 hits and 2 runs, D-Lowe levelled his season record at 2-2 and further solidified his 1.82 ERA. The Braves rode that outing and four solo home runs by Alex Gonzalez (2) Chipper and Freddie Freeman to a 4-2 win capped by Craig Kimbrel’s fourth save of the season. The performance Lowe gave to the Turner Field crowd was better later in the same evening by the returning Jair Jurrjens circa 2009. After spending a year tearing the entire right side of his body JJ returned the Turner Field mound after giving everyone a fright with another trip to the DL to protect his strained oblique muscle, an injury that seems to be already forgotten. Jurrjens spun a 7 inning, 2 hit gem throwing exactly 100 pitches and walked only 1 batter. Multi-hit games from Martin Prado, Chipper and Eric Hinske gave JJ and the ‘pen all the support they needed as George Sherrill and Scott Linebrink struck out 5 of the 6 batter they faced.
Unfortunately for the Bravos Tommy Hanson couldn’t finish off the teams first sweep of the year as he continued his early game struggles, giving up two runs on three hits in the first innings. When that first inning finally finished Hanson was dominant despite only working five innings Tommy struck out nine Mets. The three runs Hanson gave up proved enough for the Mets to snap their seven game losing streak and see the Braves offense sleep its way through another Sunday afternoon. Worryingly for Braves fans we may have another elite pitcher named Tom that struggles in the early innings, the big challenge for Tommy Hanson will be to improve his efficiency. The 3.2 innings against the Nationals took him 68 pitches, the 5.1 innings against the Brewers took 89 and after 5 innings on Sunday he was 97. Whether or not Tommy can improve his efficiency will ultimately prove how intelligent a pitcher he is and will be.
Ball Four
1. The Oakland A’s and their young ace Trevor Cahill are positioning themselves for the kind of pitching-led challenge they planned all winter. Cahill turned in his best performance of the young season yesterday striking out 9 Detroit Tigers over 8 innings that included only 4 hits and a single run. The Athletics pitching staff is already setting the best ERA mark in the majors with a team 2.59 mark. The need to place Dallas Braden on the DL today will cause a slight weakness but could open up a starting spot for righty prospect Tyson Ross to make Braden’s next scheduled start. Another interesting note is that four of the top five ERA’s in the Major’s a being set by American League teams and the top three marks by three AL West teams in the A’s, Angels and Rangers.
2. Felix Hernandez suffered his second consecutive poor start and now has a 4.33 ERA in his four starts. There a plenty of reasons for Felix to be struggling mentally but almost none for him to be struggling physically. The losing mentality in Seattle and ineptness of his offense would bore and frustrate the best human being and with the promotion of Michael Pineda he suddenly has a challenger to his crown. There have been whisperings that the time may be coming for the Mariners to trade the 2010 AL Cy Young winner and the team’s trading of Cliff Lee proves they are will to deal a quality pitcher but the question is how tradable is King Felix? His current contract has him tied in until 2014 with salaries of $10 million this year, $18.5 million in 2012, $19.5 million in 2013 and finally $20 million in 2014. There are maybe only 3 or 4 teams in baseball that could afford the contract but of those teams maybe only 1 or 2 have the pieces to make the trade happen. Of course it is only two starts.
3. The NL West was widely predicted to be one of the tightest races in baseball with three very good teams as well as the wild-card Padres, Sunday proved how close the division truly could be. All five teams were involved in games decided in the eighth inning or later Sunday in all kinds of games ranging from slugfests to pitching duals. The most entertaining game was between two division rivals in the Arizona Diamondbacks and the San Francisco Giants who tangled in a 12 inning battle that ended when Stephen Drew singled in Justin Upton to give the D’Backs a deserved win. The importance of Upton and Drew to the Arizona team was on full display in this win as they combined for four of the D’Backs 11 hits including Drew’s game winner. The Padres, despite being the worst hitting team in the National League they managed to piece together a four run eighth inning against the Houston Astros to record an 8-6 win. The lack of production from the Padres line-up should mean that there are plenty of close games in the Padres future but most probably won’t turner out as well as this one. The Dodgers got an outstanding performance from Chad Billingsley who pitched 8 innings, giving up only 2 hits and striking out 11. This performance only makes Billingsley inconsistencies even more frustrating knowing how great he came be. It did look like the Dodgers would waste this effort as Jonathon Broxton gave up the go ahead run the top ninth setting up the Cardinals for an unlikely win. The two best hitters in the LA line-up had different ideas; Andre Ethier led off the ninth with a double before Matt Kemp sent a Ryan Franklin offering over the center field fence for a thrilling Dodger win. Whilst all this was going on the Rockies were continuing their Major League best start to the season with an eighth inning charge over the Chicago Cubs as, like the Padres, the Rockies put up four runs in the eighth and rode it to their 12th victory. This division seems to be even tighter and balanced than anyone imagined
4. Let’s do a little bit of college ball to round out today given some huge series this weekend. The defending national champion South Carolina Gamecocks knocked off the number 1 Vanderbilt Commodores winning 2 of the 3 games in Columbia this weekend. The big draft names in the series were Vandy RHP Sonny Gray who gave up three runs and 11 hits in 7.2 innings while striking out 7 including Gamecock outfielder Jackie Bradley jr who went 3-for-14 this weekend and now has a .278 average on the year. Rice third baseman Anthony Rendon went 2-9 and now has a .349 average and is re-establishing himself as a top draft prospect while UCLA’s Gerrit Cole struggled a little pitching 8 innings, giving up 5 runs but striking out 11. Once again he was outperformed by teammate Trevor Bauer who threw a complete game four-hit shut-out while striking out 13 and lowering his ERA to 1.47. This is a deep draft and with some performances it is getting deeper.
What to Watch
The beginning of two huge series on the West coast with the Giants going to Colorado with both teams looking to make an early statement while the Angels visit the Texas Rangers as both attempt to make their mark of the AL West.
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