Summertime Blues?

When Tommy Hanson throws the first pitch at 4:10 eastern time this afternoon it will begin the most important stretch of Tommy’s young career. Through April Hanson has been, for the most part, brilliant. Despite two unsatisfactory starts against the Nationals and Mets the 24 year-old righty from Oklahoma has put up a 2.57 ERA, good for eighth best in the National League, with a 1.06 WHIP and 34 strikeouts in 35 innings. Historically (not including this year) April has been good for Tommy as he has a career 2.17 ERA in the first month of the season and has an average 10.26 K/9 rate. It is in May and June that the struggles have set in for Tommy. In May he has a career ERA of 5.09 and an opponent’s average of .265 before improving slightly in June but maintaining an inexplicable 4.28 ERA. Tommy then improves through July and August before being positively ace-like in September again with a career 2.26 ERA in the season’s final month. The struggles that Tommy has endured in the second and third months of the season are baffling because of his excellence at any other point, I was going to suggest that maybe the increasing hit was a problem for Hanson but it’s no hotter in Atlanta in June than July, when he has a 3.21 ERA. It could be teams seeing him for the second time an making their adjustments before Tommy has made his but again that seems like something that one of his coaches would have altered. I have no idea why Tommy struggles so much in May but today will give us an idea of how he will begin this year, one when he should be making the fabled, mythical, sanctified “next step”!

Tommy should have begun May last night but didn’t because of those annoying storm’s that drift across the South at intermittent intervals in the early summer months. Instead he gets to be the appetiser for Tim Hudson, making it two tough righties the Brewers have to face in one night. Talking of the Braves pitching two very encouraging signs for the Braves, firstly the team currently has the fourth best ERA in all of baseball and third best in the National League with a 3.14 ERA in 30 games and have racked up the joint-fourth most strikeouts in baseball with 229 in 272.2 innings. The other welcome news is that Julio Teheran, the Braves number one prospect and regarded by many as the best right handed prospect in the games, was named the International League pitcher of the week as he went 2-0 with a 1.93 ERA and 14 strikeouts in 14 innings at the same time as being the youngest player in the IL.