Braves Look To Shore Up Pitching With Burnett
Posted by Tim Malcolm, Wed, December 03, 2008 04:14 PM | Comments: 31
Posts
The Braves are inching closer to a five-year deal for AJ Burnett, according to Dave O’Brien of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. This comes a day after the Braves traded for White Sox workhorse Javier Vazquez.
Suddenly the Braves are trying to win in 2009, hoping to reclaim a fan base that has seemingly gone by the wayside. It’ll be hard in the ultra-competitive NL East. Last season, the Braves had a pretty decent starting rotation with Jair Jurrjens, Tim Hudson and Jorge Campillo earning ERAs under 4.00. I’m surprised, then, that they’d go out of their way to add two starting arms, especially considering it was their bullpen that suffered most in 2008.
For the Phillies, it’d be nice to see Burnett off the board — his wish for five years and a ton of money didn’t sit well with me. Though it would be better to see Burnett go to another division.
Posts: 0 Griffin
Interesting, where does that leave John Smoltz?
Posted: 04:23 PM on December 3, 2008
Posts: 0 Justin
The Braves didn’t offer Smoltz arbitration so he’ll probably go elsewhere, maybe back home to Detroit, I think he said he wants to go back to the bullpen and that may be good for Detroit cuz they need help. As for Burnett, good for him to sign a big deal with the Braves, I hope he turns into Mike Hampton Jr. for them. He has 2 good season 1 with the fish, and 1 with the Jays, you look at his career numbers and he’s nothing spectacular so for them to go haywire and sign 2 mediocre pitchers with big contracts is funny and will more than likely backfire.
Posted: 04:39 PM on December 3, 2008
Posts: 0 Eb
Hudson will be out for half a year with TJ surgery
Posted: 04:52 PM on December 3, 2008
Posts: 0 Frank
As we have seen with the Mets 1 pitcher does not do enough………and also the braves still need a good amout of talent to compete
Posted: 04:53 PM on December 3, 2008
Posts: 0 Manny
I’d rather not see Burnett in our division…
Posted: 04:58 PM on December 3, 2008
Posts: 0 Phil
That’s fine, the Braves can have the best starting rotation in the world, but that won’t get you anywhere with a shitty bullpen and mediocre offense. They should ask the Mets about shitty bullpens.
Posted: 05:14 PM on December 3, 2008
Posts: 0 Matt Kwasiborski
It makes them better but Vazquez can’t pitch in pressure games. He has great stuff but he should be a solid 2 with his stuff. I agree with Justin, AJ has had an injury-plagued career and he is getting older.
Posted: 05:38 PM on December 3, 2008
Posts: 0 Maverick
F–k the braves. Let them have Burnett. He alone will not overcome the lopsided ass kicking the phils gave them last year. I dont recall but didnt the phils win 18 out of 21 vs them?
Posted: 05:43 PM on December 3, 2008
Posts: 0 PhillyFriar
A Burnett/Vazquez/Jurrjens 1-2-3 punch at the top of the rotation will make the Braves a lot more competitive this year. And between Campillo, Hanson, Reyes, Parr and Glavine if he’s re-signed, they’ll put together a pretty solid starting rotation top to bottom.
The problem for the Braves will be their hitting. Only Chipper and McCann instill any fear in opposing pitchers, so they’ll need to add a middle-of-the-order bat (Dunn?) if they really want a shot at winning this division. Oh, and their bullpen’s in shambles too, but that’s another story.
Posted: 05:46 PM on December 3, 2008
Posts: 0 tom
The braves with a Hudson/vazquez/ Burnett top three and with JurrJens for the 4th guy is impressive but there lineup is terrible and there bullpen is a joke. They need to sure up the hitting before they are going to challenge us and the mets who have no pen yet.
Posted: 05:56 PM on December 3, 2008
Posts: 0 The Dipsy
By the way, Jurrjens is the #1 on that team. He’s winning 20 this year. That kid is a monster.
Posted: 06:02 PM on December 3, 2008
Posts: 0 Justin
He may be their number 1 but they’re compiling these arms to take the pressure off him to be the #1 so he’d be taking the mound 3rd or 4th in the rotation With Vasquez/Hudson/Burnett being 1-2-3 depending how healthy any of those 3 are this season.
Posted: 06:18 PM on December 3, 2008
Posts: 0 maxhole
what, is he gonna pitch complete games all year? are the braves going to avg 5 rpg? why dont you tell that sandwich joke again. there probably are people who didnt read it the last two times you posted
Posted: 06:22 PM on December 3, 2008
Posts: 0 Derek
What is everybody’s thoughts on Ben Sheets?
Posted: 07:55 PM on December 3, 2008
Posts: 0 mike
The problem I have is that Hudson,Vasquez are hittable .but if it was burnett jurrjens and lowe then its a better rotation. What shock me is the braves going for Burnett,
Posted: 07:58 PM on December 3, 2008
Posts: 0 Manny
I think I saw on ESPN that the offer was $140 for 5-years… I think that would be astronomical… Woah, blows my mind.
Posted: 08:35 PM on December 3, 2008
Posts: 0 Justin
Ben Sheets is too injury prone, Id rather have Lowe myself.
Posted: 09:07 PM on December 3, 2008
Posts: 0 mike
Manny that can’t be right. you are saying they are offering burnett 28 million a year, NO WAY.
Posted: 09:26 PM on December 3, 2008
Posts: 0 Jason B
No way are they offering Burnett that kind of money. A-Rod doesn’t get that. But that does bring up an interesting point. What kind of money is Cole going to command to sign him long term? And if we can sign him, why not just give Moyer 2yr 8 mil? He’s got 2 good years at least.
Posted: 10:27 PM on December 3, 2008
Posts: 0 Manny
I may be wrong but I remember watching the ESPN story while I was at the gym… They were talking about Burnett and the Braves’ offer and then the figure of 140 came up on the bottom part of the screen.
I could swear that I say that but it doesn’t make any sense… Maybe I just misread and they had Sabathia’s Yankees 140 offer while showing Burnett on the screen…?
Posted: 11:05 PM on December 3, 2008
Posts: 0 Manny
I could swear that I SAW (not say)
Posted: 11:06 PM on December 3, 2008
Posts: 0 maxhole
was at sixers game talking w/ people about salaries tonight. so lame that guys who play childrens games make more than docs and teachers. no reason for these guys to make more than 10 mil a year, even thats too much. contracts go up, we pay 4 dollars for a hotdog. one question that couldnt be answered tho, does anyone know when pro athletes started making such absurd amounts of money?
Posted: 11:19 PM on December 3, 2008
Posts: 0 Geoff
max..for the same reason that they kept the bailout money and nobody said or did a damned thing about it
Posted: 11:26 PM on December 3, 2008
Posts: 0 Griffin
Nolan Ryan became baseball’s first million dollar a year player after the 1979 season.
Posted: 11:27 PM on December 3, 2008
Posts: 0 maxhole
of course, but when did it get like this? did aaron, mantle, ruth make the equivalent to today’s salaries? sure they were well off, but i doubt it was so bad.
Posted: 11:33 PM on December 3, 2008
Posts: 0 Geoff
the dollars inflated to an insane degree…they just print fake monopoly money over there at the federal (private) reserve (fractional reserve) all day long…still, the salaries seem to be even more extreme than that inflation…
Posted: 11:36 PM on December 3, 2008
Posts: 0 maxhole
thats an amazing stat. he didn’t even pitch that well with angels or astros for that matter even into 82 season. at least his win loss record wasn’t good.
Posted: 11:36 PM on December 3, 2008
Posts: 0 Gavin
The bubble will burst on MLB at some point when people cant afford to take their families to games anymore, companies that sell car cant afford to pay an assload of $ for advertising, and a bunch of teams wont be able to pay their players. A bunch of teams will go out of business.
Unless the Govt. bails them out.
Can’t you see Selig, Steinbrenner, Henry and crew at a hearing pleading their case that they deserve 25 billion to kepp baseball going?
Posted: 10:34 AM on December 4, 2008
Posts: 0 Colin_K
Frankly, Burnett doesn’t scare me because we know the Phils can hit anything that is thrown straight and doesn’t have any movement. Yeah dude can throw close to 3 digits, but I don’t remember guys struggling that much against him.
Posted: 10:35 AM on December 4, 2008
Posts: 0 Colin_K
Now if the Braves managed to trade for Tim Redding and clone him 4 times, that I would be worried about.
Posted: 10:36 AM on December 4, 2008
Posts: 0 TwoTonsOfIrony
I know that Ruth was the first ball-player to make more than the president, which was a big deal.
Anyway, the Braves will find out very quickly how damaging a bad bullpen is. Not only that it is important for games, but games that are lost by the bullpen are so much more demoralizing than a game where your starter goes out and give up 6-8 or your offense can’t score. Each game that is lost late by the bullpen tears another piece of their hearts out, it drains on you throughout a season I think to lose too many games late. And with their starting rotation and bad offense I see a lot of games they lose in the 7th, 8th, and 9th by scores like 2-1, 3-2, 4-2.
Posted: 10:59 AM on December 4, 2008