Posts tagged BobbyCox at FanHouse

Fan are stupid, at least in terms of the mob mentality of finding blame. It's very easy when things are going wrong to look for someone to blame. Generally, that person is, in some sort of order: 1) the superstar player, 2) the coach or 3) the general manager.

It's apparently Braves fans' turn to point fingers at Bobby Cox, which, to me, is absolutely ludicrous. But it's happening.

A significant segment of them believe manager Bobby Cox should be held accountable for the team's recent failings, that the venerable Braves skipper should be replaced. But they would be hard-pressed to find that opinion shared by any of those who play for him or compete against him.

Yeah, ridiculous, right? And I'm not the only one. Chipper Jones feels the same way.

"He's not any different than he's ever been," Chipper Jones said of Cox, 67. "He's just not dealing with the same deck of cards that we had coming out of spring training.

"Other teams have had injuries, but not to the extent that we have. You give Bobby Cox the same deck of cards that we had coming out of spring training for a full 162 games, I guarantee you the standings look a lot different."

First of all, Chipper is dead on. The Braves have been injured and unfortunate this year, and nothing more. Secondly, most teams would kill to have Bobby running their ship (or having steered it to 14 consecutive division titles). And finally, this is a "JoePa Situation" in my mind.

Bobby Cox gets to coach in Atlanta as long as he wants to. He won a World Series and he owned the 1990's. He gets that right. And he'll know when the time is right to step down. Not us.

When I checked the Braves record and realized that they were an insane 4-21 in games decided by one run, I was pretty shocked. But after the super-smart people at Baseball-Reference pointed me in the direction of just how historically bad it was, I was even more surprised.

If you sort by one run games for every team since 1901, the Braves rank dead last (#2212) in terms of one run game winning percentage. Yes, over the past 108 years, there has not been a team with a worse relative record in one run games in baseball. Which is pretty astounding.

It's also oddly uplifting, if you're a Braves fan though. See, one run games are primarily luck. Certainly not all luck, but certain "breaks" in the game often dictate how a one run game will shape out, and a 4-21 record is not indicative of the overall talent on Atlanta this year.

Also, the poor record in one run games would seem to indicate a shift in luck for the Braves -- despite the "losing mentality" that you hear about, Atlanta should see a reversal of fortune in some of these close games during the second half of the season.

Given the state of the National League East where Philly is kind-of-sort-of surging, but no one is dominant, that could actually bear out pretty well for the ATL. The downside, of course, is that Braves players are dropping like flies to injury. Of course, not every baseball season is chock full of good luck. This might still be one of them that stays without.

Contrary to what the Braves impressed upon everyone yesterday, they have decided to ship Jeff Francoeur to the minor leagues in AA Mississippi (do not pass AAA, do not collect $200). He, unsurprisingly, is not thrilled with the decision.

"This has really put a damper on my relationship with the Atlanta Braves," Francoeur told the AJC.

"I love playing for the city, I love playing for the fans and always have," said Francoeur, a graduate of Parkview High School in Lilburn. "But I'm disappointed with the decision and how the whole process went down."

[...]"I do not agree with this, but I have to do what I have to do," Francoeur said.

Francoeur said he was given the option of going to AAA Richmond and AA Mississippi and chose Mississippi because of his relationship with manager Phillip Wellman, who was his hitting coach when he was last in the minors in Mississippi in 2005.

Well, honestly, you can't blame him. Getting shipped to the minors by a team that's under .500 is pretty daggum embarrassing. It's not as if Frenchy has never struggled either; he's pretty notorious for having an OBP that registers F-A-I-L on most standard measuring devices.

How on Earth does Tim Hudson sideline himself due to dehydration? This isn't a scolding, it's pure curiosity. I figured that you can avoid dehydration by drinking plenty of water. If Maslow had constructed a Hierarchy of Preventative Health Measures, wouldn't "drink water to prevent dehydration" be only a level up from "breathe to prevent asphyxiation"?

Today's Dugout is a construction of the only possible understandable scenario I could think of. Necessarily, it is a Spaghetti Western. Read it after the jump.

It just makes more sense to give any injuries that occur to the Braves their own following tag, no? After all, if one more person gets hurt in some sort of fashion this season, the entire city of Atlanta might just quit showing up at games.

The latest case of a player suffering some sort of physical problem is Tim Hudson, who is suffering from dehydration.

Hudson, who allowed just one earned run and seven hits in 6 2/3 innings, seemed to be tiring during the seventh inning. When he left the game and went to the clubhouse, many of his body parts began to cramp.

'He couldn't bend his fingers,' Braves manager Bobby Cox said.

When the clubhouse was opened to the media, the Braves said that Hudson was unavailable to talk. He was still in the trainer's room with an IV providing him fluids.

Certainly, everyone hopes Huddy is alright, and he should be, but come on. This is borderline absurd the way that every single Braves pitcher who gets near the rubber ends up being injured in some shape or form.

Oh, next week: Mark Teixeira gets SARS.br />
Fantasy Spin: Huddy's next start is at Texas, so frankly, I'd sit him. Dehydration + Arlington = Bad.

For all the talk about Chipper Jones possibly hitting at a .400 clip for an entire season (an unlikely possibility despite all the media attention and the way he's playing), it's pretty awesome in a somewhat ironic way that he hit his 400th home run this season, taterjacking a shot of Ricky Nolasco in the sixth inning Thursday night.

He is only the third switch hitter in the history of baseball (Eddie Murray and Mickey Mantle being the others) to cross the plateau.

'Just an awesome all-around night,' Jones said after becoming the 43rd player in the 400-homer club, doing it in style amidst a four-hit performance that raised his major league-leading batting average to a startling .418.

'I guess I've seen every single one of them,' said Braves manager Bobby Cox, the only manager Jones has played for during a 15-year career. 'He's one great player. Four hits tonight with a home run. ...'

Besides being an understatement by Cox, that first sentence points out just how much Larry means to the Atlanta organization. He was there for the resurgent Braves teams of the 1990's and along with John Smoltz, remains one of the biggest reasons why the Braves dominated their division for 14 straight years.

One fascinating "statistic" from the AJC is that in his 15 year career for Atlanta, Chipper has taken only two curtain calls the entire time, the first in 1999 and the second tonight. That's pretty indicative of -- beside Jones' approach to the game -- how synonymous he is with Atlanta baseball and how much his place in that lineup may even be taken for granted.

Deep breaths are necessary to ensure the absence of obscenities. That's what the "serenity now" voice in my head keeps telling me as I scramble to withdraw fantasy league trade offers and to keep hitting refresh on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's webpage, hoping they screwed up and John Smoltz really isn't out for the season.

Obviously I know that's all delusion and the longest tenured Brave on the roster (and my favorite baseball player in the history of my reasonably short life, for whatever that's worth) is done for the season and maybe for his career.

The repercussions on this are varying, and while tacking on "vast" to that might be a stretch, for a Braves fan, it is pretty painful to come to the realization of how this season -- which still has a lot of promise -- could quickly be unfolding into a freefalling nightmare.

We are -- to play the schizophrenic optimist here -- just three and a half games back of the surging Phils in the NL East. We have the second best home record in the bigs (despite the worst road record). Our pitching staff has allowed, as Jon Bois points out, the least runs in the bigs, despite being classified, at best, as patchwork. (No offense to the guys who have stepped up this year. Acting like injuries haven't ravaged this staff would be denial though.)

But losing Smoltz changes everything. Maybe I'm insane, but he seems like the string that holds everything together through some combination of talent and leadership. And frankly, I'm blanking terrified that it's all going to really unravel now that he's gone.

Well that didn't take long. John Smoltz, after only a few rehab starts, has been activated by the Braves and could close as early as tonight.

Smoltz, who had been on the disabled list since April 28 with a severely inflamed right biceps tendon and inflammation in his right rotator cuff, made three Minor League rehab appearances. He made his final appearance on Saturday, and pitched a scoreless inning for Class A Rome.

It's a testament to his durability that Smoltz was able to come back so quickly. He could close tonight, and although it seems like Bobby Cox would want to warm up him before tossing him to the ninth inning wolves, it's hard to imagine that the veteran gets butterflies in his stomach all too often these days.

Fantasy Spin: Get Smoltz active in all leagues. The Braves have had horrible luck in one run games, but if you just backdoored a closer after thinking you were losing a starter, this could actually work out well for you. He's had some success, I believe, in that role.

There are a lot of exciting things going on in Cincinnati right now. The Reds have won five of their last six games, Edinson Volquez is leading the National League in ERA (1.46) and strikeouts (83), Ken Griffey Jr. is one homer shy of 600 in his career, and Jesus Christ Jay Bruce is now manning center field instead of Corey Patterson.

In other words, there's a lot going on out on the field that manager Dusty Baker should feel good about. Unfortunately, instead of paying attention to his team or finding new ways to keep the bases unclogged, all Dusty can do is check out Bobby Cox's brilliant body control when he's being ejected.

It's another ejection from a game to you and me, but to Reds manager Dusty Baker watching Bobby Cox get ejected Saturday for arguing a play at the plate was cause for study.

"I learned something from Bobby; he's the king of ejections," Baker told reporters Sunday. "I learned - he crosses his arms, he kept his distance. I was really studying Bobby. I was, I'm not kidding. He was careful not turn on anybody, he backed up before he turned."

Baker, or course, was suspended for two games last weekend after he bumped an umpire before being ejected in a game at San Diego. Though I'm sure Reds fans would rather have Dusty pay attention to Bobby's ability to win his division for 13 years in a row. That would come in a lot more handy than learning how to avoid bumping an umpire.