Championship run brings a smile as frustration of Braves’ offseason simmers

Dec 15 2008

Published by bud006 at 1:00 pm under Braves analysis Edit This

By Bud L. Ellis
braves.today.com

ATLANTA — Championships are special. They are special to the team that reaches the ultimate destination. They are special to the fan base that so desperately desires to celebrate a title.

And yes, they are special to the usually jaded folks who chronicle the journey to the summit.

I spent the weekend relieving a championship march I covered five years ago. One of the high schools in our coverage area won the state football championship in 2003, and this weekend, that school won the title again.

In watching the game on TV Saturday night, my wife and I talked about all the stuff our sports department wrote about Camden County High in Kingsland five years ago, and how hard our sports staff worked during championship week. It was a blur of a week, indeed, but something I’ll never, ever forget. And, as hokey as it may sound coming from somebody who’s been blessed enough to cover a World Series and a Super Bowl, covering that team’s 15-0 season is one of the highlights of my sports writing career. Reading my game story from the championship game put a big smile on my face.

That was fun. Good times.

That trip down memory lane also served to offer some perspective as to the state of the Atlanta Braves. Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock or off trying to discover gold somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains, you well know just how rotten this offseason has been for Los Bravos, as two aces have spurned the Braves and as of this moment, the team still has no power-hitting left fielder among its ranks.

Ugh. Depressing. But you keep going. You don’t let plans that go awry keep you from focusing on the goal. The goal for the Braves is to return to championship form, and it’s got to start by upgrading the current roster. Hard as that may be to accomplish, given the fact things haven’t progressed very smoothly for this team since the disaster that was the 2008 season ended. If anything, the misery from the regular season has carried over into the offseason.

The Braves are interested in Japanese right-hander Kenshin Kawakami, a 33-year-old who sports a low 90s fastball and projects to be a No. 2 (sounds high to me) or a No. 3 (Bravos got one of those already, don’t they?) in a major-league rotation. The Red Sox also are in on Kawakami, and it may take $8 million a year for three years to land a pitcher who does have 112 career victories and a 3.22 ERA in the Japanese Central League.

Now, far be it from me to poo-poo on a guy who looks on the surface like he could step into the middle of the rotation, but when you look at the grand scheme of things and the fact the Braves were so public and so aggressive in their notion of landing rotation (and pennant-race altering) starting pitching, it seems like Kawakami is a bit of a drop from Burnett and Jake Peavy, eh?

As for the speculation that John Smoltz may toe the slab for somebody else in 2009 … I’m not as concerned about that happening as some fans with whom I’ve talked. Seems Smoltz’s agency handing out videos and reports to interested teams at the Winter Meetings doesn’t sit well with some folks. Look people, the odds of Smoltz not rejoining the Braves next season are very small. His agency is doing what agencies do: gauging interest in their clients. Plain and simple.

John Smoltz hasn’t thrown in a major-league game since early June. He’s coming off his fifth major arm procedure. He is a free agent (we seem to forget that). The Braves are not and cannot offer Smoltz a contract until they are convinced he’s healthy. You think there are critics of Smoltz not being locked up on Dec. 15? Just think what the outcry would be if the Braves signed Smoltz today, then, come to find out in March, dude simply has no more miracles left in that arm and elbow and shoulder of his. The Braves would be destroyed by the critics for signing a guy without knowing if he could pitch or not, one season after 4/5ths of the starting rotation missed significant time with injuries.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Again, as badly as I want to believe Smoltz can climb the bump every fifth day in 2009, until I see it happen, I’m not counting on it. The Braves need pitching, and after the Peavy deal fell apart, after Burnett decided on the Yankees, the Braves cannot put all their eggs and hopes and dreams onto Smoltz’s right arm.

Guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens. Here on the ol’ blog, we’re looking to go into Christmas mode in the coming days, which means probably four or five posts a week instead of the usual seven-day-a-week coverage. The three-man staff (me, myself, and I) is looking forward to a little down time. Of course, if there is breaking news, we’ll be all over it, as always.

Just like when the Braves made a deal back in December of ’03, in the midst of Camden County’s title run. One night after Camden won its semifinal game – which was held at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta – I covered the other semifinal game. That afternoon, sitting in traffic on the Downtown Connector (as fate would have it, next to Turner Field), I heard on the radio the Braves had pulled off a five-player trade with the Cardinals. One of the players heading from the Braves organization to St. Louis was Adam Wainwright, who hails from our newspaper’s coverage area.

Just can’t help but wonder how good Wainwright – who has developed into a pretty solid starter with the Redbirds after pitching out of the bullpen during the Lou’s 2006 World Series championship season – would look in the Braves’ rotation today.