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Braves Ongoing Season Comments Thread..
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Maddux not as great in the playoffs though. I’d take Smoltz first
Smoltz had the swing and miss stuff that works well in the postseason. But as WCDawg mentioned its not like Maddux and Glavine were terrible. Smoltz was a bulldog who could elevate his game.
I still can't grasp how the team won just a single World Series during that 15 year run.
Imagine if we didn't get that one? Georgia 40 years. Falcons get to the Superbowl and blow it in epic fashion. The Hawks haven't been a threat since the Dominique, Tree Rollins days.
I am the least superstitious man I know. I dont believe in hexes or jinxes. But if we hadn't gotten that one I would have to start wondering. Either way sometimes it feels like God is playing a cruel cruel joke on me. <Insert joke here>
As long as the Braves dont get swept they are fine. Leaving town with a 3.5 game lead and 4 days off the calendar isn't that bad.
I'll repeat something I posted yesterday. Going into the 1998 World Series Maddux and Glavine shared the MLB record of having 8 straight postseason starts where they gave up 2 or fewer runs and went 7 or more innings. More remarkable they did this concurrently. I'll never understand how that core staff only won a single World Series title.
never had the bullpen like the Yankees did in the late 90s. Wohlers imploded in 96. John Rocker was John Rocker
They should have won in '91. They were the better team. The Twins just had a huge home field advantage. Plus Hrbek was basically allowed to lift Gant off first base then tag him out. Ill never forget that play. Today with replay it wouldn't be allowed. Lonnie Smith keeps running etc.
'93 they were probably the best team as well but they were out of gas after an epic battle all season with the Giants. The Phillies with their roided up roster beat us.
'96 they were better than the Yankees. But as we all know they blew it.
Mr Kasem is correct after '96 the Yankees overtook the Braves and Atlanta has been good but never the same dominant force since.
I'd never seen anything like Hrbek's blatantly lifting Gant off the bag before of since. The fake out of Smith was the play that likely cost us the series.
I'd never seen anything like Hrbek's blatantly lifting Gant off the bag before of since.
That was arguably the worst call in mlb history, unless you count Eric Gregg’s strike zone in ‘97.
Marlins Iivan Hernandez in the playoff game against The Braves in maybe 1997. To this day I strongly suspect the umpire was bribed. He was calling strikes against us when the ball was literally a foot outside the strike zone. It wasn't just a call or 2 either, The Fish knew all they had to do was put the ball so far outside it was unreachable.
Live by the outside strike, die by the outside strike. Maybe that particular game was egregious, but Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz all got a wide strike zone in their time too
Maybe that particular game was egregious, but Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz all got a wide strike zone in their time too
Ive heard this argument before. I dont buy it.
Before technology changed the strike zone it was the same for everybody. Those guys were just around the plate a lot so they got more calls. But trust me the umps didn't all get together and decide they were going to call one strike zone for them and another for other teams. Presumably because they loved Bobby Cox so much. Its laughable to think about.
Plus I watched guys like Wade Boggs and Gwynn for years. With two strikes they could take a pitch basically down the middle and it wouldn't get called.
The larger point is stars get calls. Jordan knew all he had to do was go to the hoop late in the game and whether he was fouled or not he was getting at least two free throws. So I am sure Maddux and those guys benefited from that as well.
The Eric Gregg strike zone was not related to that reality in any way whatsoever. Pitches were basically in the right handed batters box and still called strikes.
When the umps foolishly went on strike Gregg was one of the few umps they didnt ask to come back. Last I heard he was bar tending in Houston before his death.
Pretty sure Gregg wasn't bribed either.
If I had to guess he called one off the plate a strike early in the game and Cox was killing him over it.
So he started calling them even further off the plate. So Cox argues more. So he moves the strike zone further outside
Rinse and repeat.
I actually had an umpire do this to me in a game when I was 13 years old. May shock some of you to know I was a bit of a hothead on the field. I wanted to win so badly
I dont know about this particular game with the weather but Gregg was also extremely obese. If it was hot that day you had better be swinging. Because he was sweating and ready to get back to the buffet.
I felt at the time that Glavine was getting the calls as well, but he didn't realize the zone until he had given up one run. It was embarrassing for Gregg.
Would be interesting to see every strike called charted over the last 30 years.
I can guarantee you the ones from the Eric Gregg game would be immediately identifiable.
This shows some of the pitches that Hernandez was getting.
lucky they didn't have the robo ump or the zone they show on tv. He would have been embarrassed.
Looking at those animated .gifs at the bottom is amazing.
Many of those pitches were a foot or more outside. Unreal
If I had owned The Braves in 1997 I would have hired detectives to turn over rocks to see if the ump was taking money, gambling, etc. There is simply no way a sighted person could have believed those were strikes.
I’m not saying we would have won the series, but the umpire should NEVER be a suspected reason why a team loses. I get the human element, but dam.n.
That just it the Marlins were really good that year. The Braves were going to be hard pressed to beat them
They didn't need any help.
Glavine did get the benefit of close calls at times, and not just in that game. I'm sure a comparison between his and Hernandez's called strikes would show a big difference in location though. Like I posted earlier, I wasn't exaggerating the distance for affect, he was a foot out of the zone on quite a few called strikes. Our batters should have straddled the plate to make a point.
It's ridiculous MLB is still refusing to use the laser system that every network that televises games have now. It might not be 100% perfect, but it's real close. They couldn't use umps and allow reviews though, the games would last 5 hours because where a tennis match might have 5 or 6 disputed calls, baseball would have dozens over the course of 9 innings.
Let the umps have a mic in their ear to be told what to call and their real job would be to call passed balls, hit by pitches, etc.
The Braves won 9 more games in the regular season than The Fish and had maybe the best starting rotation ever. They weren't overmatched talent wise by any stretch. It was just another disappointing chapter in their almost dynasty.
This site is acting up again, I'll try once more to get this posted.
The Braves won 9 more regular season games than The Fish in 1997. They had a lot of power and maybe the best pitching staff ever. They were not overmatched by any means. It's just one chapter in The Braves almost but not quite dynasty.