News
Braves' rotation undeniably deep
Return of Hudson makes for five strong, plus overflow
By Mark Bowman / MLB.com
09/24/09 3:54 PM ET
ATLANTA -- Bobby Cox had the pleasure of utilizing some of the most formidable starting rotations the game has seen, and now as he heads toward the end of his storied managerial career, he once again finds himself with a rotation that is arguably deeper than the ones that included Greg Maddux, John Smoltz and Tom Glavine.Like the Dodgers may never again possess the one-two punch that they had with Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, the Braves will likely never be able to intimidate opponents like they did during the 1990s, when they were sending Smoltz, Glavine and Maddux to the mound every five days.
But with Tommy Hanson living up to his tremendous hype and both Jair Jurrjens and Javier Vazquez proving to be two of the game's best starters this year, Atlanta enjoys a greater quantity of frontline starters than it possessed a decade ago, when it utilized the common baseball practice of regularly auditioning pitchers to fill the final one or two spots in the rotation.
"It's starting to show pretty good, the five men that we can run out there," Cox said. "Some years we had three and some years we had four. I don't know if we ever had a year where you consider the fifth guy to be a little better than a fifth guy."
Courtesy of the tremendous reconstruction process general manager Frank Wren manufactured during the offseason, the Braves found themselves with so much depth in their rotation that they opted to move Kenshin Kawakami to the bullpen to make room for Tim Hudson at the beginning of the month, when he was ready to return from Tommy John elbow reconstruction surgery.
Proving capable of finding success during his first year in the United States, Kawakami posted a 3.97 ERA in the 25 starts that he made this season. Among the four pitchers who proved healthy enough to make at least 20 starts for the Braves during their injury-ravaged 2008 season, that mark would have ranked as third.
Based simply on this statistic, Kawakami has actually proven to be more consistent than Derek Lowe, whose 4.55 ERA isn't exactly the mark Atlanta was envisioning when it gave him a four-year, $60 million contract in January and projected him to at least serve as the club's ace this season.
Even with Lowe experiencing some struggles, the Braves' starters have produced a 3.62 ERA -- tied for second in the National League entering Thursday. That mark would stand as the best the team has posted since 2002, when, during Maddux and Glavine's final season together, the rotation posted a 3.42 ERA.
More importantly, this mark shows remarkable improvement. During the previous three seasons, the first three of Roger McDowell's tenure as pitching coach, the injury-depleted and talent-starved Braves rotations didn't produce anything better than a 4.45 ERA.
"They've really come on," Cox said. "I can't say enough about Roger's work with them."
As they find themselves hoping a miracle will provide them the opportunity to participate in this year's postseason, the Braves can only wonder what might have been had they been able to go throughout the season with their current rotation.
During the first 54 games of the season, the Braves rotation produced a 3.91 ERA. In the 98 games that have been played dating back to Hanson's June 7 debut, Atlanta starters have produced a 3.34 mark.
Since Hudson joined the mix on Sept. 1, the Braves have seen their starters produce a 2.86 ERA.
| "I don't know if we ever had a year where you consider the fifth guy to be a little better than a fifth guy." |
| -- Braves manager Bobby Cox |
This current group of Braves hasn't achieved the dominance its predecessors experienced during the 1990s. From 1991-98, Cox never saw his rotation post anything higher than a 3.45 ERA.
Surprisingly the best mark (2.95) during this span was posted one year before Maddux's arrival by the 1992 group that saw Mike Bielecki and Pete Smith share the majority of fifth-starter duties.
During the 1997 and '98 seasons, the Braves' rotations respectively produced ERAs of 3.05 and 3.06. Chris Brock, Terrell Wade and Kevin Millwood each made at least six starts in the fifth spot of the rotation during the '97 campaign.
The 1998 rotation appears to have been one that arguably had at least as much depth as the current group of Braves starters. That bunch had five starters (Glavine, Maddux, Millwood, Smoltz and Denny Neagle) make at least 25 starts and three hurlers (Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz) who posted sub-3.00 ERAs.
This year's rotation will possess five hurlers who make at least 20 starts and three members (Hanson, Jurrjens, Vazquez) of that group are currently in position to post sub-3.00 ERAs.
Before this year, the Braves had to go back to 2002 to find at least one starter who posted a sub-3.00 ERA. This would also be just the second time since 1998 that they've had two different starters achieve this feat.
This is something the Braves didn't envision when they entered last year's offseason with Jurrjens as the only definite returnee to their starting rotation. But Wren altered the landscape in impressive fashion by trading for Vazquez and signing both Lowe and Kawakami.
"The way our starting rotation has been this year, we've really got a chance to do something good again next year," Cox said. "I think we've done pretty darn good this year. Our club is stronger because of what Frank did in the wintertime."
Mark Bowman is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
