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When the Mets play the Braves, they do not play the current 25-man roster by my reckoning. They play the Braves of nightmares past. They face Maddux and Glavine and Smoltz and, should it come down to a ninth inning, Rocker. They attempt to retire Brian Jordan and Rafael Furcal and Javier Lopez and Andruw Jones. They will go up against the well-honed managerial experience of Bobby Cox and the legendary clutchness that is Chipper Jones.
Dang. Those last two aren’t ghosts of a rivalry in remission. They’re still around. As for the rest, I’m not convinced those guys are altogether gone.
Greg Maddux hung up his pitch count following 2008. John Smoltz is doing other things with his life despite not making his retirement official. It was recently announced Tom Glavine’s number will never be worn by another Brave. There was a time I hoped the Mets would burn 47, but Hisanori Takahashi has rescued its respectability. Still, the Braves to me are the Braves of them. Of that whole era when the Braves were the ceiling of the National League East and the best we could hope for was to be the broomstick than banged on them from below. That Brave era ended in 2005 when a new generation of Georgians that loomed as impregnable — remember when we loathed and feared the sight of Jeff Francoeur for the right reasons? — couldn’t sustain its malevolence. But my reflexes haven’t gotten the memo.
I hear we’re going to Turner Field, I tense up. I see Brian Jordan and Rafael Furcal and Andruw Jones. I see the short-timers like Quilvio Veras and Walt Weiss and Andy Ashby. I see Leo Mazzone rocking his ass off and Kerry Ligtenberg growing weird sideburns and I hear a Seminole war chant best left in Tallahassee or at least the parking lot that used to be Fulton County Stadium.
I see Maddux even if stopped pitching for the Braves after 2003. I see Smoltz even if he stopped pitching for the Braves after 2008. I see Glavine in my dreams, and not the good ones. I see Cox and Chipper and we know that’s still lingering reality. The Braves cannot stop being the Braves to me no matter what the standings say. I may despise the Phillies and the Marlins with the kind of Edge generally reserved for Derek Jeter, but I can’t look at the Braves and not think of them as Our Rivals.
Coincidentally, they say they’re one half-game ahead of us. It’s as if it was planned that way. In April, we used the business end of the broom to sweep them out of Citi Field. This time, given the composition of the standings, we need to turn the broom around and bang on the ceiling like old times — even if the ceiling is that of the basement for the moment.
When those fuckers left town after that soggy Sunday night 5-inning (+1 pitch) victory, we were 10-9 and surging, they were 8-10 and sagging. Since then, literally a half-season ago, the Braves have won 10 and lost 9 — but are 10 and 5 since stumbling out of Citi and into St. Louis where they were also swept. They swept the Brewers at their old native burial grounds in Milwaukee (Milwaukee is to homestands what the Mets are to road trips) last week and then took two of three at Turner Field against the Diamondbacks. Yesterday they were particularly hot, winning 13-1; Eric Hinske had had 4 RBI, Martin Prado had 3 RBI and David Ross had 3 walks...which is probably more surprising than Tim Hudson collecting 2 hits on his own behalf.
We won’t see Hudson or Tommy Hanson (who can be thrown together with other H-Braves and used to nudge Franklin Pierce Adams awake: Hudson and Hanson/And Heyward and Hinske/Hiawatha’s Very Own Hotlanta Blinskey; needs work). Starting in on us tonight, opposing Mike Pelfrey, will be the anti-Ollie of the 2008-09 free agent market Derek Lowe. Lowe’s won 5 games already this season, but his ERA is a very Olllie-esque 5.73 (while Ollie’s is a very Lowelike 5.94). Lowe hasn’t pitched more than 6 innings in any of his 8 starts thus far but has been supported generously by Braves batters.
Many Braves batters don’t seem all that capable of supporting anybody generously, at least not on the surface. Not burning it up in Hotlanta: Brian McCann (.253 BA/.406 OBP/.394 SLG); Nate McLouth (.187/.313/.336); Yunel Escobar (.209/.299/.267); and the instinctively loathed for former association Melky Cabrera (.193/.285/.229). Cabrera, it was mentioned on yesterday’s Metscast, has lost his everyday role to Eric Hinske, another former MFY who is, in fact, on fire (literally — so don’t touch him): .360/.411/.600. Troy Glaus, who’s been around so long he won a World Series in the company of Kevin Appier and Alex Ochoa, has also heated up of late: .283/.374/.425. Wunderkinder Jason Heyward is living up to his hype pretty well (.276/.408/.562), though when it comes to Rookie of the Year competition, he’s no Ike Davis (I base that on Ike Davis being a Met and am already gathering resentment for the way he’s going to get screwed in the voting). It was mentioned during the course of Sunday’s disastrous Mets game that Chipper Jones is ready to yield the three-spot to Heyward, though Keith Hernandez also said that’s not Jones’s call. Keith also mentioned over the weekend that he has better things to do than be driven a half-hour from the Mets’ hotel in Miami to get a haircut. I’m not sure I believe that.
But I digress.
Chipper, or Larry for you eternal romantics, recently turned 38. He’s coming to the end of the line (.224/.392/.367), but we will always quiver in fear and pulsate in disgust at his very being. The first time Chipper Jones batted against the Mets, Bret Saberhagen was pitching. The second time Chipper Jones batted against the Mets, he singled to center, with Brett Butler fielding the ball. The third time Chipper Jones batted against the Mets, he reached on a fielder’s choice that was handled by Jose Vizcaino. The fourth time Chipper Jones batted against the Mets, he homered off Josias Manzanillo.
Makes Troy Glaus look like a neophyte, eh?
Kris Medlen starts against Johan Santana Tuesday night. He’s had one other start this year, giving up nine hits but only one run (no walks) before leaving with one out in the fifth against the Phillies on May 8. I’m still torn on who to root against in Phillies-Braves games, no matter where we are in the standings. Medlen, named for the Colombian drug cartel of the 1980s, pitched one inning of relief against the Mets during the Citi Field series in April. Derek Lowe did not pitch against the Mets in that three-game set, nor did the only ex-Met among the Braves, our former closer Billy Wagner. He has 4 saves thus far in 2010, the year he says will be his last (same as Bobby Cox). He looks forward to dispensing friendly bullpen advice to ex-Brave Manny Acosta (joining Francoeur and Henry Blanco in the Flushing chapter of the Atlanta alumni club) and new Met reliever Oliver Perez, for whom Billy had these supportive words after a rough outing in 2008:
“You’ve got to have that willpower and that desire to go back out there and fight ... Perez has honestly got to step up and know that we’ve just used every guy in our bullpen the night before. He can’t come out there and decide that gee, he hasn’t got it today, and so be it.”
No doubt Billy will put an arm around his fellow lefty and former teammate and offer him helpful tips on his new role. Perez will inform Wagner that his position in the bullpen has been framed as a demotion, implying heavily that starting pitchers are at the upper echelon of pitching, no matter how celebrated closers can be, so go screw an alpaca you two-faced bastard. At least I’d like to think all of this will take place. It probably won’t.
The thorough Adam Rubin has loads more useful information here.
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