Disappointing Braves Season, who is to blame?

Question

2 people on my list:

Frank Wren: For all the one run game loses, it is obvious that the team need only one more reliable bat or one more reliable bullpen arm to win those games. He has not done anything around all star break just hope the team to come around. Now the Braves’ regular season is almost gone, all choices left for him is trading away the best RBI producer in the team. Indecision is as bad as making a bad decision.

Roger MacDowell: The Bullpen was obviously tired even in the mid of first half. Relying on young pitchers too much, they will break down in later season. The inexperience and young pitchers can only rely on their stuff for so long. What did Roger do? Almost nothing.

In my opinion, Bobby will retire this year. He had enough for this team. I think Braves should promote him to be GM again or just find someone else for Frank.

Hire Leo to replace Bobby and hire Greg Maddux to be a pitching coach if he is willing to. Give me your 2 cents.

Answer 1

Injuries and the bullpen

Answer 2

Just not been their year, but dont count them out, they may come  back. Lets hope anyway.

Answer 3

THE GM AND THE PITCHING COACH: They doesn't know anything about their issues. Frank Wren doesn't know how to build a winning team and Roger McDowell has never been a respectable pitching coach.

Bobby Cox has not the fault of the recent injuries; however, HE PUT ON THE ROSTER PLAYERS HE KNEW THAT WEREN'T RELIABLE ENOUGH TO PLAY A WHOLE SEASON. For example: Mike Hampton and all the Bullpen.

Answer 4

Injuries, Injuries, Injuries...........I brought up a question earlier about running over the catcher in MLB.......most said it should stay in the game but look at McCann; run over twice in a very short time and out with a concussion. I still say that running over the catcher in this day and age is far too dangerous.......

Answer 5

Injuries, not people, are to blame. Smoltz, Glavine, Chipper, and McCann are all hurt. The management can't control injuries.

Answer 6

I like how you just ignore all of the significant injuries that they have had on their team.  Smoltz, Glavine, Soriano and the rest of the bullpen, Chipper and Escobar have missed time.  Plus Franceor has been awful, and Kelly Johnson has underachieved.  

As a GM, you can't replace all of those important players you lost to injury.

Answer 7

I think the biggest blame has to be on the braintrust that decided to go with an older pitching staff.  the signing of Glavine aged the starting staff and put more stress on a weak bullpen.  They should have traded Andruw last season early when his value was higher to help start the rebuild, this team just got old without anyone watching the roster enough.

Answer 8

First of all I don't think you can blame Frank Wren, he has only been GM since the beginning of the season. You have no idea how good he will be yet. His test will be rebuilding the team now which he is starting to do.

Roger has been great. Our pitching by and large has not been a problem this year. The bullpen has had to rely on young arms bc everyone got hurt. Starting the year you had three of the best relievers gone right away, Moylan, Soriano, and Gonzalez(not back from TJ yet). So in big situations we had to use the only reliable guys we had.

I think Bobby will stay an extra year, and I hope he does. He can help build up these young guys we are going to have playing. He is a hall of fame manager.

I would love to have Maddux as a Pitching Coach, but I like Roger fine. I think we should keep him. I think Leo is crazy and would be a horrible manager.

As far as the season goes. I don't think it is anyones "fault" per say. We have had a very unlucky string of injuries. All the old guys we were hoping would stay healthy didn't. You can not predict any of that though. Jeff has had a bad year, which is the extra bat you mentioned we might need. I think we are transitioning from old guys to a completely new young team. Smoltz, Glav, and Chip will all be gone soon. As far as the one run games go, that is mental by now. You know when we are down by one run it is in our hitter's heads. I think it will be helped by switching around our team, which we are about to do.

I'm disappointed in our performance, but I think it is more unlucky than naught

Answer 9

As far as the Braves are concerned it comes down to the basic problems most teams face when they have a down season, which are injuries and a lack of quality pitching.

Answer 10

I agree They should and it is MOST of there fault there team is going down this losing streak

Answer 11

I am not usually one to blame Bobby for stuff but Bobby has mismanaged his Bullpen once again I think he needs to call it a career and retire. Also ever since Roger has come as pitching coach there have been a ton of injuries to pitchers I am not saying its all him but i don't think he is helping the situation.

Wren also being GM was a bad move as well, he was horrible in Baltimore so why did the Braves think he would do a better job in Atlanta.

Oh well I guess its the natural cycle of Baseball, the Braves were great for 14 straight years us Braves fans have been spoiled for so long most of us just aren't used to losing seasons

Answer 12

Injuries are to blame. Honestly they just can't catch a break.

The other thing would be the hitting coach. The Braves have some of the worst situational hitting in the NL this year. They have good moments, but rarely when it counts.

Answer 13

Let me address each of these:

Frank Wren - The one run losses you can not peg on Wren. He had plenty of reliable bats, but they just weren't coming through in those scenarios. That's the players fault and a little bad luck...all our hard hit balls went right to people in that scenario. He was waiting to see if we were in the race or not. If we were, he was going to trade for another bat. Jason Bay was the most likely choice, but he didn't want to give up a whole lot of prospects and such just to get someone who couldn't save our season. We're rebuilding for next year. If we're able to land Bay now, it is simply for next year.

Roger McDowell - Did you see what happened to our bullpen? Peter Moylan had 90 innings last year with an ERA under 2.00. Rafael Soriano was supposed to be our closer. Both of them got injured, and Moylan was out for the year. Plus, Glavine and Smoltz were both innings-eaters, which would've taken more stress off the bullpen, but they both got hurt, and Smoltz is out for the year. Our pitching actually held up beautifully (disregarding the last 3 games). People kept stepping up, especially Buddy Carlyle in the bullpen. Also, who could've predicted that Jo-Jo Reyes, Jorge Campillo, and Charlie Morton would be in our rotation, and we would still have the best team ERA in baseball for a while (and right before the 2nd Phillies game, the 2nd best in the NL still). McDowell has done a fabulous job with what he's had to work with.

Bobby Cox - Hall of Fame manager. Bobby is not the cause of this. Chipper Jones even came out and publicly stated to all of the people who kept saying Bobby was at fault that it was the injuries killing us, not Bobby. He said Bobby is doing things like he always has (which led to 14 straight division titles keep in mind). We need him to teach these young players. It will be a sad day when he is no longer around to do that. Keep in mind, he was the manager of the year in 2005. Why was that? Because he coached all those young guys. We had 13 people on the starting roster at some point in time that were rookies. He is the best at teaching these youngsters how to play. Keep in mind, all this success over these years has been because Bobby can coach these young guys better than anyone else (that's why we have players around today like Glavine, Smoltz, and Chipper...who were all coached by Bobby from the start of their careers). Now we have people like McCann who are here because of Bobby's coaching. Overwhelming talent means just about nothing if they don't have the right person to harness it.

And no, Leo is done with this organization for now. I'm alright with hiring Maddux, but I think McDowell should be rewarded for his performance. We shouldn't fire him. All in all, the things to blame are:

1. The Injuries - 20/25 of the initial starting roster have missed time to injury. You want to try to convince me that's normal, and that a team can still immediately bounce back from that? It seemed we had a constant rotation of 8 people on the DL all year. As soon as 1 was better, another would get hurt. A lot of it was freak accidents too (a ball bouncing off of the batting cage and hitting Chipper in the eye? Come on...). The only players healthy all year were Ring, Ohman, Teixeira, Johnson, and Blanco. That's it. The injuries were the primary reason of our collapse this year. Going into the year, we had a World-Series caliber team. Injuries destroyed it.

2. Bad Luck - Goes hand in hand with all the injuries. Every team will have some bad luck, but it seems like all year long, when there was a chance of us getting a lucky hit or something, it never panned out. Something weird would always happen.

3. Inconsistency From The Players - That's the reason we couldn't score in those 1 run games. Tex, McCann, Chipper...all three of them can come through in a pinch, and those were the only times they wouldn't. It was amazing. We could catch up if we were down by 2 or 3, but not by 1. That was a mental thing. It had to be. We had the firepower to do it, but it just didn't happen.

So, the primary culprit is injuries, which is related to flat out bad luck. It has been the most disappointing season that I have ever witnessed, but we will rebuild for next year and make some huge move in the offseason (probably signing another ace...especially if Hudson is out for a little of next year). We will be right back in it in the future. Rome wasn't built in a day...we will come back as strong as we once were a few years ago. No worries. I have faith in Wren and Cox.