Is misallocation of financial resources going to hurt Atlanta Braves in 2012 season? - MLB Feature
Passing through a last year of his contract with the Atlanta Braves, Chipper Jones is on the hit list of journalists and fans. Inhibited by injuries from playing most of the games and relatively low performances over the years are being put forth as a reason
to call him a sheer financial burden on the club.
They say, if his huge salary that he gets is invested for buying new players, Braves can lift their chances. By looking at his age and his injury prone body, along with the fact that Braves do not have great pitchers in their roster, arguments being spewed
by critics seem fairly sound.
If he boasts being the best switch hitter game has ever produced, what benefit is it to the Braves when they find him injured every time they need him. Forget about his record of .304 ERA, his 454 home-runs, 1561 RBIs and look at a hopelessly pathetic performance
Braves are putting up in Spring Training. Even worse is the fact most of their pitchers have been taken on cheaply in every game.
Barring few, Julio Teheran, Tim Hudson and J.J Hoover all have gone for plenty. They seem to be wayward in pitches, mediocre with command and looking easiest of the prey for the batters have found in Spring Training. It is great having stars like Jones in
your side, but if they have only to become a stumbling block for the entry of new players, one will always argue in favour of team success.
Without wishing to blame him for everything, one thing is for sure that something has gone wrong, some flaws have remained unplugged, complacency has been shown on some areas, after all problems they have today almost all are the same of one year back.
One will maintain a contention: Jones has never parted with Braves ever since the start of his career in 1993 and thus deserves best of the treatment even if he is going through a lean period. Now keep this contention in respect of salary he is fetching
from the club. Dan Uggla gets the second highest salary from Braves and that is $9,146,942 (almost 9.4 million) and Jones the highest by far earns $14,000,000 ($14million). Is not the massive difference of around $5 million a mind boggling one?
One wonders, how a player be so important that out of first top 20 highest paid salary players, 14 of them earn less than him. Summing the salary of these players one gets to a figure close to $13 million thus one still less than the hefty $14 million he
gets alone from the club.
Implied from this is the fact that Braves have an ample potential for optimal utilisation of resources. What if they diversify the same money over a greater number of players, say they expend them on few more pitchers. Instead of absorbing themselves into
a hopeless attempt to retain some sort of pride one way or the other, they should look to higher aims. They say, “they way you see the problem is actually the problem”.
This seems to be true in the case of the Braves’ management. Their approach reeks of a malaise of myopic attitude, a one that focuses on one aspect while ignoring the whole picture.
One needs to remember last season before jumping on any conclusion about Braves regular season chances. One of the biggest reasons cited for Braves’ failure last season, in particular during the last half of the season was the mishandling of bullpen by their
manager Fredi Gonzalez. After a great performance in the first half of the season, it was their pitchers namely Jonny Venters and Derek Lowe who triggered collapse by posting their September ERA of 5.11 and 8.75 respectively. One fears the team is heading
toward the same point this year.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own and in no way represent Bettor.com's official editorial policy.
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