Projected Starters

C - Brian McCann
1B - Casey Kotchman
2B - Kelly Johnson
SS - Yunel Escobar
3B - Chipper Jones
LF - Garret Anderson
CF - Josh Anderson
RF - Jeff Francouer

Rotation
Derrick Lowe
Javier Vazquez
Jair Jurrjens
Tom Glavine
Kenshin Kawakami

Closer - Mike Gonzalez


Going to be one of the more interesting years in recent memory. Think this team can do a lot better than a lot of 'experts' are projecting.

Don't have much confidence at all in this years team. I will continue to watch probally 25 games or so this season but in a really tough division I'm unsure of what kind of progress we can make. Sucks that Tim Hudson will be out all year.

A little part of me died when Smoltzy signed with Boston.

I'm looking forward to this season as well. I'm not sure what the 'experts' are saying, but recent projections based on PECOTA and CHONE both have the Braves as a borderline Wild-Card team, which seems about right.

One such projection, based on CHONE, predicts some pretty interesting times in the NL East. (http://www.baseballprojection.com/2009standings.htm)

East (W-L)
Phillies (87-75)
Braves (86-76)
Mets (86-76)

The latest projections from the Baseball Prospectus folks looks like this:
East (W-L)
Mets (91-71)
Phillies (88-74)
Braves (87-75)

With Philly, LA, Milwaukee and Atlanta all within a game or two for the WC.

My thoughts:
-The rotation is solid except for Glavine. I really hope he gets hurt, because Bobby will probably be biased towards keeping him in the rotation even if he doesn't deserve it. He should be 3rd or 4th in line for the #5 spot at best. We should have spent his money keeping Smoltz or paying for something better in the OF. He adds no value to the team whatsoever.
-Lowe and Vazquez will both do well, with Vazquez doing slightly better.
-The OF continues to be an abortion, with Blanco, Francouer and Garret Anderson getting the bulk of the playing time. If I'm wrong, and Josh Anderson gets more AB's than Blanco, they could easily set the record for fewest walks/lowest OBP for an OF ever.

I really have no idea what to expect this season. I think the pitching will be very solid but the lineup is a huge question mark. Gonna be interesting.

Braves have very little power in the lineup this year, but Leo Mazzone keeps saying he thinks they'll lead the league in extra base hits though. He's also been pimping Kawakami on 680 the fan the past couple of days. Likes his cutter and how he locates pitches. I think he might be #3 starter if Jurrjens starts off slow.

Hats off to Frank Wren as GM for at least putting a team together that looks like they have a shot in hell at competing and not throwing away Tommy Hanson and all our other top young players/prospects like Yunel for Peavy and others. I was pissed back in December and January, now things actually look somewhat bright, and who knows what can happen if we actually learn to win some 1 run ball games, and are still leading or 1-2 games back come mid August. Garrett Anderson was a better signing than Griffey too. Blessing in disguise that he signed with Seattle afterall.

Basically what gmc said. It'll be fun to watch this team compete without as high hopes as usual. We have some good pieces, so it could be pretty good.

I'm a relentlessly optimistic homer. Ship the division, the league, and the ring, imo. Taking the over on 225 K's for Vazquez, and the under on 3.75 for Derek Lowe's ERA.

Over 25/100 for Frenchy, Chipper, Kotchman, and Mac.

lol that would be nice.

re Glavine,

It'll be interesting to see how long he can hold off Tommy Hanson. By all accounts he's just too good to keep out of the Show. Knowing Bobby though, it'll probably be a while. Can't wait to catch some Tommy Hanson games just a short hop up I-85.

+1

I've practically never had a reason to complain about our front office... but this made me mad.

I guess at the end of the day it all came down to money, they had more, and that was that. I just hope that part of it wasn't Smoltzy feeling like he was being underappreciated.

I'm a lot more optimistic heading into this year than any of the last few years. I really wish we had Smoltz back and really wish we didn't have Glavine but whatever. Gogogogo Braves.

Excited for the season to start, should be fun.

...And no I would not care to place a wager on the over/unders I posted above, lol.

Why? I was pissed at first too and so was everybody in ATL. After looking at it the full picture though neither side was wrong. The Braves knew how bad Smoltz injury really was, and how well he was progressing, and what he'd most likely be physically capable of better than any other team in the league looking to make a deal with him. Don't tell me the Braves didn't offer him a fair deal. They offered him fair money, and basically said "just stay healthy and don't make us take a complete gamble with no return if we wrong to give you guaranteed money to just sit on the bench all year hurt. All they asked was he take a base contract, and he'd get pretty close to what Boston threw at him regardless of knowing much of anything compared to the Braves, and if he stayed healthy for what I think all they asked was the first 60 days, in return he'd earn the rest. I can't blame the Braves for asking that of him, after he barely pitched at all last year and made 14 million to do it. You can't be wasting money on the Mike Hamptons and John Smoltz to be hurt and sitting on the bench wearing out your bullpen to death every year. I love Smoltz as much as every Braves fan, but what he got asked to sign was a reasonable deal, he wanted more guaranteed money regardless of his possible injury and Boston threw it at him. It's a business. When he enters Cooperstown he'll put on a Braves hat and every Braves fan will smile about it. Frank Wren was more than fair with every free agent he tried to resign and bring in this offseason. **** Furcal and his agents by the way. What a low life bunch of pieces of ****. Go get DUI's in LA. We never needed him anyways

I don't really know how to respond to that other than I generally agree with everything in that rant, hahaha

Being sarcastic or serious?

I was pissed at first too, because Smoltz gave up so much money to stay with the Braves throughout his career when he could have went and signed larger contracts elsewhere. First thought was "**** you Atlanta Braves, wtf, this offseason is ****ing nightmare, we haven't done ****, now we just disrespected Smoltz to where he's finishing his career in Boston." Then I heard both sides and looked at the big picture for each, and it came down to business where both sides did what was best and nobody got screwed. It's weird seeing legends like Smoltz go, and now I get to watch players who are one year older than me that I went to high school with and played basketball with become the face of the Atlanta Braves. Weird feeling

Serious in that I agreed with pretty much everything you said.

Guess I just haven't let go of the emotions of it all yet. Neither Smoltz nor Atlanta got screwed really... just us fans who love Smoltz (not past tense).

And I'm pissed that now the Red Sox have Literally THE Greatest Postseason Pitcher Of All Time instead of us. For the last few years I always thought that if we could just get to the postseason, we'd be a lock for the World Series because Smoltz would kick it into that extra special gear he has for October.

No idea what to expect. Hope to be pleasantly surprised.

Hampton sure was a giant ****ing disappointment for us.

Having a healthy Hudson would be so so nice.

Chipper has a couple good ones left in him too imo.

Braves vs. Astros in spring training on ESPN at 1 today (eastern ldo)!

I always get overly excited about baseball season when spring training starts... opening day's still a month away and I've already done about 30 mock fantasy drafts and 2 real ones.

Yeah, I don't care what the circumstances were surrounding the Smoltz deal. I wish he would have retired and become a Braves radio announcer or something, and maybe opened a car dealership. I just don't like the Red Sox, and I hate seeing Smoltz there.

Let's hope Francoeur gets it together this year.

Apparently Hanson pitched today but i missed it. sigh. How'd he look?

He looked pretty good. Gave up a run and a couple hard hit balls, but that curveball just drops off the end of the table.

And Yunel got plunked in the 2nd inning... so of course, shortstop for shortstop, Tommy plunked Miguel Tejada the next inning.

He's a team player, I love him already.

good stuff

Go Braves!

Hanson looked like he had some really sick stuff. He had Carlos Lee shaking his head going back to the dugout one time it looked like. The consensus seemed to be he needed some seasoning in AAA but he'd be up in Atlanta by June or July.

Mac absolutely JACKED that pitch off that goofy-looking Canadian junk-baller in the WBC today.

He looks noticeably slimmer as well, announcer was saying he dropped 20 lbs in the offseason.

Can barely contain my enthusiasm.