When asked how his team has encountered so many pitching injuries and still produced a National League-best 3.69 ERA, Braves manager Bobby Cox without hesitation has responded with, "Roger has done an excellent job."
With Leo Mazzone and TBS's affiliation with the Braves now a thing of the past, Cox can't refer to his current pitching simply as "Roger" and assume a wide-ranging audience would certainly know who he was referencing.
But those who have worked with Roger McDowell during his three years as the Braves' pitching coach know he's not just another "Roger" and that he's proven not to be just another pitching coach, either.
Circumstances might not be strong enough to describe what the Braves have dealt with on the pitching front this season. McDowell was supposed to have a rotation that included four former 20-game winners.
But with John Smoltz's season complete and the futures of both Tom Glavine and Mike Hampton in doubt, McDowell currently finds himself with a rotation that includes Hudson plus four other guys who had combined for 18 starts entering 2008.
Unfortunately for McDowell, the injury-related concerns have extended into his bullpen. Projected closer Rafael Soriano has been healthy long enough to make nine appearances and collect four save opportunities. Soriano's projected top setup man, Peter Moylan, made seven appearances and then underwent season-ending surgery on his right elbow.
Regardless, McDowell has found a way to stay positive and follow the direction he gained during his formative Major League playing years, when Mel Stottlemyre served as his pitching coach. "I just look at it like we have a schedule to play and they're not going to change it for us," McDowell said. "We all still have jobs to do, and that's what drives us to come to the park every day."
When the Braves began their search for Mazzone's successor after the 2005 season, they didn't know a lot about McDowell, who had spent the previous couple of seasons in Las Vegas as the Dodgers' Triple-A manager. But it didn't take long for Cox to immediately take a liking to the former hurler, who was the winning pitcher for the Mets in Game 7 of the 1986 World Series.
McDowell takes full advantage of the technological benefits that allow him to study the best way to pitch specific batters. But it's his ability to adjust and relate to all of the different personalities and approaches on his pitching staff that might be his greatest asset.
Obviously McDowell approaches Jair Jurrjens, Charlie Morton and Jo-Jo Reyes -- the rotation's three youngest members -- differently than Tim Hudson or Jorge Campillo, who has emerged as the season's biggest surprise. But at the same time, McDowell has shown each of them a level of respect that hasn't been ignored.
Maintaining his humble approach, McDowell doesn't want to even hear about how he deserves the credit for the surprising success his injury-riddled pitching staff has enjoyed this season.
"It's not me," McDowell said. "It's the 12 or 13 pitchers that go out there and make the pitches. I just hand them the ball."
Chipper Jones has waited long enough for his right quadriceps muscle to heal, and now he might be destined to make his first trip of the season to the disabled list.
"I'm the only one in here who knows how I feel," Jones said. "I can do the fast-twitch stuff -- I can hit and I can even field -- but I just can't run."
When Jones aggravated the quad injury on June 20, he indicated that he was feeling more discomfort than he had when he'd tweaked the muscle twice earlier this season.
"We probably should have DL'd me right when it happened," Jones said on Sunday. "I knew that it was worse than the previous time. But the competitive side of me wanted to help the club, and I've always been a fairly quick healer. So I figured in five or six days, it would be OK, or at least good enough to get back in there. It just hasn't gotten good enough, fast enough."
"I don't think Chipper is close to playing," Bobby Cox said.
Jones currently leads National League third basemen in All-Star balloting and has been looking forward to starting his fourth career Midsummer Classic. But right now, he's just hoping this additional rest will allow him to get healthy.
"I'd miss nine or 10 days that, quite frankly, I'm probably going to need," said Jones, who still isn't able to run with more than 50 percent effort.
Only Tim Hudson and Jair Jurrjens remain from the Braves' projected starting rotation, the one that prognosticators thought was World Series-caliber, not a sorry attempt at nostalgia. The other starting pitchers have succumbed to injury, age, or fate -- or a combination of the three. Surely this season has been anything but nostalgic.
Ace John Smoltz underwent season-ending shoulder surgery. Veteran Tom Glavine's durable body finally broke down, which sent the 42-year-old left-hander to the disabled list twice this season. Oft-injured Mike Hampton hasn't thrown a pitch for the Braves since Aug. 19, 2005, and remains a few weeks away from a possible return.
Yet the Braves, lauded for their pitching depth and quality for the past two decades, seem to have found the right trio of young hurlers to remain competitive.
Three of the Braves' five starters -- Charlie Morton, 24, Jo-Jo Reyes, 23, and Jurrjens, 22 -- are under the age of 25, and none has more than a year of Major League experience.
"Those three, my gosh, they're holding this together," said second baseman Kelly Johnson. "They're the reason why we're four or five games out instead of 10."
Despite a steep learning curve, which is especially prevalent in the organization, Morton, Reyes and Jurrjens have exceeded expectations.
"I expect a lot out of our guys and it almost surprises me when they don't [pitch well]," Hudson said.
There will inevitably be struggles. But as Smoltz said, it's about limiting the damage, not allowing one bad start to affect the next three.
"What experience allows you to do is deal with everything that has come your way," Smoltz said. "I could tell them the blueprint of all the things that could help them. But until they go through it, some of those things won't matter."
That Jurrjens is the staff's No. 2 pitcher is not surprising to most in the Braves' clubhouse. Not much was known about the right-hander from Curacao when he was acquired from the Tigers in the Edgar Renteria deal, other than he had a tremendous upside.
That potential was realized in Spring Training. Hudson, who, at 32, is the team's oldest pitcher currently in the rotation, was Jurrjens' throwing partner this spring, and said he undoubtedly knew that Jurrjens would fill one of the Braves' vacant starting rotation slots. The kid had too much talent not to be on the mound every five days.
"You can't have a rotation without young kids," Jurrjens said.
Before his starts, Jurrjens will frequently sit down with Hudson to go over scouting reports and decide how best to attack opposing hitters.
Jurrjens' seven wins are two more than any NL rookie, and his 3.20 ERA is third-best in the league among rookies.
Morton's first three big league starts have elicited nothing but positive reviews from those around the Braves organization. "He's shown people a lot with his maturity and how he's come along," general manager Frank Wren said.
And Reyes, who Jurrjens said had the best 'stuff' of any young pitcher in baseball, has been far more impressive than his 3-5 record indicates. Manager Bobby Cox continues to rave about the lefty, who has significantly improved his command of both his offspeed pitches and fastball.
"Guys are coming up and pitching phenomenally," catcher Brian McCann said. "It's not the pitching when we're struggling."
The end may be in sight. It seemed it would never end. But we may have seen the last of John Smoltz on the mound for the Atlanta Braves.
Restricted by a bulky brace and burdened by numerous painful and sleepless nights, John Smoltz has had plenty of time to think about his future. At times, he thinks about the possibility of pitching again and at other times, he wonders if the time has truly come to realize his post-retirement plan of being a high school basketball coach.
Is that all there is? High School Basketball? I mean, coaching basketball's a notable profession, but for John Smoltz?
Why wouldn't he be an awesome pitching coach? The man has excelled both as a starter and as a bullpen ace. Who else knows more about both roles?
"There's really nothing left for me to do," Smoltz said. "There's nothing I want to do but get back to the playoffs."
Ahh, so there it is. As long as the Braves kept making the playoffs, John was fired up and ready to go. Not knocking John. Love him. But it just isn't as easy to remain dedicated to a team that is playing 500 ball.
Smoltz is considering a strategy that would have him ready to pitch during the fall of 2009 if the Braves are in the playioffs. But the odds of that happening aren't as good as they used to be. Therefore, the only place we may see John Smoltz in the future is not likely to be on a field of dreams but inside the friendly confines of a high school basketball gymnasium.
Coming off of Friday night's thrilling 13-inning win over the Nationals, Lance Cormier understood the importance of sustaining the generated momentum and protecting a bullpen that had accounted for 10 of those innings. But still, before recording his seventh out of the evening, he forced Braves manager Bobby Cox to make one of those far-too-familiar early strolls to the mound.
"It's been that way quite a bit," Cox said after Cormier's early struggles factored heavily in the 7-4 loss that the Braves suffered to the Nationals at RFK Stadium on Saturday night.
While allowing five runs -- four earned -- in just two innings, Cormier didn't even last as a long as Friday's starter Chuck James, who at least registered nine outs before taking his premature stroll toward the showers.
By surrendering D'Angelo Jimenez's two-run first-inning homer and Robert Fick's three-run, third-inning homer, Cormier put the Braves in an early hole and at the same time did nothing to increase his confidence. Jimenez hadn't homered in the previous 124 at-bats he'd recorded since April of last year and Fick, whose decisive blast came at the end of a nine-pitch confrontation, had gone deep in just one of his previous 160 at-bats this year.
"He just didn't have much tonight," Cox said. "Generally he has a good hook [curveball] and a good sinker. But everything was just flat. He got behind too many hitters and that's exactly what you can't do."
Unfortunately for Cox, whose team has lost three of the first five games of this road trip, he also didn't have much to choose from in the bullpen. Jo-Jo Reyes strained his right hamstring while shagging balls before the game and both Oscar Villarreal and Tyler Yates were given the night off following the work they'd provided on Friday.
Things got worse in the fourth inning, when Buddy Carlyle hyperextended his right elbow during his fourth-inning at-bat. Like he had in the third, Carlyle kept the Nationals scoreless in the bottom of the fourth. But when he was forced to exit in the fifth, Cox found himself without the long relief option that would've certainly aided his taxed bullpen.
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