I don't know if you guys have caught it, but Dale Murphy has been making the rounds talking about the steroid issue. Here's a quote from Radley Balko's blog (www.theagitator.com). Balko was on a panel on steroids, advocating a "let 'em take what they want" position).

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Dale Murphy struck me as a authentic, decent guy who did play by the rules for all of his career, and is now bothered in part because his stats have been dwarfed by people who didn't. He also seems genuinely concerned about the state of baseball which, though i disagree with his position, I can respect.

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I also now have this surreal image forever burned into my head of, backstage, legendary sportscaster Bob Costas holding a small white box, walking up two-time baseball MVP Dale Murphy and saying, "Hey Dale, would you like to try one of my delicious pumpkin cookies?"

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Me again.  I don't think Murphy will ever get into the HOF unless it's by the Vets Committee or its heir. But maybe one good thing about the sordid steroid mess is it will bring some attention back to the one of the best men to ever play the game. It's nice to know -- when I'm at age past when Murphy had retired, that I can still look up to him.

Dammit.  Don Sutton is gone from the announcing crew.  I always enjoyed his analysis of the game.  One of better color guys out there.  TBS was blessed for many years with an outstanding announcing crew -- I think Skip the best of the entire Carey Clan.  And Sutton's arrival coincided with the Braves ascent to glory.  As a HOF pitcher, he was in the best position help us appreciate the best pitching staff of all time.

Now that, like every other Brave tradition, is slowly disappearing.

Sigh.

It's behind the subscriber firewall, but Marc Normandin over at BP breaks down Marcus Giles' career.  His conclusion?  Marcus has had an unlucky year.  He's been hitting balls at people.  His fly ball rates, popup rates and plate discipline are as good as ever.  And if the Braves trade him while his value is low, they may regret it.

I think Marcus's 2003 MVP-caliber campaign has colored our perception of him.  Very few players can put up those numbers. It was clearly a career year.  But a 28-year-old good-fielding second baseman putting up a .286/.362/.450 career line is outstanding for a 53rd round pick -- and something about half the teams in baseball would kill for.  Even in this year -- after a very slow start, Marcus is near the middle of the pack for second-basemen.

Now is not the time to trade him, when he's coming off a bad year.  Now is the time to sign him cheap for the next two years.  At the end of that, he'll be a 30-year-old with old player's skills.  That's when you trade him to some dumb team like the Pirates.

This off-season scares me.  The Braves are talking about trading away Andruw and Marcus -- two of their best players.  And once you've decided you have to trade, you've lost the trade.  Hard-hitting, good-fielding up-the-middle players do NOT grow on trees.  They have no one who can replace these guys with anywhere near that production.  This would potentially cripple the franchise.

Think about the last decade or so.  The Yankees great run was partly fueled by an up-the-middle set of Posada, Jeter, Knoblauch/Soriano and Williams.  The Braves built a dynasty on Lopez, Blauser/Furcal, Giles/Lemke and Andruw.  Anyone can find bats for the corners -- anyone but the Braves, apparently.  But we could spend five years struggling to fill the holes at 2B and CF if we make a couple of dumb trades because we're afraid of Andruw's salary and Marcus hasn't met our lofty expectation for the guy drafted 1511th.

Well, it's now official - the streak of 11 straight division titles - and 14 in 15 years - is over.  The last time the Braves failed to make the post-season, Bush I was President, we had not yet fought a war in Iraq, the Soviet Union still existed, Turner still owned the team, Home Alone was the top movie of the year, Rhythm Nation was the top album.

Good gravy, am I glad to see the back of 1990.

The good news is, I don't think we'll be away for long.  The farm system is a bit weak, mostly because it produced so much last year.  With Chuck James showing he can pitch at the major league level and a step forward for some of the Baby Braves -- and maybe a little purse-loosening by AOL/Satan/Time Warner -- they can be right back in it next year.  Of course, if they trade Andruw for nothing, we'll be sunk.

Still, it's been an amazing run -- a team on par with the great Yankees and Dodgers of the past, a dynasty defined by the greatest pitching staff of all time that managed to cling to victory for another few years at the end.  Were it not for the post-season disappointments, the Braves of 1995-2000 would be considered one of the great teams of all time.

I'm reporting what I've gathered from a number of sources.  Apparently, the Braves tried to slide Andruw through waivers to open up the possibility of a wiaver trade.  An unnamed team grabbed him and the Braves pulled him back.

One of the reasons for doing this?  In a week or two, Andruw becomes a 10-and-5 man (10 years with the Braves -- can you believe that?!) and can veto any trade.  He has expressed an interest in playing his entire career in Atlanta.  But AWOL-Time Warner-Satan wants to cut payroll and apparently thinks gold glove 50-homer centerfielders grow on trees.

It will be interesting to see where this goes.  The big salaries on the team in 2007 will be Chipper (can't trade), Smoltz (same), Edgar and Hudson (can but won't).  Mike Hampton is due to come back so maybe they can get some rich team cough Yankees cough to take him off their hands.  But the Braves seem to cling to the bizarre idea that Hampton will pitch well when he comes back from TJ surgery.

Either way, we're looking at potentially dangerous off-season when our team could be eviscerated.

Looks like Thorman might work out.  We'll see what happens when NL pitchers get used to him.  But a .500 slugging after his ice-cold start with only 6 K's in 58 AB is nice.  I'd like to see more walks and bit more average.  But his .795 OPS (through wed; 1.194 in July) compares favorably to Langerhans .744, Frenchy's .728 and even Diaz's .813.

Now if we can only get the team to hold on when Smoltz pitches . . .

According to Maury Brown at Baseball Prospectus, part of the new TV deal MLB cut is that TBS will stop showing any Braves games nationally!  Is this true?  Am I going to have to buy MLB TV or something to get my increasingly rare fix?  It's bad enough that I only get a tiny fraction of the games anymore now that Time Warner has seen fit to move the team to Turner South and other channels I can't get.  The national following this team once had that TW has chipped away at for year, is going to collapse.

Man, I hate Time Warner.  From America's Team to local channel 87 backwater.  Disgraceful.  It's almost like they are trying to ruin the team.

I posted this in the comments, but I thought I'd put up a diary on the subject. The speculation that the Braves will try to get Joey Gathright as a "leadoff" hitter scares me.  I don't understand the fascination with this guy.  Consider this:

BP projected Gathright to hit .256/.310/.310 this year with little to no improvement over the next five years (he's 25). So far this season? He's been actually worse - .211/.318/.253 and 12/15 SB.  He's got 22 walks but 31 K's.  That ain't a leadoff hitter.  By comparison, Giles is hitting .239/.324/.349 with 35 BB, 54 K and 7/10 SB.  So we'd lose power, lose some BA but gain five stolen bases.  Wahoo.  And remember that Giles has hit much better than this in the past.

And the idea of him replacing Andruw is not even funny.

This focus on needing a "leadoff hitter" is strange. The Braves don't need a leadoff hitter.  The Braves's need hitters full stop.  If you want some OBP and speed at the #1 position, move Renteria up there, with high-AVG McCann hitting second and drop Marcus down to #5.  The Braves aren't failing to score runs because they aren't stealing bases.  They're failing to score runs because they're not hitting.

Now turning to the pitching.  Check this out.  Here are the VORP's put up by the 20 pitchers the Braves have used this season:

Smoltz - 20.8
Hudson - 18.0
Ray - 10.0
Paronto - 7.5
Remlinger - 4.6
James - 4.5
McBride - 2.6
Villareal 2.2
Yates - 1.4
Stockman - 0.7
Ramirez - -0.3
Cormier - -0.3
Davies - -1.0
Smith - -1.0
Thomson - -2.3
Moylan - -2.4
Boyer - -2.7
Sosa - -4.0
Device - -6.3
Reistma - -9.6

This doesn't tell you anything you don't already now.  Smoltz, Hudson and Ray have been good while the rest of the crowd has been replacement level or far far worse.

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The biggest problem with the Braves is their corner production.  This is the VORP they've gotten from their position players, and their rank in the NL:

C - McCann (19.2) - 1st
1B - LaRoche (6.2), Jordan (-4.3) - 18th (LaRoche 15th)
2B - Giles (3.3) - 14th
SS - Renteria (14.9) - 1st
3B - Chipper (13.6) - 7th
LF - Diaz (10.3), Langerhans (-1.6) - 10th (Langerhans 19th)
CF - Andruw (16.2) - 2nd
RF - Francoeur (-7.5) - 19th
Bench - Pena (1.5), Pratt (-5.1), Prado (0.7), Orr (-4.1), Pena (-1.3), Betemit (7.1)

For those of you counting, that's 54.0 VORP from the up-the-middle-positions -- an outstanding figure considering Giles' struggles; -1.5 from the bench, which is acceptable for a bunch of glove guys;  And 16.7 VORP from the corners.  That's pathetic.  You will not win championships that way. And I've marked Diaz as LF, not bench, so the number could be even worse depending on how you look at it.

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