Last season was certainly a letdown, but after the first two games of 2007, I'm quite upbeat about the chances of retaking the NL East.

So yeah...anyone watch the Phillies get whacked late on Monday and today? The Braves bullpen is finally good and the hitters are clutch!

Thanks for Laroche...1 for 12 as a pirate so far.

I hate McCann now. My rotisserie team has both Hamels and Gordon and I lost a win and a save to his 9th inning bomb.

You're welcome.

Laroche has always been kind of spotty. He'll heat up eventually for a while, but he doesn't really have season-long consistency.

LaRoche's strikeout numbers always scared me also.

On another note, I love Chuck James.

Wooooo...suck on it, Mets. Rubber match will be biggest game in MLB tomorrow.

Best record in baseball! Wheeee.

(Yes, it's early still.)

I'm pretty pumped that this team is looking like the Comeback Kids of the mid-90's.

And it looks like playing the Nats will help Chipper and Andruw break out of their slumps. As good as they look now, they could definitely be better.

I think it's quite possible we'll be 15-1 when we next face the Mets.

Smoltz pitched a gem. Here's hoping Hudson does the same, with the addition of the offense doing something useful.

Ok, so we got the bad games out of our system. Now it's time to start playing like we're capable of playing.

The only thing that worries me is that our expected wins/losses has been so far from our actual record. I think that's mostly a result of the small sample and losing that one game 11-1 to the Mets. Last season, the Braves actual record was far worse than its expected won/loss (mostly cause they kept losing 1-run games via blown save).

The Braves...responsible for over half the Mets losses...that's both a good and bad thing.

yeah i hate have the mets in our division. it is true that hitorically we have really had their number but their lineup is so potent that they could allow 6+ runs and still win

Mets vs. Braves: 2-4
Mets vs. Rest of NL: 9-2

So sick. Even if the Braves continue beating them, it's going to be hard to win the NL East if the rest of the league doesn't step up a little bit.

*sigh*

I hate having bullpen question marks. It's like my least favorite baseball question mark.

In the past 15 years, the only time I've had any confidence in the bullpen was when Smoltz was closer.

Still pulling out the clutch comebacks.

Unfortunate that the Mets are keeping pace. Was hoping to have a bit of a gap by this point. Oh well...it makes it more exciting, right?

Excitement is good. Gonzalez and Soriano have been lights out and Wickman could find himself out of a job by season's end.

Okay...what the frig is going on? I guess I can understand losing 2/3 to the Red Sox, but 3/4 to the Nationals? That's BS.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2880979

Okay...this is just getting damn depressing. I've always tried to be supportive of Andruw, but he's absolutely got to step up if we hope to get things going again.

They can't keep losing like this. We're just fortunate that Mets have been struggling somewhat recently also...they've had a chance to totally run away with the division.

These are the games we're supposed to be winning. We can't lose a series to Washington, Florida, or Chicago and still make the postseason. As hot as Escobar is, we need Chipper back in the lineup and Andruw to pull his head out of his ass once and for all.

I don't know who I hate more right now, Alfonso Soriano or Lance Cormier.

After sweeping the Mets, Phillies are pulling closer! Unfortunately that was good for the Braves too

I'm glad I'm on "vacation" and unable to watch most of these.

even after the loss yesterday, this west coast swing has been good for the Braves..........hopefully we can finish off SD today and be feeling good going into the allstar break..........We need to win the division because its gonna be tough to get into the wildcard..........I have a good feeling though.........just as long as Smoltz gets tht shoulder healed up soon.........

Things have really started to turn around. I predict that Atlanta will retake the lead of the NL East on Wednesday. I'm not sure that we'll hold onto during the series with St. Louis, but I suppose it's possible.

...I run so bad.

I live in atlanta, but I'm a die hard sox fan, not that the two usually conflict, except for inter league play. all i have to say is ELEEEVVENNNN TOO ZEERROOOO, ELEEEVVENNNN TOOO ZERROOOOO (to the tune of the tomahawk thing).

that is all.

ship Texeira and hopefully Dotel by the end of the day...................

That was pretty much the sickest game in a very long time...and a pretty awful shame to lose to the Astros again that deep in extras.

another series won against the Mets......we should have swept the bastids...oh well........On To Philly we march now!!!!!!!!

*sigh*

Hudson/Smoltz and the offense are so good...and the rest of the pitching staff is soooo bad.

Half of the team deserves to go to the playoffs and the rest don't deserve to be in the majors.

So True........so frustrating

god we suck this weekend..........please sweep the phillies, please......

I've been fortunate to miss most of the games lately. I hate giving up, but it's looking pretty ridiculously impossible at this point. I think we've got a better shot of winning the East than the WC since so many teams are ahead of us. In order to do that, we can probably only lose 4 more games the entire rest of the season. Considering that we've not put together any sizeable winning streaks this season, that seems unlikely.

It's sad that I expect the Braves to lose games that they're not leading by 4 runs or more these days.

Looking at the expected win-loss records...the team's really not as much of a disappointment as their actual record reflects. The Braves just haven't done well in one-run and extra-innning games (the coin flips of the baseball world).

welcome back Tom Glavine...............just give us 15 wins and 200+ innings and things are good.........

Given the state of Atlanta's non-Smoltz/Hudson rotation this past year, they'd probably be plenty happy with 10-12 wins from him.

With the Mets picking up Santana, this year's going to be a bit more difficult. I'm also really bummed to see Renteria leave. He was an offensive catalyst when he wasn't injured.

Im glad that Glavine is back in the ATL. Some things are just right. And right is right.

Here's to a good year!!! Go Braves!!

VERY excited about this year.........weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

85 wins and no playoffs wwwwwwweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

I think I mentioned it before, but Braves ran somewhat significantly below expectation last year. Their ExW-L was 89-73...which would've won the NL East and been good for 3rd overall in the NL. On that note, the insane anomaly of last year was Arizona pulling a 90-72 record facing 79-83 ExW-L. I'm curious if that's the biggest difference ever between actual and expected. Another cool note while looking over the 2007 standings...no team finished with a Win% below .407. I doubt that's happened in a really long time.

Edit: After spending a few minutes looking...before 2007, the last season when the worst MLB team had a .407 (66-96) Win% was 1984 (the Giants).

I wasn't thrilled to see him go either, but I'm comfortable with Escobar getting the full time gig. Also, the addition of Jurrjens really helps if (when) Hampton goes down again and Chuck James struggles.

Plus, with the combined salaries of Edgar and Andruw coming off the books, it frees up money to throw at Teixeira.

Soooo ready for the season to start!!! Was down at Spring Training a couple of weeks ago and Jurrjens was extremely impressive. He almost has to have the 5 spot in the rotation locked up. Already have my tickets for the the first two games of our first home series againt Pitt. March 30 can not get here soon enough!!!!


And I'm pretty sure that once we see Escobar over the course of a full season that we will see that the kid has more than enough potential to be a future All-Star

Anyone else think it's odd that we open with a one game road "series"? I don't ever recall seeing that before.

I am jealous because you go Jurrgens. He looked really good last year when he pitched for the Tigers. I love getting Renteria for sure but I think JJ will be something special.