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America's Team Can Kiss My Ass

Jun 3, 2009
By .
Sports

The Atlanta Braves have released Tom Glavine, without a doubt their best pitcher and, with the exception of Henry Aaron, their most important player ever.  Yes, Glavine was more important to the Braves as a franchise than Greg Maddux.  Glavine, aged 43, was just on the verge of a major league comeback when the Braves dumped him.

Baseball is dead to me. Year after year, from the 80s even into this decade, the Braves had the best pitching rotation in baseball, despite weak hitting, and Glavine was its core.  In a perfect world, Glavine will sign on with an American League team, and the Braves will make the World Series, only to lose to Glavine in the 7th game.

Last 5 posts by Patrick

7 Comments
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7 Comments

  1. Grandy  •  Jun 4, 2009 @4:01 am

    He has lost significant velocity and the rehab starts in the minors were not going as expected. It's not just about Hanson; I think if Glavine had shown anything they'd have found a way to keep him.

    It pains me, but I've been monitoring it and this seems like a reasonable move.

  2. Carbon Fibber  •  Jun 4, 2009 @5:43 am

    Welcome to the club. But what took you so long? Strikes, superstars tanking seasons to force trades, steroids, a lack of home-grown stars and athletes (something that will sink the NBA, too), $2500 lower level tickets in the new Yankee Stadium, showing contempt for youthful fans by airing World Series games at 9 pm, no centralized management. Football has long since passed baseball as the national passion.

  3. Charles  •  Jun 4, 2009 @7:29 am

    I'm not sure what they were supposed to do, Patrick. He had two straight "shutouts" but they weren't the kind of shutouts that make you think he can get out major league hitters. In 8 innings at AAA he gave up 11 hits and had only 3 strikeouts; a shutout in A-ball for a 43 year old with Glavine's savvy is meaningless for evaluating a major leaguer – and even there he only struck out 2 batters in 6 innings.

    If I seem obsessed with strikeouts, it is because K rate is one of the few things that are reliable projections to major league performance. If A-ballers who weren't born when he started pitching are getting wood on the ball, major leaguers will be hitting him hard. He was only on the verge of being promoted in the minds of people who so badly wanted it to be true.

    I'd appreciate it if you would get back to caring about baseball so I can complain about your team stealing my team's best hitter yesterday.

  4. Patrick  •  Jun 4, 2009 @7:51 am

    The Durham Bulls made an acquisition?

  5. Charles  •  Jun 4, 2009 @8:12 am

    Yeah, a young guy. Fireballer. Million dollar arm and a ten cent head.

  6. Mhoram  •  Jun 4, 2009 @8:55 am

    I gave up on Glavine when he abandoned the Braves to go to New Yawk.

    However, I do think the Braves made the right move – Glavine just doesn't have it any more. He was never a power pitcher with a gazillion strikeouts, and 43-year-old finesse guys just don't do well in the bigs. If he wasn't a lefty, he would have been done 3 years ago.

  7. Corporal Lint  •  Jun 4, 2009 @11:04 am

    Welcome to the club. But what took you so long? Strikes, superstars tanking seasons to force trades, steroids, a lack of home-grown stars and athletes (something that will sink the NBA, too), $2500 lower level tickets in the new Yankee Stadium, showing contempt for youthful fans by airing World Series games at 9 pm, no centralized management. Football has long since passed baseball as the national passion.

    Where to begin? MLB passed the NFL in revenue (and profits) a few years ago, and is growing at a higher rate — as good a measure of the "national passion" as any. More: the last strike in MLB was settled 14 years ago. Manny Ramirez tanked, maybe, but he's sui generis. The NFL is no stranger to superstars acting out. Steroids are at least as prevalent in the NFL (see the Panthers scandal, a poll last year in which 10% of players admitted to using, etc). By my count, the best position player on something like 18 of the 30 MLB teams was developed or at least acquired as a minor leaguer by his current team. The Yankee Stadium thing is the Yankees being both stupid and greedy, not baseball as a whole grubbing for money. The game time thing I'll grant you, but it's really TV's paranoia about starting things before prime time on the West Coast. And "no centralized management" is a bad thing? How? What does that even mean? Do you want the Pirates to be protected from their own idiocy?

    Anyway, MLB is far from perfect, as any baseball fan will tell you. But I can never understand why people who are fans of a league in which contracts mean almost nothing and teams routinely release star players because of byzantine salary cap considerations can be so blind to their league's faults.