Braves

[msstate7]

Will the losing streak stop tonight?

I'm excited to see Floyd tomorrow night also. Hopefully he can hit...

[Tbonewannabe]

Will the losing streak stop tonight?

I'm excited to see Floyd tomorrow night also. Hopefully he can hit...

The problem is they are either boom or bust. Freddie and Johnson are the only ones that can hit consistently. Johnson not as much this year. It is like watching MSU except they can actually hit HRs.

[smootness]

The only thing that truly concerns me about the offense right now is the walks and OBP. Heyward will be fine, he'll hit and get on base. Freeman will obviously be good, and I think Justin Upton will have a better overall year than he did last year; he won't struggle to get on base. But when you look at guys like Gattis, Chris Johnson, Simmons...they all should have decent BAs but they very rarely walk, so they'll need to hit around .300 in order to really get on base enough. I expect Chris Johnson to end up around .275-.280 but with an OBP hovering around .300. Simmons will probably be similar, and neither one will hit a lot of HR.

Gattis will have plenty of pop, and I expect him to hit well all year, but he will also struggle to keep an OBP very much over .300. That means the top of the lineup will have to carry us and then we'll have to hope for HR elsewhere. When you have 3 guys in the lineup struggling to keep an OBP over .300 in addition to Uggla and BJ, we could certainly struggle.

We really need to cut bait on Uggla and at least try La Stella. It's past time; we simply can't keep his bat/glove in the lineup while we're losing like this. Pena has gotten more time recently, but he's not the long-term answer, either.

[Irondawg]

Yep, it's time to cut bait on Uggla. He's just not going to be productive and La Stella is a better defender and could be a potential #1 or # 2 hitter with his high OBP. So maybe something like this:

La Stella
Heyward
F. Freeman
J. Upton
Gattis
C. Johnson
Simmons
B. upton

[MS_half-step]

Not defending Uggla by any means, but the knock on La Stella is his defense

[Dawg61]

If a pitcher can change his mechanics than so can a hitter and to me the Braves have 3 hitters in serious need of completely new swings. BJ, Uggla and Heyward need to all change their swings completely. If that means sending two of them down for a year or more till they fix them then so be it or just cut bait with Uggla and send BJ down. Keep Heyward up but he too needs a major overhaul with his swing. He's ****ing huge and has worse power than Billy Hamilton right now.

[Irondawg]

I thought La Stella was perceived as being a glove upgrade to uggla though. No gold glove type defense, but better range than uggla. Maybe I'm wrong though.

[MS_half-step]

http://atlantabraves.blog.ajc.com/2014/05/05/how-long-will-offensively-challenged-braves-stick-with-uggla/