Losing John Thomson for up to three months should, by the normal laws of baseball, be a crippling blow to the Braves; as I’ve noted before, since last year’s All-Star Break, Thomson has been one of the very best pitchers in baseball.
Then again, Thomson arrived in Atlanta with a career ERA of 4.93, including 4.48 on the road, with a 2.1 K/BB ratio and 1.16 HR/9 allowed on the road; with Atlanta, his overall numbers are a 3.66 ERA, 2.5 K/BB and 0.80 HR/9, and the road numbers are similar, with the HR/9 rate dropping to 0.59. Which raises the question again of how hard it can really be for the Braves to find a guy with similar credentials to Thomson pre-Braves (such as Kris Benson or Victor Zambrano), knowing what Leo Mazzone can do with him.
Here’s the full roster of Braves pitchers under Cox and Mazzone.
5 thoughts on “Back To The Lab, Leo”
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I am amazed that, over the course of 15 years, the worst ERA the Braves have had by any pitcher with over 162 IP (why did you use that as a cutoff, out of curiousity) is 5.43.
I’m going to go through the other teams and see if any other team comes close. I’ll be surprised if any is.
Wish I had done that before commenting. It apparently is not as outlandish as I thought. Astros, Cubs, Mets, Padres, both expansion teams during their tenures… probably others since I stopped after the Pads.
What’s amazing in this day and age is only 6 pitchers with ERAs above 4.00.
There isn’t a limit to how much credit Cox and Mazzone deserve. I’m tired of hearing the new wave of pitching coaches with their computer models and stats, Cox and Mazzone are examples of how the old school way of coaching is still superior.
Heading into Saturday in the NL there were 10 pitchers with ERAs between 2.4 and 3.3. There combined record was 21-31. In the AL there were also 10 pitchers in roughle the same ERA field. There combined record was 43-19. How weird is that? I didn’t add it up but the next 15 pitchers in the NL ERA-wise had an incredilbe W-L record (somewhere around .667).