Atlanta Braves

I'm a Braves fan.  I've been one since the early 90s.  In my lifetime of enjoying Braves baseball, you can't say much about the team's success without mentioning Chipper Jones in the same sentence.

At 38 years old, we all know the decline is rapidly picking up speed.  It shows on the injury sheet.  It shows in the stat line.

Chipper is batting .240 this season with 1 HR and 21 RBI.  He's slugging almost 200 points less than his career average and his OBP is drops year after year.

The 2010 Atlanta Braves seem to be a very determined ball club that has turned the corner. This team has great chemistry with a great group of guys that will help push through the "dog days".

Whether they will admitt it our not, this team is also trying to get their future hall of fame manager Bobby Cox back to the postseason and to the world series one more time

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Oh, how the tables have turned.

The Braves extended their season-high winning streak to six games and moved into first place in the National League East with a 9-3 spanking of division rival Philadelphia at Turner Field on Memorial Day.

It's June 1st and I have an alarming stat for Braves fans—this year's primary starting pitchers (Hanson, Hudson, Kawakami, Lowe and Medlen) are having a more successful year at the plate than the starting centerfielder, Nate McLouth. Through 51 games (nearly a third of the year!) the pitchers are hitting .184 and McClouth is hitting .179 with no signs of coming out of his slump.

Just to prove how random, and therefore essentially worthless, wins are as a statistic, check out the numbers of two pitchers below.

Pitcher #1 - 4.86 ERA, 1.46 WHIP, 35 strikeouts, 29 walks and 63 innings pitched in 11 starts.

Pitcher #2 - 4.66 ERA, 1.32 WHIP, 32 strikeouts, 15 walks and 56 innings pitched in 10 starts.

At this point in the season, Jason Heyward, the Braves (and baseball’s) top prospect is tearing it up in Atlanta. But the Braves system still has a load of young talent, so here are my top 10 Atlanta Braves prospects as of right now.

Although the rankings are affected by performance thus far in 2010, I’m not going to make any huge drops based on performances thus far.

Does anyone else remember the hype machine surrounding Jordan Schafer from about, say, 2007 up until 50 games into the 2009 season?

The sky was the limit for this kid.

He was (and still is) a superb glove in center and has the potential from a speed/contact standpoint to turn into something resembling an above-average Major League talent.

Pretty amazing what a 50-game suspension and a broken wrist can do to a career isn't it?

As the month of May is drawing to a close, it’s hard to believe that coming into this month the Braves were in last place and just a game removed from a nine-game skid.

It almost feels like we are in a different season.

After a decent start to the month, the Braves caught fire—and have won five out of their last six series (the other series was a 1-1 split between the Braves and Mets).

Coming into the 2009 season, the Atlanta Braves' Tommy Hanson was one of the most hyped prospects in baseball, even ranked by some above Jason Heyward.

Despite being seemingly ready for the major leagues, the Braves opted to give Hanson a taste of AAA, and left Jo-Jo Reyes in the rotation.

Instead of getting a full year of Hanson’s 2.89 ERA and 8.18 K/9, the Braves were treated to five starts of 7.00 ERA from Jo-Jo Reyes (Kris Medlen also made a couple starts, not faring much better than Reyes).

The Mets, Marlins, and Nationals are all three games behind the division-leading Philadelphia Phillies, while the Braves are 2.5 back.

Either this speaks to how good the division is compared to what many thought, or it speaks to how many flaws the Phillies truly have and how average the division is.