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Post by Fumbduckery on Sept 13, 2021 21:55:55 GMT -5
Here's a new and exciting topic for discussion. List your top 10 favorite Barves players of all time. I'm going to list mine in order, but everybody can feel free to just list 10 in no particular order if you want. Or list however many you want. List 15 or 20 if you want. You can list 10 and then some honorable mentions. However you want to do it.
My top 10:
1. Chipper Jones 2. Hank Aaron 3. Fred McGriff 4. -Freddie Freeman-
5. John Smoltz 6. Dale Murphy
7. Ralph Garr 8. Darrell Evans 9. Ozzie Albies 10. Brian Jordan
Honorable mentions: Ron Gant Deion Sanders Terry Pendleton Ronald Acuna Gary Sheffield Martin Prado Julio Franco John Rocker (in the beginning!)
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Post by Hart's Middle Finger on Sept 13, 2021 22:17:52 GMT -5
John Smoltz Chipper Jones Freddie Freeman Dale Murphy Phil Niekro Andruw Jones Fred McGriff Bobby Cox.. give me all the grief you want. I loved the old man. Ozzie Albies Ron Gant
Honorables Henry Aaron.. I was just a kid during his hay-day. Acuña Brian Jordan Terry Pendleton Glavine despite his time with the Mets and other stuff Maddux McCann Javy Kimbrel Hudson Gallaraga Sheffield
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Post by Hart's Middle Finger on Sept 13, 2021 22:38:13 GMT -5
I remember Evans, but I didn't choose him for the same reason I only gave Aaron an honorable. I was just too young for him to have made the same impression as others.
I loved Franco and Prado, and they were just on the cusp... especially Prado
I loved Sanders as well, he might should have been there but I wanted to shoot from the hip and he was another bullet in the ammo belt.
Furcal, Blauser, Grissom, Hubbard, Nixon, Giles...
Hubbard was the guy that reminded me the most of... me.
Ya know who I never warmed up to? Bob Horner
I didn't really dislike him... I am just ambivalent about him.
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Post by Fumbduckery on Sept 14, 2021 0:01:11 GMT -5
I was young too during the Aaron days as well as the Garr and Evans days, but I was a RABID fan by the time I was 5 years old, so I was following them big time from that age on.
For some reason I felt the same way about Horner, and I never disliked him either, he just didn't make an impression on me.
I have always enjoyed watching lefty hitters more, part of the reason I liked Garr and Evans. The 70's were the heyday for baseball as far as I'm concerned, it was just pure magic.
It was amazing when Garr hit .353 and won the batting title in '74. I've always loved guys who hit for average and had speed. He also didn't strike out much. Something like 8% for his career. The good old days.
I was looking at some things recently and looked at Ty Cobb's career, the dude struck out 4% of the time. At age 39, in 1926, he struck out 2 times in 273 PA's. Wow. Eat your heart our Willians Astudillo.
I hated Deion when he played football because he was so cocky, and I was not thrilled when I found out he was going to play for the Braves. But the guy won me over with his baseball sense, and he really did have god given talent for the game. He actually had a 3.3 WAR in 1992 for us in only 325 PA's. He had a 136 wRC+ and slashed .304/.346/.495/.841. The dude was legit. He also had a real good playoff run for us that year, he was really a big part of the success we had that season.
A couple of years before he played for us I got out of my car at a gas station in Charlotte, and I parked all the way across the parking lot. I parked next to a really mega blinged out Cadillac, to the point you knew it was somebody famous. Sure enough I get halfway across the parking lot, and here comes Deion out the front door walking towards the car and right at me. We were going to come eye to eye, but I hated the guy so much I turned my head and looked the other way so I didn't have to speak to him. lol, funny that that happened, and then a few years later I was rooting for him and respecting him as a baseball player.
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Post by Hart's Middle Finger on Sept 14, 2021 0:21:53 GMT -5
There is no complaining about anyone's choices. I was sitting in my parents car listening to Braves games on an A/M transistor radio while they were shopping on Friday nights, but the Garrs and Evans of the world just don't have the same impactful memories as do the ones I chose above them.
I really dialed in from about 1975 and on. That's the very end of Evans career here, and about the time Aaron was ending up in Milwaukee.
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Post by Fumbduckery on Sept 14, 2021 2:05:33 GMT -5
I feel like listing Evans is probably a darkhorse kind of pick, I was thinking it was just a personal like of mine, but he had a much better career than I remembered him for. I do remember his 41 HR year with us in '73, but never would have guessed it was a 9.7 WAR season!
It's funny that Davey Johnson hit 43 HRs for us that year too, but I just never could stand him, even back then. I guess it was a precursor for after he became a manager!
It's probably a little known fact that Johnson holds some team records from 1975. He had a 1.000 batting average, a 3.000 OPS and a 742 wRC+.
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Post by Hart's Middle Finger on Sept 14, 2021 6:49:00 GMT -5
He also had zero strikeouts!
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Post by Fumbduckery on Sept 14, 2021 7:42:11 GMT -5
He also had zero strikeouts! How does a guy have 1 AB in an entire season? He doubled, imagine if he had homered! Another funny thing, in that 1AB he ended up with a 0.1 WAR. He was more valuable in that 1AB than wife beater was this whole season with his -0.2 WAR.
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Post by SuperBrave on Sept 14, 2021 12:07:26 GMT -5
Most of these are from my childhood memories and not in any specific order...
1. Hank Aaron 2. Ralph Garr 3. Darrell Evans 4. Dusty Baker 5. Dave Johnson 6. Marty Perez 7. Chris Chambliss 8. Terry Pendleton 9. Mark Lemke 10. Freddie Freeman 11. Greg Maddox 12. John Smoltz 13. David Justice 14. Fred McGriff 15. Ozzie Albies 16. Phil Nucksie Niekro
Cannot stand Chipper Jones or Tom Glavine.
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Post by Fumbduckery on Sept 14, 2021 12:49:47 GMT -5
I never enjoyed watching Glavine pitch and I never forgave him for jumping to the Mets. But I still respect that he came through and pitched a gem in the biggest Braves game of my life.
I’ve never liked soft tossing lefties, and to me he got an unreal amount of calls in his favor from the umps. He would throw 70 pitches in a game that were 2-3 inches off the plate, and the umps would start giving them to him. What I didn’t like about that is we got a reputation for our whole staff getting calls from the umps and I don’t think that was true. Maddox did get a lot of calls too, but with him I felt like it was because he had so much late movement and you never knew what direction it was going to go. That had to make it hard for the umps to call his pitches.
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Post by Hart's Middle Finger on Sept 14, 2021 15:27:06 GMT -5
Never bothered me one bit. He got those calls because of his ability to hit those spots time and time again. It's not like the baseball gods just decided to make all the umps call things in his favor.
I was really mad for a period of time, but I got over the Mets thing after awhile.
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Post by Fumbduckery on Sept 14, 2021 16:13:06 GMT -5
Never bothered me one bit. He got those calls because of his ability to hit those spots time and time again. It's not like the baseball gods just decided to make all the umps call things in his favor. I was really mad for a period of time, but I got over the Mets thing after awhile. I do give him credit for being able to hit those spots repeatedly, the upshot of it bothering me was us getting the reputation as a team for getting favorable calls from umps. And people still say that about our 14 year divisional title run, that we got away with murder on balls and strikes. And we didn't, as a team. Glavine got them because he'd throw the ball there every time and then start expanding it farther out once the hitters started swinging at them, and Maddux because he had that insane late movement in every direction, but that was the extent of us getting calls. Nobody could have called Maddux's pitches accurately. If they tried to use a robot it would start responding "WTF?"
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Post by Deleted on Sept 14, 2021 16:36:08 GMT -5
Joe Torre and Rico Carty are a couple of names I want to add. These guys might have gone too far back for most to remember but got to mention Rico Carty getting a write in to the 1970 All Star game hitting .366 that season with 25 HRS and 101 RBI. I think that was the first write in for a starter in the All Star game voting.
And Joe Torre was still a formidable player the first 3 yrs of ATL Braves history (66 to 68) before he was traded for Orlando Cepeda.
Cepeda gave us two and a half yrs of strong hitting (69 to 71) but his knees went on him. STL did get a bit more out of Torre.
Got to remember Cepeda's contribution to that 1969 Division Title team. Add Felepe Alou in that era. Guess I am going back to my 60s roots in being a baseball fan.
Add Ron Reed - 18 game winner in 1969 and pitched for a time as a mid rotation SP for us - good number two man for Knucksie that year.
Earl Williams - for two yrs a dangerous hitter and 1971 Rookie of the year. Went downhill somewhat after he left here.
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Post by SuperBrave on Sept 14, 2021 17:35:05 GMT -5
I never enjoyed watching Glavine pitch and I never forgave him for jumping to the Mets. But I still respect that he came through and pitched a gem in the biggest Braves game of my life. I’ve never liked soft tossing lefties, and to me he got an unreal amount of calls in his favor from the umps. He would throw 70 pitches in a game that were 2-3 inches off the plate, and the umps would start giving them to him. What I didn’t like about that is we got a reputation for our whole staff getting calls from the umps and I don’t think that was true. Maddox did get a lot of calls too, but with him I felt like it was because he had so much late movement and you never knew what direction it was going to go. That had to make it hard for the umps to call his pitches. Glavine was head of the players union that caused the 1994 Baseball strike. I will never forgive him for that...Screw his pitching. That sealed the deal for me.
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Post by Fumbduckery on Sept 14, 2021 18:00:26 GMT -5
I never enjoyed watching Glavine pitch and I never forgave him for jumping to the Mets. But I still respect that he came through and pitched a gem in the biggest Braves game of my life. I’ve never liked soft tossing lefties, and to me he got an unreal amount of calls in his favor from the umps. He would throw 70 pitches in a game that were 2-3 inches off the plate, and the umps would start giving them to him. What I didn’t like about that is we got a reputation for our whole staff getting calls from the umps and I don’t think that was true. Maddox did get a lot of calls too, but with him I felt like it was because he had so much late movement and you never knew what direction it was going to go. That had to make it hard for the umps to call his pitches. Glavine was head of the players union that caused the 1994 Baseball strike. I will never forgive him for that...Screw his pitching. That sealed the deal for me. Holy heck, I completely forgot about Glavine's role in that, I can't believe I forgot that, it did turn me against him and was another aspect of him that I never forgave him for. I just forgot! Thanks for the reminder!
Dear Mr. Glavine:
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