Running 2011 Baseball Thread, Vol. I: Dedicated to spnited

The Pittsburgh Pirates are 1 1/2 games out of first place five days before the break.

http://mlb.sbnation.com/2011/7/6/2262134/pittsburgh-pirates-nl-central-race

 

Bruce Chen, stalwart.

 

Holy mother of god.
For some reason seeing Bruce Chen's name in the Royals gamer today got me curious about his career stats. I know he's never been better than average, but did figure he'd been around long enough to have somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 wins.
Not. Even. Close.
Today's win put him one game over .500 — at 53-52. That's almost one win for every team he's played for.
Moreover, he's only 34! How in the name of Julio Franco is Bruce Chen only 34 years old!?
I'm in shock right now. Total shock.

 

Yeah, I would have sworn Bruce Chen made his big-league debut around the same time, like, Steve Avery did. I feel like he was third or fourth in the line of approximately 565 truly dismal fifth starters turned out by the Braves in the 90s.

 

Kyle Davies would kill every member of his extended family to have Chen's record.

As for the Royals, poetic justice was served in taking two of three after the umpires horsefucked them on Monday with that bullshit balk call.

 

How was Hawk today?

 

Holy crap. That's who you're talking about?

I remember him.

 

How many did you truly need after throwing Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz?

 

I was going to say Spinal Tap drummers had better careers than some of those guys.
And then I looked at Baseball Reference and saw that most of them have been able to carve out a decent career. Not Hall of Fame worthy by any means, but at least serviceable. This is just from 1994-2002, when Atlanta's Big Three was together:
Bruce Chen
Kent Mercker
Jason Schmidt
Denny Neagle
Kevin Millwood
Odalis Perez
Andy Ashby
Jason Marquis

In that group of eight players, there's a few all-star appearances, three no-hitters, at least one World Series ring not won with the Braves, an infamous prostitution bust and approximately 60 combined teams played for (a totally made up number that probably isn't far off the real mark). And that's just during the era of Atlanta's Big Three, from 1994-2002, before Glavine left for the Mets.
Tell you what, if there's any national baseball writer types lurking on here that could be a hell of a fun story to write.

 

Jesus, I would have remembered all of those but Ashby. I'd completely forgotten about him. The one particular bomb I'll always remember was Paul Byrd, who had the misfortune of showing up right about the same time they started updating ERA on the scoreboard after every batter. I swear I watched him pitch a game -- and not in early April, either -- where his ERA went up, like, a run, if not a run and a half.

But to be fair, I wouldn't have put Millwood, at least, in that fifth starter category. There was a period when he was fourth of the strong set of four.

There had to be nothing more annoying than buying tickets weeks in advance, planning a night at the ballpark, then checking the rotation a few days beforehand and going, "Maddux Tuesday, Glavine Wednesday ... ah hell, we've got Denny Neagle."

 

Blissfully silent, from what I could hear. Had to keep the sound down at work.

 

Yyyyyes!