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Doing their part Hitters need to produce more for Atlanta to win in '03Posted: Friday February 28, 2003 10:39 PM
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- For a long time now, the Atlanta Braves have followed a pretty simple blueprint for winning: Great pitching and good hitting. In that order. Every time. It's worked, too. Eleven straight pennants (except for the washout year of '94). Five trips to the World Series. One World Series win. It's worked because of guys like Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine, John Smoltz and Kevin Millwood. And a lot of other very good pitchers. They are staffs that have made the Braves either No. 1 or 2 in ERA in the major leagues every year since 1992. But now we have the new-look Braves, without Glavine, without Millwood, with three new starters in the rotation and a radically revamped bullpen. The Braves claim that pitching still is No. 1. But can these pitchers continue to carry the load? And what if they can't? "It's about enough of that, I think," said second baseman Marcus Giles. "We need to step up. We owe it to the pitchers." It's really as simple as this: The Braves' hitters, Giles included, have to be better in '03. The offense has to be better than the middle-of-the-road .260 average it posted last season. Better than 164 home runs (eighth in the NL). Better than ninth in walks, too, and ninth in on-base percentage. Probably a lot better than all that. "Leo already attempted to do that one at the first meeting," said Terry Pendleton, the team's hitting coach. He was talking about Leo Mazzone, the Braves' pitching coach, who told pitchers and catchers at the first meeting this spring that the pitching would be good -- but that the pitchers could use a little more help from Pendleton and his guys this season. "We struggled, offensively, I thought," Pendleton admitted of the '02 Braves. "We could have definitely been much better." Go down the list of Atlanta hitters last season and you'll see what Pendleton means. Not one had a particularly remarkable season:
"A lot of our everyday players didn’t have their normal years last year. If they produce, then we start producing big runs," says Chipper Jones, who included himself in the bunch. "It seems like every player has one thing against them that he wasn't happy with." The trick, of course, is to make sure that doesn't happen again. The Braves are optimistic that it won't. Lopez shed at least 20 pounds and worked hard on his swing in the offseason. Pendleton, for one, has noticed the difference. Giles is healthy, Mark DeRosa (who hit .297 in 72 games with the Braves last year) will challenge Giles at second or Castilla at third. Sheffield and Castilla are healthy, too. Robert Fick, who had 17 homers and 63 RBIs in a no-win situation in Detroit last season, is taking over at first. "If we have five or six guys who do what is expected of them, it'll be a fun year for us," says Chipper Jones. "But the fact of the matter is, we play in a pitcher's ballpark. We have to play to our strength." That strength, the Braves hope, is still their pitching. It wouldn't hurt, though, to get a little more help from the hitters. John Donovan is a senior writer for SI.com. Comments? To e-mail Donovan, click here.
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