Post by Reddington on Jul 10, 2022 5:01:37 GMT -5
The Road to 400, the Smoltzie and Mad Dog story: Will the fairy tale happen?
In 1984 and 85 the top picks for the Braves were Greg Maddux and John Smoltz. The Braves pitching was getting long in the tooth, and they desperately needed an influx of younger arms to keep the juggernaut going.
It didn’t start out all that auspicious for John, as his first two seasons in the Majors, after two in the minors, were 10-11 and 9-18 with an ERA over 4 and only avg 153 K for each season. Greg was far more polished when he made his debut after 2 seasons in the minors, he went a combined 26-21 and the second season he had a 2.60 era, and managed 2 shutouts.
Since then, Greg has been an all star ever season except for 1992. A 20+ game winner in 11 seasons, sub 2 ERA in 8 seasons, and with one season barely missing out with an 2.01 era.
Greg won the Cy young award in 1990, 91, 95. And 98 for a remarkable 4 times so far. He also has 3 No No’s in his 56 career shutouts.
Currently Greg has the lowest ERA of anyone who has thrown more that 2000 IP, is #18 in wins with 291 and was a shoe in to make it to 300 this season as he now has 301 wins as of this article. The amazing thing is he has 56 career shutouts and is 13th on that list, but is not on pace to even make the top 25 all-time for most complete games. Most of those only got a shutout once ever 4 or more complete games, where Greg has 56 in 127 as of the ending of the 99 season.
While no one will ever break Drysdale’s wins, as the game has changed and pitchers cannot start the same number of games as they use to in a season, Greg is uniquely poised to possibly become a 400 game winner. Even if he did not pitch another inning, Greg would be a shoe in for the hall of fame. The question is, how many more seasons does the Mad dog have left in him at age 34?
Smoltz needs another 29 wins to get to 300, so not likely this season, but it seems like it will be a foregone conclusion that he will make it. While Smoltz has done what this reporter thinks no other pitcher has done in the modern age, and win 100 games in 4 seasons, he has not had the consistent win totals each season like his brother Greg has. Smoltz currently has the second lowest all-time ERA for pitchers with at least 2000 IP and needs 15 more wins to crack the all-time top 25 wins list. He is 24th all time in SO, and 16th all time in shutouts, but again like Maddux, has no realistic chance of making the alltime list of complete games
This season they have 19 wins together in 22 games started and we aren’t even to June. Both their ERA’s are under 1.57
Additionally this season, Jim Abbot is finally looking like the pitcher the Braves expected when they went out and grabbed him in FA a couple seasons back. He started out hot that year and then got injured and was mediocre the rest of that season and all of last year, however he is back to being hot this year. Having quality pitching surrounding the two studs is important so that they don’t have to feel like every outing has to be pitcher perfect.
Not only are these guys doing what no one else has, they are doing it on the same team at the same time. Atlanta’s GM has built a defense behind them that allows them to shine, however the Achilles heal is against stud opposing pitchers if the D doesn’t generate any offence, it comes down to a game of chicken, most notably in the post season. With all the amazing success, they have been to the post season together since 1987 and only have 3 World Series rings each. Mad dog has had the better success in the post season going 20-10, where poor Smoltzie is only 11-10. John really needs to turn that around if they want to get another one or two rings before they retire.
