The Launching Pad- An Atlanta Braves Blog

A Letter to Mr. Jeff Francoeur

Dear Mr. Francoeur,
You have problems. Last season was abysmal, you know this. You acknowledge this. However, you have no idea what the root of your problems are.
Your problems are not a result of you gaining weight and working out a lot. They are not a result of people giving you hitting tips. They are not [...]

Merry Christmas, Braves Fans. I Hope You Like Your Coal!

This blog has a forum for Braves baseball now. Please join the discussion.
If you’re a Ramblin’ Wreck fan, the Golden Tornado gave you something to cheer about this year. And hopefully next week’s Peach Bowl Chick-Fil-A Sponsorship Bowl will leave you happy as well.
If you’re a Hawks fans you got to see your team go [...]

TLP Book Club Book Review: Baseball Between the Numbers

Good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the first edition of: “The Launching Pad: Official Book Club”. I’m going to try and keep this segment going for at least the course of the next baseball season. That way, the time involved in making this logo will pay for itself. Speaking of which, here it [...]

Norton Will Return To Anchor Braves’ Bench

While Frank Wren may be still searching for that impact bat, still searching for that starting pitching ace, and still griping about how he was mistreated in the Furcal saga, he has one less thing to worry about. Frank Wren took the first step towards keeping the current group of Braves together earlier today by [...]

Perhaps the Braves Spoke to Soon…

Don’t blame me! I told you yesterday the ink had not yet dried and to not get too mad, happy, disappointed, or however you took the “news” of Furcal becoming a Brave once more. At this point, the Dodgers have re-buttered their bread and are going even harder after the coveted shortstop.
Rather than following through [...]

Recent Articles

Peter’s New Year’s Resolutions

First of all, Merry Christmas everyone. Here’s a few New Year’s resolutions of mine. As you may know, I began my baseball journey purely as a fan who thought that the best offensive metric was batting average. Slowly, over the years, I’ve become more and more of a sabermetrician. However, this has only made me [...]

December 25, 2008 | PWHjort | Comments Comments

So… Now What?

Well, the Winter Meetings are over. I don’t know whether to be relieved or angry, but they’re over. To summarize the Atlanta Braves’ activity at the Winter Meetings, the Braves got very close to signing A. J. Burnett only to lose him to the Yankees while making very little headway to acquire a power-hitting, right-handed, [...]

December 13, 2008 | PWHjort | Comments Comments

Five Reasons Why The Braves Should Consider Casey Blake

Casey Blake is largely seen as a third-baseman. However, he has played in the outfield before and with much success. He got the bulk of his games in the outfield in 2005 where he was the Indian’s starting Right Fielder and he played 138 games of +8 defense (that is, he made 8 more plays [...]

December 06, 2008 | PWHjort | Comments Comments

Vazquez Will Benefit From Braves’ Above-Average Defense

In an effort to further project how Javier Vazquez will contribute in 2009, it is important to understand that a team’s goal is to score more runs than the opposition. In doing so there are 2 facets, offense and defense. While offense is another subject, a team’s pitching alone cannot prevent runs. Imagine a team [...]

December 04, 2008 | PWHjort | Comments Comments

Some Insight On Mike Hampton’s Signing

As many of you know, Mike Hampton just signed a 1 year 2 million dollar deal plus another 2 million dollars worth of incentives with the Houston Astros yesterday and pending a physical will be under their control until 15 days after next year’s World Series. I was personally disappointed that Mike Hampton didn’t give [...]

December 02, 2008 | PWHjort | Comments Comments