The Atlanta Braves Prove Me Right Again

After the long and insufferable road trip, the Braves are back at home and loving every minute of it. It seemed that all last week I have read comments about the Braves not playing up to their potential. While I agree that they haven't, you wouldn't believe some of the stuff that people were suggesting. The suggestions ranged from taking Mark Teixeira out of the cleanup spot to Bobby Cox's system doesn't work. I won't even begin to justify the latter with a response. I had a few friends call and ask me what was going on with our Braves. I explained to them that we are starting to have productive at bats; working the count, and putting good wood on the ball (with the exception of Matty Diaz against righties). I told them that even with the injuries we just seem like we are about to bust out of this funk in a big way. Then Bobby Cox called a team meeting. That's right! Bobby Cox called a team meeting. We have now seemingly gotten on a roll with the bats. We have swept the Dodgers, who have always seemed to give us a hard time since back in the Piazza and Lasorda days, and won 4 straight. Everyone is swinging great; Kelly is starting to draw some walks, Tex is back, and Chipper is?well?ungodly right now. My only worry is our pitching. We know that Huddy, with the exception of his last start (everybody's had one) and Smoltzie are going to be there every turn and get their numbers. Jurrjens is looking great. We just need him to be comfortable letting his velocity drop a little in the late innings and stop trying to overthrow. If he had done this in Colorado, he would've still gone 7, but only given up 2 runs instead of 4. Injuries to Glavine (never thought I would say that) and Hampton (show of hands, who didn't see that coming?) have left the rest of the starting rotation needing help. Granted, Chuck James and Jeff Bennett looked good, but the Dodgers had their chances, and got the pitches, and were still 0 for 10 with runners in scoring position. But maybe that's just what James and Bennett needed for some confidence builders. This is exactly what this type of lineup is built for. Let's just keep the intensity and stay consistent on making adjustments and we could have another offense like we did in '03 when we scored 907 runs. Nathan Myers