Baseball 2006 I: Mazzone

When there was talk of Leo Mazzone leaving the Braves for the Yankees, I was torn between my social scientist side and my despise-the-Yankees-with-the-intense-heat-of-a-million-suns side. I certainly didn’t want the Yankees to benefit from him, but I was interested to see how the Braves would do without him, and whether he could turn around pitchers to the same extent elsewhere. Of course, he ended up joining the Orioles, which is sort of the best of both worlds. It’s also interesting because the Orioles have a lot of talented but erratic arms (although they play such a brutal schedule–even the Devil Rays have a pretty decent offense–it’s not entirely fair.)

My own judgment is that Cox–who was also great with pitchers in Toronto–has a lot more to do with this than is commonly assumed, and I don’t think the Braves’ pitching will suffer noticeably. But that’s why they play etc.