New Ballpark: Thumbs Up

The paintings of the new Braves stadium look great. 41500 seats – most between the foul poles. That will be plenty. Big overhanging roof to provide shade for the fans. Drawings show diamond facing west, meaning the batter will be looking into the sun. Southpaws would be northpaws. Not sure if that is right. No sign of a giant Coke bottle or cow performing the tomahawk chop. 

As usual, fans not fully aware of all the issues are making ignorant comments, like this: Falcons to break ground on a new dome, while a perfectly good structure sits next door. Waste of money. What about the teachers? Promises never kept to spruce up area around old dome. And so it goes.

So Uggla has finally been benched. Since management had stuck with Uggla for so long it seemed like they will continue to ride him until late August or September like they did last year. There was talk during the off-season that a change could be made, perhaps leading to an early trigger. Pastornicky's minor league stats are superior to LaStella's, though most don't realize that.

We hadn't discussed Ernesto Mejia's departure for Japan. Hit a home run in his first at bat. After Freddie signed his long-term deal and no trades developed, Ernesto must've known he was stuck. He started the season tearing up the AAA pitching. Hope Freddie doesn't get hurt, or his eyes get worse. But Terdo or Cunningham would still be better call-ups than Ernesto – both are hitting well.

BJ is great when he just tries to make contact. He is no Andruw out in center, but who is? Hope he sticks with the glasses.

So many on Twitter tweet without thinking, and demand answers from DOB. Pretty sure I couldn't handle it as well as DOB. Many act like he's running the team. Sometimes I'll check the profile of the crazy poster. Some accounts are new and many haven't tweeted much or have many followers. What makes them experts?  I stopped following Mark Bowman, just because most of his tweets are so similar to DOB's.

People forget (or aren't aware) that the Braves aren't the only team that strikes out a lot – in fact the Cardinals are one of the few teams that don't strike out much. When your email came through I had just turned to the Sports Illustrated to the article about the negative impact all the strikeouts are having on the fans.

See that play where Heyward avoided Buster Posey's tag? Close play. I'm wondering if Posey's past injury had anything to do with him being so far away from the plate. Hopefully Minor can repeat last night's excellent pitching performance. For the time being Fredi will stick to a six man rotation: Teheran, Sanatana, Minor, Floyd, Harang, and Wood.  

TUESDAY'S GAME: Wonder if Posey's previous injury had anything to do with him being so far out in front of the plate when Heyward slid. Not 100% sure he was safe, but Posey didn't complain and the replays weren't conclusive.

Nice to see Gattis hit his first big league triple. He had six in the minors, including four in 49 games. The White Bear leads all NL catchers in home runs and slugging percentage. He has twice as many homers as Brian McCann, and also leads the ex-Brave in hits, RBI, average, on base, slugging, and OPS – at a fraction of the salary. Having Gattis allows the Braves the payroll flexibility to consider eating Uggla's salary, as well as locking up the young core of Freeman, Simmons, Johnson, and Kimbrel. After and early slump Chris Johnson is regaining his hitting form.

EBAY: Couldn't resist placing the only bid on a 2003 all-star edition Harry the Hawk bobblehead, standing on a special star shaped base. Six more of my items will sell this weekend: a Hawks tee, Mitchell & Ness tee, Oakland Athletics jersey, five American Eagle shirts, two Under Armor shirts, and a Roswell Rockets tee. Maybe more. Last week I sold a FootJoy golf shirt, Polo pullover, Olympics tee, alligator shirt, and eight golf shirts.