The sample size isn’t huge and the level of competition hasn‘t been high, but Tommy La Stella’s numbers still have meaning. The Atlanta Braves second-base prospect has hit .327/.412/.496 in 999 plate appearances in three professional seasons. Last season, at Double-A Mississippi, he hit .343.

An eighth-round pick in 2011 out of Coastal Carolina, La Stella is steady. He isn’t flashy, nor does he possess elite tools. What he brings, though, are a combination of solid all-around skills and a disciplined approach. The 25-year old has more walks than strikeouts as a professional.

La Stella talked about his development in the final week of the Arizona Fall League season. Read the rest of this entry »

Tom Glavine is going into the Hall of Fame for a reason. The long-time Atlanta Braves lefthander was a great pitcher. He won over 300 games and was an All-Star 10 times. A pair of Cy Young awards adorn his mantle.

Paradoxically, some of the numbers Glavine put up over his 22 seasons are atypical of the elite. One reason is that his stuff was anything but electric. Glavine didn’t overpower hitters. Not that he needed to. A master of nuance, he consistently induced outs with impeccable command.

Glavine talked about the secrets to his success, including the subtle adjustments he made to his approach, late last week. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, Jeff Sullivan wrote about Atlanta Braves third baseman Chris Johnson. The article addressed the 28-year-old’s surprisingly stellar season, which has him leading the National League in hitting with a .338 average. More notable is the fact Johnson has the fourth-highest BABIP [.364] in history among players with at least 1,500 plate appearances.

What does Johnson think about his BABIP notoriety? I asked him that question when the Braves visited Philadelphia this past weekend. Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this month, former St. Louis Cardinals right-hander Bob Tewksbury took us through his outings against the 1992 Chicago Cubs. He did so with the help of his old notebook, which includes scouting reports, pitch-selection data and results from specific at bats. Also on its pages are mechanical reminders and notes on adjustments he planned to make in the future.

Tewksbury, now a mental skills coach for the Red Sox, won 110 games in 13 big-league seasons. In 1992, he went 16-5, with a 2.16 ERA and finished third in National League Cy Young Award voting. His repertoire included a 47 mph curveball.

In the second installment of Tewksbury’s Notebook, he takes us through his notes on the 1992 Atlanta Braves. Tewksbury faced the National League champs twice, each time allowing a pair of runs over eight innings. Read the rest of this entry »

Joey Terdoslavich isn’t worried about his low walk rate or his numbers against left-handed pitchers. The 24-year-old Atlanta Braves prospect expects those issues to work themselves out during the season. The reason? He’s a master craftsman with a baseball bat in his hands.

Terdoslavich went into last night’s game hitting .328/.349/.578, with eight home runs, for Triple-A Gwinnett. The numbers don’t come as a surprise. Outside of a rocky 53-game stretch to start last season — the switch-hitter had been double-jumped from High-A — he has always swung a potent bat. Following last summer’s demotion to Double-A Mississippi, he hit .315. Two years ago, in Lynchburg, he hit .286 and had 74 extra-base hits.

The biggest question for the 2010 draft pick is defense. He has bounced between the infielder corners since signing out of Long Beach State and is now trying his hand in the outfield.

Terdoslavich talked about his game during a recent visit to McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket, R.I.

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Savvy baseball fans know the difference between a cutter and a slider, but what differentiates the two pitches is a mystery to many. Roger McDowell and Randy St. Claire understand the nuances of both. Former big-league relievers, they now serve as pitching coaches for the Atlanta Braves and Miami Marlins, respectively.

McDowell and St. Claire discussed the ins and outs of the cutter — and its hybrid cousin, the slider — in separate interviews last month.

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THE CUTTER

St. Claire: “For me, a cutter is a fastball that’s moving. It runs in on that left-handed hitter’s hands. There is velocity to it, and there is no spin to the ball that you can pick up. A slider has spin and usually a tight dot to it. It’s usually when you throw a poor slider that it gets hit. On a cutter, the hitter does not pick up the spin on the ball. At the last, just before contact, the ball is sliding. For a left-hander it’s sliding to the right, and for a right-hander it’s sliding to the left. It’s very short break, too. A cutter is a contact pitch that makes them mis-hit the ball.”

McDowell: “Basically, you just take a four-seam fastball and offset it. It’s a very small offset from your four-seam fastball. You make a very slight turn — I guess it would be horizontal. You basically turn the seams. On a four-seam fastball, you’re gripping across the seams, and a cutter would be a slight angle off the four seams. You get a natural movement from that without having to do anything at the end, like on a curveball or a slider, where there’s a turn in your wrist. There’s more of a turn in the wrist on a curveball than a slider, but you can get away from that, just by off-setting a fastball, and hopefully it will cut.”

ACCIDENTAL CUTTERS

St. Claire: “The more you start manipulating the ball to get it to cut, the more velocity you lose on the ball. Read the rest of this entry »

Tim Hudson has had a long and successful career. The 36-year-old right-hander owns a 187-100 recrod and a 3.41 ERA in 389 big-league appearances. Now in his eighth season with the Atlanta Braves — after six years in Oakland — he has accumulated 50.5 WAR. Primarily a sinkerball pitcher, Hudson has been a consistent front-line starter despite a pedestrian 6.11 K/9.

Hudson talked about his repertoire, and how it has evolved over the years, when the Braves visited Boston earlier this month.

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Tim Hudson: “When I first signed, I was sinker, slider, split — mostly sinker, split. I didn’t really throw much of a breaking ball; it was kind of a show-me type of pitch. That was pretty much all I had up until I got to Triple-A. Then I started working more on a changeup and a little bit of a bigger breaking ball.

“When I got to the big leagues, I was still mostly sinker-split, with an occasional slider. After about a year or so, I started relying more on a bigger breaking ball that I could throw more often when I was behind in counts. I also started throwing an occasional changeup, which was a different look than my split.

“My breaking ball went from being more of a cutter to more of a slider — just a bigger break. I needed something with a little more depth, something with a little more swing-and-miss potential. I needed something that would move away from a right-handed hitter a little more. The [pitch] I had been throwing had a smaller break, because it didn’t have slider rotation.

“A cutter is just an offset fastball that looks like a fastball and spins like a fastball, but at the very end cuts like a small slider. Read the rest of this entry »

I think it was Earl Wilson who said baseball is a nervous breakdown, divided into nine innings, or something to that effect. I imagine the Atlanta Braves are starting to relate to that sentiment.

On May 20, the Braves beat the Tampa Bay Rays 5-3 in rather classic Braves style — with a win, a hold and a save from Tommy Hanson, Jonny Venters and Craig Kimbrel. They were 25-15 and stood atop the National League East by a game-and-a-half and appeared to be a serious playoff contender — if not the likely NL East champs. Since then, they’ve gone 9-16, they’re 4.5 games back of the Washington Nationals and they’re fighting to stay in contention for a wild card spot.

Read the rest of this entry »

Late last week, I posted a scouting report on Atlanta Braves third-base prospect Edward Salcedo. I received several comments voicing concern over the lack of hitters throughout the organization’s minor-league levels.

But as much as I understand the frustration (I certainly don’t enjoy watching a starting lineup full of non-prospects and organizational players), I’d urge readers to adopt a more big-picture view of the Braves organizational philosophy. And it’s really quite a brilliant strategy: leverage the ability to develop arms better than anybody else to fill needs at the big-league level. After all, ultimately it’s about World Series rings and not how many sluggers an organization has on its Double-A roster, isn’t it?

At the trade deadline, I was shocked that the Braves were able to acquire Michael Bourn without dealing a single “key” prospect. Sure, Paul Clemens (SP), Brett Oberholtzer (SP), Juan Abreu (RP) and Jordan Schafer (CF) might all wind up being big-leaguers in some capacity. but Michael Bourn is a top-flight center fielder who posted the second-highest WAR at the position between 2009 to 2011. For me, the sum of the parts who were dealt for Bourn didn’t equal one of the better center fielders in baseball.

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The thought of Atlanta Braves third base prospect Edward Salcedo forces me to think of a popular Dave Matthews Band song titled, “The Best of What’s Around“. Maybe the lyrics don’t fit exactly, but the title is perfect when discussing the bats, or lack thereof, in the Braves minor league system. On a humid evening in July, I wound up sitting next to a scout I had met two seasons earlier in Savannah and spent much of the game discussing the Braves system. After talking through the top-flight pitching prospects in the organization, the conversation turned to potential big league hitters to which the scout commented, “Salcedo is the only bat in the entire system.” Having scouted Braves affiliates including Rome, Mississippi and Gwinnett in person, I don’t completely agree, but do concede the fact Salcedo is the only prospect system-wide with a middle-of-the-order ceiling.

Video after the Jump Read the rest of this entry »