Atlanta Braves News: The Morning Chop – Cobb County and Rotation
By Jeff Schafer
On Braves’ rotation, and remembering Bobby Dews
Tomahawk Take Editor’s Note: The topic of the morning (and all spring) will be the Atlanta Braves starting rotation for the 2016 season. When looking on paper, you can’t be too excited about the list currently in front of us. We have many young prospects almost ready to make the leap, veteran guys coming off bad seasons, and Julio Teheran. Can we count on great performances from all of these guys? No, but we can expect to see some of the young pitchers take the next steps for 2017. The 2016 season will be a learning season for the Braves to see who they have for the future…and this is especially true for the rotation.
"The Braves this offseason traded away the best starter, Shelby Miller, from a rotation that ranked 20th in the majors in ERA (4.27), 26th in opponents’ batting average (.270) and 23rd in opponents’ OPS (.763).They didn’t tender a contract to lefty Mike Minor, who was their best pitcher in 2013 but struggled with shoulder woes in 2014 and missed the entire 2015 season recovering from arthroscopic surgery to repair that ailment.They return two-time Opening Day starter Julio Teheran and a cast of promising but still fairly, or in some cases very, inexperienced rookies and second-year starters, including Matt Wisler, Mike Foltynewicz (coming off surgery to remove a rib), lefty Manny Banuelos (coming off surgery to remove bone spurs from his previously surgically repaired elbow), Williams Perez and Ryan Weber, who wasn’t considered much of a prospect when he came up as an emergency fill-in late last season and impressed in a couple of his five starts."
Cobb is getting diverging diamond
Tomahawk Take Editor’s Note: One more season and then the Braves will no longer call Turner Field their home. The new ball park located in Cobb County continues to be constructed and the projection date stays the same…2017 will and has always been the target date. For transportation purposes, the county and team continue to take strides to get fans in and out of the park easier. The building of this new diverging diamond is the next step. The town I live in installed these on two different roads very close to my home. These have helped traffic flow exponentially and I can only see it helping the traffic close to a ball park. Great move.
"Cobb County begins construction this month on a new $20 million intersection that could be one of the main ways fans will get to the new Atlanta Braves stadium next year.From the intersection of I-75 and Windy Hill, the cranes at the Braves’ construction site at the new SunTrust Park, less than a mile away, are visible. A new diverging diamond interchange (DDI), the county’s first, will be key to alleviating traffic congestion.“This interchange, Windy Hill at I-75, we’ve had a good bit of accident history there over the years, particularly because of the amount of traffic,” says Jim Wilgus, interim director of Cobb County’s Department of Transportation. “It’s just going to be a real safety and efficiency improvement.”"