Atlanta Braves Are On Fire

After being sidetracked by personal problems for several years, Atlanta Braves catcher Evan Gattis is making a name for himself with his hot start this season. Credit: Rob Foldy-USA TODAY Sports

I just scorched my fingers by typing the words “Atlanta Braves.” That’s how hot they are two weeks into the baseball season. If I smoked, I could light a cigarette by standing near their dugout. To cook my steaks well done all I would have to do is perform a tomahawk chop near the grill.

The Braves can’t keep this up without setting records and the six months of the regular season is the great equalizer, but for the time being “Wow” should suffice. The Braves just toyed with the Washington Nationals. The Reds are struggling. The Dodgers are hurting. Yeah, it’s early, but it’s not difficult to see how we might have to rewrite prognostications for the 2013 National League season.

And all this without Greg Maddux in the lineup. Maybe Chipper Jones will second-guess himself for not staying around one more year. He’s probably in a school-yard cage trying to get his stroke sharp so he can jump on this bandwagon.

Atlanta has Monday off and the rest of the league is thankful for the break. Let the Braves go watch the new Jackie Robinson movie “42” and leave everyone else in the league alone for a day.

The Braves are 11-1. They have a nine-game winning streak. The pitching staff’s earned run average is 1.81. Atlanta crushed pre-season league favorite Washington 9-0 Sunday, capping a three-game series sweep. I don’t know what to predict for Atlanta come October, but I like the Braves more every day in my NCAA bracket.

Atlanta is doing this with some major flailing–thus far–in the batting order. B.J. Upton is hitting .163. Jason Heyward is hitting .103. Dan Uggla is hitting .171. On the flip side, Justin Upton is batting .348. Catcher Evan Gattis is batting .324. And first baseman Chris Johnson is batting .405. I don’t even know those last two guys’ first names without checking the roster. But as the song says, enough of them are hot blooded, with a fever of 103 right now. (Go figure on the good brother versus the bad brother hitting with the Uptons. Could change tomorrow).

Meanwhile, Gattis, a 6-foot-4, 230-pound catcher could be the second coming of Josh Hamilton. When he was younger, Gattis, 26, was a renowned amateur player who was ticketed to Texas A&M on scholarship. However, anxiety-ridden, he felt so much pressure to perform that he began taking drugs and drinking alcohol that for a while he spent more time in a drug rehab facility than on the diamond.

Gattis got injured, quit baseball, spent some time hanging out at Yellowstone National Park, and in New Mexico, Texas and California, too. In 2010 he began his battle back in the sport and is now showing the form that scouts loved as a teenager. Braves’ gain.

Atlanta has been winning games by a margin of about 6-2 and that’s because the pitching has been astonishing. Paul Maholm is 3-0 with a 0.00 earned run average. That used to be a good season for him. Tim Hudson is 2-0 with a 2.50 ERA. Kris Medlen has a 1.50 ERA. Then there is closer Craig Kimbrel who has six saves in six tries with a 0.00 ERA.

The team run differential is 62-23. If you don’t allow any runs, you don’t have to score very many to win. Wait. This report just in. The reflected heat from Turner Field ignited a lava flow on Stone Mountain. Now that’s hot, particularly since Stone Mountain is a quartz dome, not a volcano.