Cash in the Chips? Never!

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The stock market's down.

Gas prices are up.

The Braves are down. Even though we won yesterday... and there was much rejoicing....

yay

Seems like a good time to throw in the towel huh? I've read a lot of posts lately about the Braves becoming sellers. Bloggers are out there saying we should start trading away, start from scratch and basically rebuild.

Well excuse me for sounding like Mr. Rosy Goggles but I just don't see it that way yet. Not that we haven't taken our share of lumps this year and this team has been a bit of an underachiever. I just think we still have a decent shot at pulling it together.

The biggest thing it comes down to is performance. I know our starting rotation looks 3/5 different than it should but look at what our "fill-in's" have done.

Jorge Campillo- 3-2, 2.54 ERA, 53 K's/12 BB's, in 8 GS, allowing 16 ER's in 49 innings.

Charlie Morton's first 3 big league starts- 1-1 (with one game he should've had the "W" and another that easily could have made him 3-0) is 4.24 ERA, 11K/6 BB's.

Jo Jo Reyes- Not really a star 5th starter but he's had 4 starts where he went +5 IP and gave up 2 ER's or less and hasn't allowed more than 4 ER since May 23rd.

Gonzo is back.

Glavine will be back.

Diaz is slotted to return and if Kotsay gets healthy and Chipper stays that way, we can give those bench guys their bench jobs back.

And really it's Frenchy and Tex who have been the large holes in the lineup. The latter is starting to catch fire a little bit hitting .330 with 4 HR's 7 RBI's since Seattle came to town. And Frenchy.... he's disappointing us all right now but I just have this feeling that he will snap out of it at some point.

I know it's been easy to hate this Braves team lately but when you have to resort to filling your entire lineup with the bench on a daily basis, you have to expect them to perform like bench players. After all that's why they're riding the pine to begin with.

All this Braves blogger is saying is we've still got talent and we're only 4.5 games out. And although the trade deadlines and free agency are causing the winds to blow and the hot stoves to heat up... I don't think it's time to count this team out just yet.

You never know. Stranger things have happened. What are the odds that the lowest seeded, unranked team, with 31 regular season losses would go on to win a National Championship?

By the way Fresno State, thank you for beating UGA.

This is probably the only time I'll ever say this but....

"Go Bulldogs!"

Next up: Braves vs Blue Jays- Jurrjens vs. McGowan Friday, 7:00pm EDT

Time for some retribuition for 1992.