Nationals-Braves....A Mirrored Historical Image?

The Atlanta Braves struggled through two tough decades in the 70’s and 80’s.  With the exception of a few Dale Murphy, Bob Horner, and Phil Niekro years, the Braves were unarguably the laughing stock of Major League Baseball.  Even though the Braves were Ted Turner proclaimed as America’s Team, not even Atlanta considered itself a baseball town.  Attendance at Fulton County Stadium averaged as small as 6,000 fans per game at one point, and only rose above 20,000 (26,000 being the highest season average) during three solid seasons in the early 80’s.   The Braves attendance, in fact, stayed around the 10,000 fans per game average much of this era. 

Since 1990, however, the Atlanta Braves have become one of the elite franchises in all of Major League Baseball.   The Braves owned their division for more than a decade, and attendance has only dropped below a 30,000 fans per game average once in that time span.  The first year of this transformation (1991), a prominent billboard located on I-85 (in downtown Atlanta) illustrated a huge tomahawk crashing down and through the sign.  The sign was cited, “Who said Atlanta is not a Baseball Town?”  How did the Braves turn around a franchise in demise to a perennial powerhouse?  The answer is simply Stan Kasten.  Stan took the reigns of the Braves franchise in 1986 when he was named President.   Stan and then GM Bobby Cox began the rebuilding process.   Kasten later (4 years) hired John Schuerholz as GM, to continue the development of the club, when Cox stepped down to manage the team.   The following year, the Braves would realize a World Series appearance.

The Braves, from 1985-1990, would lose an average of 96 games per season, with a high of 106 losses in 1988.  The three years prior to their first World Series appearance (1991), the Braves lost an average of 100 games per season (106, 97, & 97).   Those three years under Kasten must have left most Braves fans thinking the hire was a mistake; however, behind the scenes, the process was working, and was working well.  Beginning in 1991, the “Young Guns” (a spin-off of the southern term “young’uns”) of the pitching staff (Glavine, Avery, Smoltz) began to formalize into a solid pitching corps.  Tom Glavine had struggled through four seasons to have a 2.92 ERA.  Smoltz, who had a tough first season in 1988, had dropped his ERA down to 2.94 in his second season, and was already rolling by 1991.  Steve Avery, thought to be the best of the three, dropped his first season ERA in 1990 from 5.64 to 3.38 in 1991 with 18 wins, three complete games and one shutout.   The Braves had a journeyman behind the plate (Mike Heath) paired with second year player Greg Olson.   The OF consisted of the speedy Journeyman Otis Nixon in CF with Ron Gant in LF and third year player David Justice in RF.  The Infield consisted of solid journeymen Rafael Belliard, Sid Bream, Jeff Treadway, and Terry Pendleton….neither of which, with the exception of Pendleton, were terrifying with the bat. 

The Washington Nationals seem to be traveling this same course.  The Montreal Expos were never considered a championship franchise, and the thus far short existence in DC has shown no progression in the record books.  When MLB took over the ownership of the Expos franchise, in an attempt to contract the team from the league, the franchise would begin seeing the decay of its team, overall management, and farm system.   Stan Kasten, after the purchase of the team by the current ownership group, took over the franchise in 2006 (exactly twenty years after taking over the Braves), and with the exception of an unfortunate turn of events with the previous GM, the team seems to be finally heading in the right direction.   Kasten also named a new GM exactly four years after taking over in both cities (from Cox to Schuerholz in Atlanta, and Bowden to Rizzo in DC).  

Similar to the Braves of the 80’s, the Nats are being directed by the same President, with the same process of building the franchise through the farm system, on the foundation of solid pitching.  There is nothing to suggest that the 2010 Nationals will compete for playoff contention, but neither did the 1990 Atlanta Braves.  There does seem to be promise however.  John Lannan will be in his third year. Stammen, Detwiler, and Martin will all be in their second season.  Zimmermann will hopefully be back by 2011, and we all know about a certain guy named Strasburg.  The Nationals certainly have their own group of “young’uns” who could soon very well take over that “Young Guns” nickname.   This is Kasten’s fourth season in DC.  The fourth Braves team under Kasten’s watch lost 97 games (1990).  It is highly unlikely that the 2010 Nationals will lose 97 games like the 1990 Braves, which leads one to believe that the Nationals are a little ahead of the Braves in the Kasten “process” of building a champion.  The Braves had three strong young pitchers in 1990….the Nationals have more, and although it will be several years to determine for sure, the Nats may have a better rotation of young starters.   The Braves were still working on their outfield and infield, but had a solid defensive unit by 1991, which even include a little pop with the bat….the Nats seem to be heading in that direction, and have already put together an impressive offensive unit.   The similarities are odd, and hopefully more than a coincidence; heck, even the owners last names rhyme (Turner and Lerner), each with the first name TED!  Go figure! 

The Nationals, in the opinion of this writer, are a step ahead of the Braves in Stan Kasten’s fourth season at the helm.  Can the 2011 Washington Nationals be the 1991 Atlanta Braves?  If history does repeat itself, hopefully it will not be a similar “worst to first” season….hopefully the Nationals will make a much louder volume of noise in the 2010 campaign than did the 97 loss Bravos of 1990!