never be content

with macay mcbride demoted down to AAA richmond braves, i thought there could be nobody worse that they could possibly bring up to take his place.

enter peter moylan.

known best for making his rediscovery in the 2006 world baseball classic, representing the country/continent of australia. despite the fact that australia went out without any resistance, moylan impressed someone enough for the atlanta braves to bring him to the states for a spring training workout. he ended up making the extended roster, just being another arm - nothing special, nothing out of the ordinary. he had a few appearances in the 2006 season, usually during darko milicic time, when the braves were either blowing someone away, or were getting blown away. nothing special, nothing to call home about. i didn't think he could throw all that hard either.

during spring training this year, bobby cox made comments about how he returned to the sidearm delivery that resulted in more success, but obviously he wasn't good enough to make the 25-man roster over macay mcbride.

today's outing showed exactly why. going into the top of the 9th with an 8-1 lead against the florida marlins, the braves called upon moylan to simply close out the rest of the game. moylan would proceed to give up hits to the first three batters, and ultimately give up three runs before bobby cox had to unnecessarily make the AT&T call to the bullpen and bring out bob wickman to throw 0.2 innings in a non-save situation.

his "new" sidearm delivery is slow, and moylan's control is awful. throwing constant balls well below the strike zone, and anything that hits over 88 mph on the speedo is normally wild. lefties also have a gigantic advantage of being able to see his release point easier than righties, and it was proven when borchard and olivo both delivered hits from the left side.

what should have been a relaxing game, i found myself screaming at the television, praying for moylan to throw some goddamn strikes. there was no reason to have to use soriano or gonzalez, but if the braves can't get some reliable arms to do some garbage work, it's going to be a long season.