All Braves All Star Team

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~JB, the Red Bull is not helping today

So in honor of the All Star game being played tonight I thought I’d do my own All Star team. And of course I’m talking about an all Braves All Star team.

You can always go back and see my all time Worst Braves Acquisitions.

And now,  I give you your All Braves All Star Team (according to JB).

We shall begin with my All Star Braves starting five.

Starting Staff

1) Warren Spahn- One of, if not the best, left hander in the game. I know he didn’t play in Atlanta but I have got to go with him for my All Star Braves team as my number one starter. (NL All Star selections ‘47, ‘49, ‘50, ‘51, ‘52, ‘53, ‘54, ‘56, ‘57, ‘58,’59, ‘61, ‘62, ‘63)

2) John Smoltz- Mr. 3000, 154 saves, 210 wins, future HOF’er. Smoltzie is Mr Brave and an obvious choice…not a bad #2 either. (NL All Star selections ‘89, ‘92, ‘93, ‘96, ‘02, ‘03, ‘05, ‘07)

3) Phil Neikro- Knucksie had a very long career and spent quite a number of those years in an Atlanta Braves uniform.  3342 career K’s and 318 wins makes him the last truly great knuckler and a dying breed at that. (NL All Star Selections ‘69, ‘75, ‘78, ‘82 ‘84)

4) Tom Glavine- Of course I need Glavine on my team. The 305 game winner made 10 regular season All Star appearances and won 2 Cy Young Awards. (NL All Star Selections, ‘91, ‘92, ‘93, ‘96, ‘97, ‘98, ‘00, ‘02, ‘04, ‘06)

5) Greg Maddux- Of course I had the obvious choice of the “Big Three” but I was tempted to go with something a little different here just to avoid predictability. But I really can’t think of anyone better for my number 5 starter. Apologies to Manny Acosta and Dan Kolb. They were really close behind. (NL All Star selections ‘88, ‘92, ‘94, ‘95, ‘96, ‘97, ‘98, ‘00)

Backstop

(Updated 11:14 pm… Thanks, Joe) C- Brian McCann- I think Javy Lopez is a good runner up. He himself had three All Star seasons and a 43 HR year in  2003 while hitting .328. But apart from being one of my favorite players so far, McCann’s .297 overall BA and 65 HR’s along with being selected to the All Stars in his first three years locks him up for me.

Infield

1B- Galarraga, Teixeira, even Darrell Evans (.248, 414 HRs, 1354) are some of the finer Braves to suit up at first. But this starting position goes to Crime Dog. Fred McGriff  in his career, .284, 493 HR’s, 1550, .509 SLG%. (NL All Star selections ‘92, ‘94, ‘95, 96 AL All Star selection ‘00)

Ah, the middle infield. Always a tricky one.

2B- I wanted to go with Lemmer here. He was a long time Brave and his 1991 World Series performance (.417, 3 triples, 1 double, 4 RBI’s) are what I remember most about his career. Call it nostalgia. But Lemke was never an All Star and Glenn Hubbard was in 1983. But think about it… how many stellar career second basemen have we had that have spent any amount of time with the Braves? (NL All Star selection ‘83)

SS- This was a tough one too but honestly I’m gonna have to stick Rafael Furcal at short. The former ROY is in his ninth season and has 259 stolen bases, a .287 hitter, 227 doubles, 53 triples and even the 83 homers are not bad. Renteria put up some very good numbers in his two seasons with Atlanta but for my purposes I’m looking for players who were really Braves for a longer amount of time. (NL All Star selection ‘03)

3B- Eddie Matthews with apologies to Chipper Jones. Matthews who spent time partially as a Boston Brave and partially as an Atlanta Brave, was mostly a Milwaukee Brave and he edges Chipper by just a little bit. In Eddie’s 17 big league seasons he was a .271 career hitter but he did smash 512 HR’s and drove in 1453 runs in. Chipper at 404 homers would need to hit 108 more from now until his 17th season (54 a year) to equal Matthews. And though Jones is a .310 career hitter now, he will not surpass the number of games played by Eddie in his 17th season. Chipper in my book will go to the Hall but Eddie is my tough pick on this one. (NL All Star Selections ‘53, ‘55, ’56,’57, ‘58, ’59, ’60, ‘61, ‘62)

Outfield

RF- Hank Aaron- I don’t think I need to explain this one. (NL All Star Selections, ‘55, ‘56, ‘57, ‘58, ‘59, ‘60, ‘61, ‘62, ‘63, ‘64, ‘65, ‘66, ‘67, ‘68, ‘69, ‘70, ‘71, ‘72, ‘73, ‘74, AL All Star Selection ‘75)

CF- Dale Murphy- Ok so maybe he won’t ever make the Hall of Fame since my vote doesn’t count. And maybe he had some rough later years and he ended with a .265 BA. But he was a 2 time MVP, 7 time All Star, 5 time Gold Glover, 4 time Silver Slugger, and led the NL in SLG% twice. Besides who else would I put in centerfield? Andruw? (NL All Star Selections ‘80, ‘82, ‘83, ‘84, ‘85, ‘86, ‘87)

LF- The tough one. But I’m gonna cheat a little and stick Chipper out here. He didn’t get selected as an All Star in Left but he did play left field that one and a half season, so technically…. whatever. Chipper’s my choice. I had to go with Eddie at third base but I think Chipper deserves making my All Star team. The very fact that he moved from his natural position so the Braves could bring on Vinny Castilla in 2002 and even stayed during the Derosa experiment is a testament to his loyalty and sportsmanship. He’s an all around team player and 2008 MVP… not to mention my homeboy. (NL All Star Selections ‘96, ‘97, ‘98, ‘00, ‘01, ‘08._)

Let’s see if the NL can finally pull of a victory after this rather embarrassing losing streak they are suffering.

I hope you’ll post your suggestions for your own Braves All Star team or let me know if you just flat out disagree with my selections and who you’d put in there instead. I’m going to try to make up a simulated game after tonight’s results to see how my team would’ve done against the winning team.

Keep Choppin’

PS. This home field advantage All Star game stuff is stupid. Just for the record.

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Filed under All Star Game, All Time Braves, Atlanta Braves, Braves blog

Tags: john smoltz, tom glavine, chipper jones, Hank Aaron, Eddie Matthews, Phil Neikro, Warren Spahn, Dale Murphy, greg maddux, Rafael Furcal, Fred McGriff, Mark Lemke, Andres Gallarga, Glenn Hubbard, All Star selections, All Star Team, NL All Star, All Star Game