Pro Notebook 8/14
By Brad Rowland
Jul 25, 2013; Flowery Branch, GA, USA; Atlanta Falcons tight end Tony Gonzalez (88) during training camp at the Falcons Training Complex. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Liles-USA TODAY Sports
Aloha! We’re back with version 2 of our newly-instated professional sports notebook. Let’s dive right in.
Braves
For the two teams that aren’t in-season, it was a bit of a slow day, so we’ll start with baseball. The Braves grabbed a win on the back of Kris Medlen last night, but as encouraging as that performance was, the headliner of the day was the Dan Uggla injury. Uggla was placed on the DL in order to have corrective, LASIK surgery on his eyes, and Tyler Pastornicky was recalled to take his place on the roster (and the starting lineup).
In the grand scheme, losing Uggla for 2 weeks-plus isn’t the end of the world, as the Braves have a monstrous, 14.5-game lead in the standings, and he’s been struggling. However, one quote issued by Fredi Gonzalez (from MLB.com’s Mark Bowman) caught my attention:
"“When this procedure works — and I do say ‘when’ instead of ‘if’ because of the success rate — we may see a guy that’s a new player,” manager Fredi Gonzalez said. “So that’s encouraging for me.”"
Obviously, LASIK surgery is pretty common in the world today for “normal” people, but if Dan Uggla’s eyesight has legitimately affected his play, this could be big. I’m highly skeptical that a guy with a great walk rate already (13.5%) has had too much pitch recognition trouble, but with the worst batting average of his career (currently .186) is almost assured, and that’s an issue. Hopefully, this will be corrective, and we’ll see the “old” Uggla.
Falcons
Without the benefit of any “news” in Falcons camp, attention turned to Tony Gonzalez in the last 24 hours. The AJC issued a story about his “virtual” training camp experience (click here), and tight ends coach Chris Scelfo had an interesting quote in the midst of it:
"“We’ve been in communications with him quite a bit with the technology that we have today, its state-of-the-art,” Scelfo said. “We’ll get him up to speed. We are using the iPad and we speak just about every night.”"
Frankly, I could absolutely care less whether Tony Gonzalez is in training camp. You won’t find a more consummate professional in the entire NFL, and anyone who believes that he would ever arrive unprepared hasn’t followed the career of Tony Gonzalez. Let’s just keep going.
Hawks
Lastly, I wanted to highlight what I thought was a tremendous piece by HawksHoop’s Bo Churney. Churney examined the Danny Ferry roster transition, and highlighted what has been a complete transformation without the “benefit” of bottoming out completely. In the piece, there was a very interesting quote from Ferry:
"“Analytics is a great tool, but it’s not a decision maker,” Ferry said. “At the end of the day, you have to make decisions that you feel good about and you feel right for what you’re trying to build and what you’re trying to do. But it’s a great checks-and-balance to make sure you’re not missing something. Or, if it does challenge you, OK, why? It makes you ask the right questions. I think that’s how we’ll use it going forward and I feel like it’s a valuable tool.”"
This is absolutely reflective of my views on analytics, and it’s encouraging to see (and be reminded of) the fact that the team’s new direction is one guided by sound reasoning. The Hawks may not be a title contender this season, but the roster is in good hands under Ferry, and I’m excited to see Mike Budenholzer’s approach.
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Stay tuned.