Quality of his starters has coach smiling

I know that when this staff of starters breaks up, I’ll never have a chance to work with as quality a group again,” so says Leo Mazzone, Atlanta Braves pitching coach, about his extended family, the Atlanta pitching staff.

Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz and Denny Neagle comprise the best starting group in baseball. Mazzone has been with them throughout the 1990s as they have gone to the NLCS for six consecutive years. Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz are the constants.

Maddux has won the Cy Young Award four times, Glavine and Smoltz one each in this decade. Neagle was the NL’s only 20-game winner this year. Mazzone knows some of the whys of their success.

“They are a family,” he says. “They constantly talk pitching – during games, in the clubhouse, on the bus – everywhere.” Mazzone is the center of that roundtable. The pitchers believe in him. He knows when to speak and when to just be there.

“When resigned this year, I said to someone, `You know, now I can be a genius for another four years,”‘ says a smiling Mazzone. He knows who’s on the mound, and it’s not him.

“The starters are the leaders of this team, make no mistake about it, and they are the smartest group of pitchers I’ve ever seen,” says Mazzone, with an intenseness that mirrors that of his starters. Yet, with this kind of recognition comes expectations.

Over the past seven years the Braves have won more games that any other team in the majors (651-417). They have only one World Series title in that time. Only the Brooklyn Dodgers of 1951-57 had that good a seven-year win streak and won only one championship.

Now they face elimination tonight without getting to the World Series. Last year they came from down 3-1 to beat the St. Louis Cardinals in the NLCS. They are only the eighth team ever to overcome a 3-1 deficit and win a post-season series. The Boston Red Sox are one of the those teams, in the 1986 ALCS.

Tom Glavine is asked to extend the Braves’ season. He is 7-2 in his last 11 post-season starts. He won Game 7 of this NLCS. He is, according to Mazzone, “the most competitive pitcher I’ve ever met. Nothing ruffles him. Nothing.”

Florida will try and break that focus tonight. If they do, one of the games greatest starting staffs will have to live with a ton of wins and one ring. If Atlanta can win two in a row, the legend of the arms of the south will rise again.