By: TJ Hartnett

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

Before winning the first two of three against the Marlins in Miami over the weekend, the Braves were (not) enjoying a miserable six game losing streak. It was their second such victory-less run of the year, to go along with a five-gamer already in the books all before the second month of the season has seen its halfway point.

Unfortunately, the biggest culprit behind this crime of losing has been the pitching staff; a notable bruise given that three veterans were brought on board before the season began to avoid these kinds of slumps.

In fact, the Braves’ starting staff’s ERA has been hanging out near the bottom of the barrel in the majors so far. The bullpen, despite its own inauspicious start and rough patches here and there, has been a tick better; not that they matter much when the game has been long since blown by the time they get to face batter.

Digging a little deeper, seven of the last eight losses for the Bravos have been hung on the starting staff. It’s a foul feeling given the money the Braves sunk into the likes of Bartolo Colon, R.A. Dickey and Jaime Garcia.

The homegrown holdovers, Julio Teheran and Mike Foltynewicz, have been patchy as well.

It wasn’t as though we had signed Chris Sale, Max Scherzer and Clayton Kershaw, mind you but the mild expectations set for the guys that were brought in have yet to be met.

The relative disappointment of the veterans has put the Braves in an ironic position; they were brought in to be steady so that the Braves young pitching prospects wouldn’t be rushed up and overmatched like some were in 2016 (see: Blair, Aaron). Now they Braves’ brass has got to be wondering if one of the kids in Gwinnett might be able to outperform Colon’s 7.22 ERA.

Another irony is the presence of the Chuck Hernandez as pitching coach; he was brought on because the Braves felt he’d be a better fit to work with some of the younger arms in the system than Roger McDowell. The thing is, they aren’t in Atlanta yet. Hernandez hasn’t been able to guide the veterans to success. More irony if you can stomach it; McDowell found a new home with Baltimore, who (as of Saturday night) are tied with Yankees for first place in the AL East.

Can the starting staff solely be blamed for the Braves wallowing in last place? No, of course not.

The offense has had its’ weak points (disappointingly it’s Dansby at the moment, but I have confidence that won’t last), but it’s still solid enough to put enough runs on the board that a decent pitching staff should be able to squeeze enough victories to stay out of the cellar. But, the staff has been pretty miserable and that’s why the Braves are racing San Francisco for the worst record in baseball.

While Colon has been a trainwreck (I’ll be at his bobblehead night anyway), Dickey and Garcia have been more like train…fender benders; but the problem is that there are three of them underperforming. If Colon wasn’t the shell of who he was just last season and Garcia was pitching even just slightly better than he currently is, then Dickey’s 4.22 ERA wouldn’t even seem that atrocious. Keep in mind that Dickey has the second lowest ERA on the team, and only barely, to Julio, so just because I’m not bringing them up much doesn’t mean he or Folty have impressed.

June is coming up quickly and any shot at a .500 season is starting to slip away. The Braves are in between a rock and hard place; either a couple of these veterans needs to step up in a big way, or Atlanta might be getting younger a little faster than they’d hoped.