Brave oldies Smoltz and Chipper still have it

The Atlanta Braves may be 6-9 early on in this baseball season, but they must be optimistic about John Smoltz who started the year with health questions. He is now 3-0 after a masterpiece in Florida; 5 Innings, 3 hits, 2 walks, 0 runs, 10 K's! He has a 0.56 ERA in three starts and is averaging over a K an inning. Year in and year out fantasy owners let Smoltz fall faller than his stats should dictate, obviously with the presumption that sooner or later he will fall. While he may be more susceptible to injury with his age, we can assume that his production will continue to be stellar when he pitches healthy.

Speaking of old underrated Braves, there is Chipper Jones and his 4 / 4 night with 2 home runs. He is now batting .443 on the year. Remember this guy hit 29 HR's with a .337 average last year so again we ask the same question as with Smoltz; why are worse players being drafted ahead of them when there is no sign of production slippage? You wouldn't take him ahead of Braun / Wright / Cabrera / Arod, but should he not be right after those four younger keeper-types?

Brian McCann continues his bounce back year. Well he really only had 6 less HR's last year but the .333 2006 average to .270 was a significant dropoff. That said his .333 average was probably a fluke, though he seems to have a good enough eye at the plate to hit around .300. Another HR for McCann tonight and he ties the great Mike Napoli with 4 HR's for a catcher. If you are running crappy catchers out there like John Buck or Kenji Johjima, you could do a lot worse than Napoli. In 487 AB's in 2006-2007 he has 26 HR's and 7 steals. That is about a full year for a catcher, and a good one too.

Mark Teixeira is a guy I have in a million leagues but he has started off relatively slow at .200 average and just a few HR's. He has had poor starts before and then monster summers, so unlike David Ortiz I would not worry about Teixeira. He is in a good offense on a contending team, batting cleanup. And he knocked an HR too tonight (Jones, McCann and Teixeira went back to back to back).

Not much to say about Florida. They had 3 hits this game against Atlanta, and Nolasco got lit. They do have Mike Jacobs, a cheap power hitter batting cleanup for them. He will hit HR's, probably won't continue to bat over .300 though. No Jeremy Hermida tonight unfortunately. And remember Jorge Cantu? He is eligible at 1B and 3B in Yahoo! leagues but remember the days of him being a 2B in like 2005 for Tampa Bay, knocking in 115+ RBI? He has been batting 5th or 6th, a favorable spot in the lineup, and with some of the quality hitters in front of him he could gather up some good numbers (but of course if he was 2B eligible he would be much more valuable).