1985 Atlanta Braves – 66-96

This team personified what would be considered the "lost decade" for the the Braves.  Sandwiched in between the early 80’s Joe Torre years and the mega run that started in 1991, 1985 was the second of seven straight years where the franchise finished below .500.  Two time NL MVP Dale Murphy once again hit .300 and had 37 homers and 111 RBI's.  At 29 his prime years were to be wasted in mediocrity.  His running mate, Bob Horner, switched from 3rd base to 1st as his waistline became bloated, while proportionately his batting average shrunk.  Horner still managed to hit a respectable .267 with 27 homers, but his skills were beginning to decline rather rapidly.  The rest of the lineup was pedestrian at best.  Claudell Washington, who seems to follow around losing teams (he's on the KOD Yankees and Mets too), plays right field with little passion, but does have a decent .276 average.  His 15 homers are sub par when considering that he played half his games in the "launching pad" called Fulton county Stadium.

As a whole the team hit .246, which was good for 10th place in a 12 team league.  The bench featured a corps of sub .220 hitters with the exception of Milt Thompson, who hit .302, but he only had 182 AB's.  The pitching was flat out awful.  Their 4.19 team ERA was dead last in the NL that season.  The lone bright spot was Rick Mahler (17-15, 3.48), who was a work horse (39 starts and 266 innings).  Steve Bedrosian (7-15, 3.83) was a hard luck starter, who posted over 200 innings as well.  The bullpen does have Terry "big tub of goo" Forster (2-3, 2.28) as the lefty setup guy and Gene Garber (6-6, 3.61) as the righty setup man.  They had decent seasons and if future HOF’er Bruce Sutter was even a shadow of his former self the pen might have helped the team to 20 or more wins.  Unfortunately Sutter was suffering from injuries and diminished skills, as evidenced by his 7-7, 4.48 record.  He did save 23 games, but at 32 years of age the bearded one got old real fast.  Expect to see Rick Camp pitching a lot of innings as the long man out of the pen.  Camp (4-6, 3.95) tossed 127 innings in 66 relief appearances.  I'll bet he got a lot of work in games that Pascual Perez (1-13, 6.14) started.  With this staff on the hill at the launching pad look for Chief Knock-a-Homa to relocate his tee-pee to the parking lot for fear of incoming missiles.