Glavine isn't exactly following his headlines these days. In an odd way, Glavine is right. Atlanta's bullpen has been good because it's had to be. With the unusual struggles of Cy Young Award winners Greg Maddux and Glavine and the lingering elbow trouble of John Smoltz, the bullpen's workload has come in greater gulps through the first two months of the season than in any of Atlanta's glory years this decade. Our bullpen was good last year.
Nobody wants to believe it, or it's something easy for a lot of media people to write about.
You blow one game and start talking about the bullpen, because there hasn't been much more to pick on through the years here, so let's pick on the bullpen. But the fact is our bullpen has been good. It's just names that nobody recognizes. We don't have the Aguileras or the Becks or the Hoffmans, so people don't associate in baseball with the Rockers and the Seanezes and the McGlinchys and the McMichaels that we had and the Alejandro Penas, the Juan Berenguers. All unleash fastballs that reach at least 90 miles per hour, and Rocker and McGlinchy regularly top 95 mph.