But the hole at SS would mean Paul Janish All Day, which wouldn’t be especially fun.

As far as the Hanson trade goes it’s a way to free up some money. Obviously
Walden was ALL they could get for Hanson, or Wren would’ve gotten more. Braves
are stacked at SP. Minor, Delgado, Teheran (however you spell it), Hudson, Maholm, Beachy, and
Medlin

I like the move.. i made it a point NOT to buy Braves tickets on Hanson’s scheduled starts.
However, I’m glad they got him as far away from the NL east as possible. Hate to face that guy
with the Braves bipolar offense.

The answer to why Strasburg blew out — and why his future is a risky one — may lie in his mechanics. Several pitching coaches quietly predicted Strasburg was at risk before he broke down. He will continue to bear risky loads on his elbow and shoulder unless he changes the way he throws.

To understand the danger of the glitch, first you must understand the most critical point of a pitcher’s delivery. The pitching motion is a kinetic chain of events, carefully calibrated and timed, like a Formula One car’s engine, for maximum efficiency. But above all others one link of the chain is most important: the “late cocking phase,” or the phase during which the shoulder reaches its maximum external rotation with the baseball raised in the “loaded” position (typically, above the shoulder) and ready to come forward.

“The late cocking phase appears to be the critical point in the pitching motion,” according to a conclusion from a study by Dr. Brandon Bushnell of Rome, Ga., and colleagues and published last year in the American Journal of Sports Medicine, “where higher levels of torque at the shoulder and elbow can result in increased risk of injury. Manipulation of pitching mechanics to alter these torque levels or using these measures to identify pitchers at risk may help decrease injury rates.”

Here is the key to managing the torque levels in the late cocking phase: timing. The ball should be loaded in the late cocking phase precisely when the pitcher’s stride foot lands on the ground.

“If he’s too early or too late he winds up with more force on the shoulder and elbow,” said Glenn Fleisig, Ph.D., research director for the American Sports Medicine Institute in Birmingham, Ala. “The energy gets passed to the arm before it was ready, or after.”

Without the energy from the rest of the body, the shoulder and elbow must bear higher levels of torque in what in even optimum circumstances is a maneuver that taxes the physical limits of what an arm can bear.

How important is this specific timing? I spoke with a key decision maker for one club last week who, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said his club will not consider any pitcher — by draft, trade or free agency — who does not have the baseball in the loaded position at the time of foot strike.

It is during this critical moment of the throwing motion when Strasburg fails. Most pitchers, after taking the ball out of their glove, swing the ball down and away from the body and then raise it in a way in which the throwing hand raises and then the elbow and shoulder follow. Think about the way you would draw back a whip before cracking it.

However, once Strasburg takes the ball out of the glove, down and away from his body, his right elbow, not his right hand, literally takes the leading role. Like re-writing a script, the roles in the kinetic chain are switched. Now it is the elbow that raises higher than the shoulder and the hand.

There is one moment in this sequence when both of Strasburg’s elbows are higher than his shoulders, as if he were locked in medieval village stocks. Many people have frozen that moment of his delivery and assigned it as the point of risk. That’s not entirely true.

The problem is the timing associated with that move, not the move itself. When Strasburg gets his elbows above his shoulders and the baseball is below or about even with his right shoulder, his stride foot is hitting the ground. The ball should be in the loaded position at that point, but because Strasburg uses the funky “high elbow” raise, he still has to rotate his arm above his shoulder to get it there. The energy from landing on his stride foot has passed too early to the shoulder and elbow — before the joints are ready to use it.

“It’s not a case of too much armpit angle,” Fleisig said, referring to the moment when the elbows are raised. “It’s that the arm hasn’t rotated yet.”

Fleisig spoke in general about the glitch some pitchers have with the raised elbow, not Strasburg in particular. When I asked him if this glitch puts pitchers at greater risk of injury, he said, “Totally. It is risky and dangerous. That’s a red flag. Definitely.”

Read More: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/tom_verducci/03/08/stephen.strasburg.mechanics/index.html#ixzz2DkZg7Q8Q

Everybody seems certain that Hanson is done, but he’s only 26 years old and his makeup is solid.

Pitchers peak a lot earlier than position players do. Also, these stats aren’t encouraging:

(last three years ’10, ’11, ’12)
K% – 20.5, 26.3, 21.2
BB% – 6.6, 8.5, 9.3
fball velocity – 92.7, 91.2, 89.7

throw in the known shoulder issues, which mentioned above are far worse than elbow troubles, and I’d be concerned.

Personally, I think it’s a good trade for the Braves. Not so much because of what it brings in return — even though it does strengthen an already formidable bullpen — but because this trade, combined with the expected non-tendering of Jair Jurrjens, frees up the cash to pursue some of the better left field options available on the free agent market. And they don’t really lose anything in the rotation, in my opinion, because there are better options waiting in the wings. They had a surplus of starting pitching, so they made a move that will ultimately allow them to address the holes they have elsewhere on the roster. Doesn’t sound too bad to me.

There was no future with him, and the extra payroll could come in quite useful.

The Braves have plenty of starting pitching with Hudson, Medlen, Minor, Beachy, Maholm, Teheran, and DelGado. What they don’t have is a left fielder, and that $4 million they just saved with the trade will go to that. Another solid arm in the bullpen (which we know the Braves overuse at times) and money to go get Justin Upton in a trade or Nick Swisher/Cody Ross through free agency.