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The Cardinals and Marlins have had their fun, and if you believe that America's pastime can begin in Asia, so have the Mariners and A's. Now it's our turn.

While an off-season is normally too long for baseball fans, the 2011-12 off-season for the Braves was that much longer. With the way the 2011 season ended, people wanted to see a lot of change. It seemed we were getting that when Derek Lowe was immediately sent to Cleveland. After that, nothing happened. We were left swimming in rumors of what the team wanted to do without any action taking place. ...

It is official. The Chipper Jones Era of the Atlanta Braves will come to an end at the conclusion of the 2012 season. We knew this day would come soon, but it is never easy to say goodbye to a legend.

It will be hard to add to what you have probably already read about Chipper's decision to hang them up at year's end. I would recommend everyone to read David Lee's write-up at Capitol Avenue Club to gain an understanding of just how good Chipper has been throughout his career.

Instead of going through all of his on the field accomplishments, I am going to touch a little bit about what his overall impact on the Atlanta Braves franchise has been and will continue to be. Chipper has been a mainstay with the Braves since 1995 when he was brought to the majors to stay. It seems pretty fitting that one the most iconic figures in Atlanta sports history began his career as one of the main cogs in an engine that got the city their first, and only, sports championship. ...

As everyone knows, the Braves have a crowded starting rotation. There are eight players that could legitimately be included in the Braves starting rotation if the season were to start right now. The Braves already traded away Derek Lowe this offseason, and it appears that they are doing everything they can do to trade Jair Jurrjens, as well.

Nearly every trade rumor you hear about the Braves this winter has been in connection with Jurrjens, though Braves.com gave us a largely insightful nugget when they told us the team would only make a trade if it made them better. I know, crazy idea, but you get the sense that Frank Wren is looking to move one more starter this off-season to make the numbers work a little better.

For this exercise, we'll pretend that Jurrjens is still here. What we're going to try to do is determine the Braves best five starters. ...

Going into the winter, most Braves fans would have agreed that if one player (other than Derek Lowe) was going to be traded, it would be Jair Jurrjens. As the winter began, we heard a lot of chatter about Jurrjens with a lot of Martin Prado rumors mixed in. As Winter Meetings came and went, we heard even more talk about the two players. Some reports had 8-10 teams as being interested in Jurrjens.

The Braves are said to have left Winter Meetings after making a lot of progress in discussions with other teams. One would think that with C.J. Wilson and Mark Buehrle now off the free agent market that Jurrjens will begin to attract more interest. The Rangers and Twins are teams outside of the NL East that had interest in Buehrle before coming up empty, while the Rangers also came up short on C.J. Wilson. The Reds and Rockies are other teams that have been linked to Jurrjens throughout the winter. ...

Through the first 92 games of the 2011 season and the All Star Break the Braves amassed the second best record in their league, will begin play on Friday looking for the 10,000th win in Braves franchise history, and with a five game lead over the pack for the National League Wild Card. The playoffs seem to be a clear destination and they appear to have the goods to compete for a National League crown when October begins.

They’ve largely done it with pitching. They enter the second half with the second best ERA (3.02) and xFIP (3.34) in baseball, and the third highest K/9 ratio (7.86) and FIP (3.19) in the game. The question is whether the staff can keep up that pace. Jair Jurrjens surpassed not only his career numbers in the first half but put up both win and ERA totals that don’t appear to be realistic over a full MLB season. The bullpen has been amazing, but eventually depth may become an issue due to overuse of the bullpen in the first half. I wrote back in May about concerns over bullpen use and those paces haven’t significantly diminished. ...

Welcome to 2011 (in the world of OOTP)!

We're almost to July in real life but the newest version of Out of the Park Baseball has recently been released! We have a good relationship with the guys over at OOTP Developments and they decided to shoot us a copy of the newest installment of Out of the Park Baseball, OOTP12. And what I've gone ahead and done is simulated the 2011 Season and will present you the results! I'll cover how the season went, the 2011 award winners, and the major accomplishments that occurred. Of course since we're a Braves website we'll focus on the Braves especially. Here we go! ...