Ernie Clement

You and I, maybe not the right generation to appreciate what he did for the Blue Jays, but he was part of a critical part of the team's history.

And then in Atlanta, he was a staple at the Atlanta Braves.

I know that the time that you and I were coming up, it was actually quite difficult to watch baseball and out of other markets.

And one of the teams that you were able to watch

was the Atlanta Braves because of TBS, which is a weird thing.

But so a lot of fans ended up watching a disproportionate amount of Atlanta Braves baseball through like the late 90s, early to mid 2000s.

And so they were exposed to a lot of Bobby Cox and a lot of us saw many of those objections and saw many of those great teams in Atlanta

he was at the head of you know one of the great i would say dynasties is a weird thing to say because they didn't necessarily win enough titles for that but one of the great teams of that era clearly one of the great managers of that era and in fact of all time a true loss for the game of baseball today 14 consecutive nl east titles under bobby cox then of course they won the world series in 1995 which was until the braves won in 2021 the only professional sports championship

You have to be.

He struck out batters at a very high rate, much more than you would think, considering his lack of velocity and his track record, to be honest.

There was a moment where it seemed like he was going to go down fairly imminently, right?

When Eric Lauer was going to head back from the rotation and be in the bullpen, and then he would be the second lefty there, and you wouldn't necessarily need Mantiply.

They'd originally signed him on a minor league deal, so that's a move that they could have made fairly easily.

He kind of escaped that fate.

And since that time, he's pitched really, really well for the team.

Kind of a, I don't want to say a coming out of nowhere guy because he's had a solid MLB career in the past.

But they have to be thrilled with what he's done.

And it's been fairly quiet because he's not used in those high leverage situations.

But you need a pitcher to soak up some innings.

And he's done that more efficiently than most and deserves a lot of credit for his success this season.