Major League Baseball

Cox's last year as manager to be a challenge

Published Dec. 25, 2009 12:00 a.m. ET

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Bob Klapisch

To a man, the Braves say they want 2010 to be a memorable send-off for Bobby Cox, who's ending his managerial career after 29 years. His 2,413 victories, fourth on the all-time list, are already good enough for Cooperstown, so the only remaining curiosity is how gracefully Cox walks out the door.

"We definitely want to send him out on a good note … and that's on top of the division," is what Brian McCann said in September. The Braves all seem to agree that, after a four-year drought, Cox is owed at least one more (one last) trip to the postseason.

But will he get there? Last week's trade that sent Javier Vazquez to the Yankees weakened the Braves' best asset, their starting rotation, without adding significant firepower to the lineup.

Not unless you have faith in Melky Cabrera. Yankees fans may have been emotionally attached to the Melk Man, but club officials ultimately knew better: The left fielder with a career OPS-plus of 88, well below average, will be easily replaced.

Braves GM Frank Wren, meanwhile, is trying to sell Cabrera's energy, his penchant for walk-off hits that, along with the experimental signing of Troy Glaus at first base, could somehow muscle the Braves to the wild card.

It's not impossible, but the Braves' fan base has been fixated on Vazquez, who's coming off a 15-win season and has pitched 198 or more innings for 10 straight years. Still, it's premature to say Wren got fleeced by counterpart Brian Cashman, at least until the Braves spend the $8 million windfall from the deal.

Approximately $2 million will go toward Glaus. There's still enough cash for the Braves to add another player, although not nearly enough to court Matt Holliday or Jason Bay.

All of which puts the burden on Cox, whose success in the past two decades has been diminished, if ever so slightly, by his team's disappearance in the East since 2006. After 14 straight first-place finishes between 1991 and 2005, the Braves have fared no better than third since then and have twice been under .500. Cox appeared to have lost his magic touch, although he has been around so long it's hard to imagine the Braves without him. It's even more of a stretch to think Cox's pride could allow him to walk away if the Braves finish out of the running again in 2010.

Still, the clock is ticking on the game's six 60-something managers – Cox, Joe Torre, Tony La Russa, Jim Leyland, Lou Piniella and Cito Gaston. Only one of them, Leyland, has a contract beyond this coming season.

Cox, 68, has been working on one-year deals since 2005, giving both him and the Braves the chance to end the marriage at any time. Cox seems as spry as ever and was probably was only half-kidding when he said he could manage "another five years."

But, hand on his heart, Cox says the plan for 2011 is to serve as an adviser to Wren and to scout the Braves' minor league teams in the Atlanta area. But in his last campaign in the dugout, Cox will need the surgically-repaired Tim Hudson to become the innings replacement for Vazquez, for Tommy Hanson to keep taking small steps toward someday turning into the next John Smoltz and for Billy Wagner to give the Braves the stability they've been lacking in the ninth inning.

That's the abbreviated version of Cox's wish list. No one's talking about toppling the Phillies, but if all goes well, the Braves could push past the Marlins and Mets and Chipper Jones won't prematurely end his career after 2010.

That's the other ticking clock in Atlanta - the great third baseman was so disheartened by his career-low home runs, RBIs and slugging percentage, he's ready to forfeit the last two years of his contract if there's no improvement next summer.

Cox and Jones would've both been bolstered by adding, say, John Lackey or trading for Roy Halladay this winter. And it goes without saying Braves fans would rather see Bay or Holliday instead of Cabrera. But Wren's budget was tight enough to force a contraction of the starting rotation.

He wanted to peddle Derek Lowe and literally got nowhere – no one would touch that $15 million annual salary through 2012. Vazquez, who's heading toward free agency after 2010, was Wren's only other choice. Hudson is obviously a reclamation project, and Hanson, young, talented and cheap, is a mid-market franchise's dream.

In a perfect world, Wren would've loved to have given Cox a championship roster as a farewell gift, but this will have to do: a very good, but nevertheless diminished rotation and an offense that has some potential, but is also loaded with questions.

The only constant, it seems, is Cox himself, who has been around so long the East won't be the same without him. Or will it? When informed last September that Cox was serious about retiring, Jones smiled and told reporters: "I'll believe it when I see it."

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