Braves Offensive Statcast Data

72 thoughts on “Braves Offensive Statcast Data”

1. Agree with Sansho1 on the last thread. I like value investing as much as the next guy, but it’s pretty easy to be penny wise and pound foolish — as, indeed, the Braves appear to have been during this past offseason with respect to the bullpen.

   Pay Freddie what he’s worth. He’s a great player, he’s going to remain a great player for the next few years, and the entire reason to spend frugally and save thriftily on other parts of the roster is to give yourself the ability to throw some “you’ve-earned-it” money at your homegrown superduperstar.

   Freddie’s worth more to the Braves than he’s worth to other clubs, because hometown heroes pretty much always are. But he is worth that surplus value to the Braves. He sells tickets and he sells jerseys. And if the Braves do right by him, every other man in the clubhouse will notice. If they do wrong by him, they’ll notice that, too.

   Sometimes the right thing to do is the obvious thing to do.

2. That is a tremendous analysis Ryan. I believe small sample size is appropo for everyone on the list, but I’m looking forward to seeing this analysis in a month or two. I think Ozuna will see major improvement, but I don’t expect him to come close to his 2020 numbers.

3. #Braves got great news on Ronald Acuña Jr. — mild abdominal strain, listed as day to day.

   — David O'Brien (@DOBrienATL) April 19, 2021

4. Riley is a AAAA player… and hindsight is 20/20… but Pache clearly needed more AAA seasoning. Still not sure I wouldn’t rather roll with him than Inciarte if both are healthy considering EI can mostly only ground out to second base and probably runs slower than me and I’m turning 46 in a couple months.

   How much role is there longterm in modern MLB for a guy in Pache with an 80 glove (FWIW as someone [me] who played CF for his entire life and good enough to be offered by two tiny colleges, I don’t think his glove is an 80 based on what I have seen so far…, more like a 65/70) and a 35/40 hit tool? I think we may be about to find out.

5. I’ve seen enough of Riley, man. I know some hitters make big changes and turn things around, but that can take years. This team should be in win-now mode, which means there’s no room for 3 hitters “figuring it out” at the bottom of your lineup. And before you tell me they need to be patient, realize there were folks saying that 500 PAs into the careers of Jordan Schafer and Jeff Francoeur.

6. Cosign @1. Moreover, while I would not tell anyone what sort of fan to be, armchair GMing is not for me. Primarily because I don’t want to adopt the position of cheering below-value contracts — if/when Albies or Acuna hold out for renegotiation, I don’t want my attitude to be “we cheated you fair-and-square, and now we(‘re pretending to) need that money somewhere else in order to be competitive”.

7. Braves have signed RHPs Jesse Chavez and Dylan Lee to MILB deals.

8. @6 Without a doubt, that’s the kind of fan I prefer to be. I’m not here to root for good value signings or the infamous F. Flexibility that I was seeing jerseys for a couple of years ago. I want the best team on the field money can buy as opposed to the best team on the field afforded by wise spending and an incredibly shrewd GM.
   Unfortunately, I kind of know how the story is going to go or how it will end when a guy like Freeman is on a 6 year deal earning $22-$25M and the budget is stuck at $130M. These are the kind of people who just shouldn’t own baseball teams, because we literally had to make cuts to the bullpen to add starting pitching depth at a time when teams normally pony up and make financial additions that stretch payroll beyond ordinary budget constraints in order to make a run.
   For what other reason did we cut payroll for multiple seasons if not to spend above and beyond our means when it matters?

9. @8 This is why I don’t think the Braves should overpay to the extent that the Braves Country politics will dictate. When you can’t even resign Adam Duvall and he goes to the Marlins, should you be paying 25M (purposeful exaggeration) AAV for a 32 year old 1B? I mean, duh, no.

   And it goes without saying that the Braves will never win a WS while Liberty Media owns the team. Ever.

10. @9 It will take lightning in a bottle, for sure. They were one out away from going to and possibly stumbling into a world championship victory, though, and right then and there, last fall, I had a moment where I wondered if that could have been the team’s peak. It happened so fast and so suddenly. I had to concede that even a more robustly talented Braves team might not make it as far as they did last season… You have to make the most of those opportunities when they come, which is something a corporate-set budget doesn’t allow for. SMH…

11. @10 If I’m being honest, that was a 60 game season in which the team had very few issues with COVID. Other teams could barely field a team. I wouldn’t read too much into the 2020 season good OR bad.

12. @11 So the Dodger’s one and only world title is in name only?

13. It’s not their only title but this one should have an asterisk beside it, yes.

    It wasn’t even half a season. Sorry but no.

14. @13 It is for this Dodgers’ team. I wasn’t meaning they had never won one in the history of the franchise. These Dodgers have lost as many as the 90’s Braves.

15. @4 seems to me that 35 40 hit tool, high end defense is basically Kevin Pillar, who has had a legit career and was a useful starter at his peak.

16. If the Marlins (or the 29-31 Astros) had won the WS last year, I’d give it an asterisk.

    But a team that won its 8th straight division, winning 72% of its games… and then had to win an extra best-of-3 round?

    I have no problem saying that the Dodgers were the best team & they earned their title.

17. The best team won the World Series.
    Putting an asterisk beside it is silly sauce.

18. As JonathanF can remind us, the “best” team often doesn’t win the World Series. See the Dodgers for the past 8 years, or the 1990’s Braves. Not that either team was obviously the best every season, but both were the best for a fairly long stretch and both only won it all once.

    That’s why I’m not too concerned with claims that my team may not be “built to win in October.” What you want is a team that has an excellent chance to win enough to make the postseason on a regular basis, and then take your chances.

    Now, I am critical of Braves ownership for not spending enough to make winning the pennant more likely. Some bad breaks in terms of injuries and player development may mean that this Braves team won’t make the playoffs (although it’s way too early to speculate on that). But if they do make the playoffs, of course they can win it all.

19. This is excellent analysis Ryan, thank you for putting that together.

20. Yes, Ryan, this is fascinating information. Thanks

21. Yeah, I don’t like asterisking seasons. Our only championship in Atlanta was in a strike-shortened season.

22. A rose in a garden of thorns, good for you and our two friends.

23. I’m not advocating that MLB put an asterisk next to their title, I’m simply saying that I personally mentally am.

    It was barely 1/3 of a season during a pandemic with no homefield advantage and wide disparities within clubs and their respective outbreaks not to mention disparities with teams’ players opt outs.

    If the Braves had won, I’d still have mentally asterisked it.

24. As Obi-Wan Kenobi said, “You must do what you think is right, of course.”

    I mean, I hear where you’re coming from. For my own sanity, I felt that I had to accept it as a full season, despite the fact that nothing like that has passed for anything like a full season since the 19th century. I think ultimately the Dodgers were the best team in baseball, and the fact that they won helps to reinforce the feeling that it was sort of kind of a full season. It felt more natural for them to celebrate a championship than any of the second-place world champions we had in that awful first decade of the Wild Card.

25. The contest for predicting the DH and OF is still on. Winner receives his/her choice of a Hammers hat or tee. Predictions will be null when/if we here Acuña is ready to go for tonight. Here are the guesses thus far:

    From Jonathan F:
    Ozuna LF
    Sandoval DH
    Herredia CF
    Adrianza RF

    From TheBigLibowsky
    LF Ozuna
    CF Heredia
    RF Camargo
    DH Pablo

    From Andrew
    LF – Ozuna
    CF – Heredia
    RF – Riley
    DH – Sandoval

    From Remy
    LF – Ozuna
    CF – Heredia
    RF – Adrianza
    DH – Riley

    From RustyS
    LF – Ozuna
    CF- Heredia
    RF – Waters
    DH – Sandoval

26. To me, last season was just making the best of an obviously less-than-desirable situation. We could have had no baseball. Instead, we got a very short season of mostly regular baseball capped off with an extended playoffs format that was intended to widen the net for any actually-good teams that stumbled out of the gate for some reason.

    For the Braves, luckily, this meant facing 2 rounds of presumably sub-.500 teams in a normal season and actually winning in the playoffs for the first time in nearly 20 years! It felt really nice to be deep into the NLCS.

27. TFloyd @ 18 – Your comment interested me. I disagree and think there is absolutely a way to optimize rosters for the postseason. Deep lineups matter. Quality pinch hitters matter. Consolidating talent in your 1/2/3 starters and bullpen aces matter. 5th starters don’t matter. Back end of bullpen doesn’t matter. What gets a team into the postseason may not set them up to win a 3 round tournament of the best teams.

    Let’s look at high-level team quality in the last 10 WS winners. I used FanGraphs WAR.

    2011 STL – 6th in batting WAR; 19th in pitching WAR
    2012 SFG – 3rd in batting WAR; 22nd in pitching WAR
    2013 BOS – 1st in batting WAR (by a lot); 14th in pitching WAR
    2014 SFG – 6th in batting WAR; 26th in pitching WAR
    2015 KCR – 9th in batting WAR; 14th in pitching WAR (amazing fielding stats that year, however)
    2016 CHC – 1st in batting WAR; 4th in pitching WAR
    2017 HOU – 1st in batting WAR; 7th in pitching WAR
    2018 BOS – 2nd in batting WAR; 6th in pitching WAR
    2019 WAS – 8th in batting WAR; 5th in pitching WAR
    2020 LAD – 3rd in batting WAR; 5th in pitching WAR

    Takeaways:
    1. Most winners were really good at something. Every winner at least top-9 in hitting or pitching.
    2. The past 5 winners were really good and really well-balanced.
    3. The cardinal devil magic and SF odd-year magic was real.

    If you’re interested in the Braves (duh) the last year Atlanta had top-10 seasons in batting AND pitching WAR was 2013. The last time before that? The year 2000.

28. I just finished reading an interesting piece on Ian Anderson: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/whats-going-on-with-ian-anderson/

    The article notes that Ian’s release point is different this year (it is higher and wider than in 2020, which is an unusual combo – usually it’s lower + wider, or higher + narrower), and also, so far this year his fastball has less “rise” and curveball less break. Even with his control and velocity the same as 2020, the changes have made his fastball far easier to hit and his curveball less effective as well. The article posits that his 2021 mechanics have changed the characteristics of his fastball/curveball to his detriment.

    From the article: “So what’s going on here? My theory is that the wider release point is affecting Anderson’s grip on the baseball and impeding his ability to stay on top of the ball, keeping him from producing the kind of spin shapes that are necessary for his signature vertical attack.”

    It doesn’t look to be the result of an injury, hopefully something that can be fixed by tweaking his mechanics.

29. @25
    What the heck, I’ll give it a shot:
    LF -Riley
    CF -Heredia
    RF -Adrianza
    DH – Ozuna

30. @27

    Of interesting note to me at least…

    As with football, the old adage of defense wins championships is rarely true. Especially in modern sports. OFFENSE wins championships. My 2010 Auburn Tigers’ defense was not good. They obliterated almost everyone on defense that they played but gave up a large amount of points and the pollsters rewarded them for scoring points.

    Four times, the WS winner had either the #1 or #2 rated batting WAR. ZERO times was the WS winner #1 or even 2nd or 3rd in pitching WAR.

    As someone else mentioned, modern winners (most recently) weren’t flukes and tend to be well rounded teams who were good in both, but not exceptional in both. I’d argue that the Dodgers lineup last year, regardless of it being 3rd in WAR was about as fearsome as it gets.

    I find it interesting that the further back you go, the WS winner’s Pitching WAR was increasingly worse overall. The early decade clearly produced more fluky results.

    My thesis statement would be that better players cost more money and in turn tend to produce better results. As salaries have expanded, the need for teams to spend has increased. To win the WS now, you better be way above average in both. If I were building a team, though, I’d focus on offense and figure out and piece together a pitching staff secondarily. Focusing on FA hitters, home-grown and developed pitchers and starters/swingmen who can also pitch in relief and in multiple roles without being aggrieved or loss of effectiveness by doing so.

    2016 CHC – 1st in batting WAR; 4th in pitching WAR
    2017 HOU – 1st in batting WAR; 7th in pitching WAR
    2018 BOS – 2nd in batting WAR; 6th in pitching WAR
    2019 WAS – 8th in batting WAR; 5th in pitching WAR
    2020 LAD – 3rd in batting WAR; 5th in pitching WAR

31. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/whats-going-on-with-ian-anderson/

    Nice short article on Ian Anderson; hopefully it is a quick mechanical fix.

32. I agree with Jonathan – Panda DH, Ozuna LF, Heredia CF, Adrianza RF. Bonus tiebreakers are Riley at 3B and Camargo at 2B. If either Riley or Camargo are in the outfield, that means either Panda or Kazmar are in the infield. We don’t want Panda fielding unless we want to see a dead-ball-era number of bunt singles. I say all this without checking on the handedness of the Yankee starter or the platoon splits of our various options, so I guess Snitker might think Kazmar is a better option in some circumstances.

33. @30

    But then each of those teams except the Dodgers acquired the kind of pitching you can trust to lock down a big playoff game.

    2016 CHC – Jon Lester
    2017 HOU – Justin Verlander
    2018 BOS – Rick Porcello, David Price, Chris Sale
    2019 WSH – Max Scherzer
    2020 LAD – When your system produces Clayton Kershaw you don’t need to worry about acquiring a staff ace for a decade.

    While the more recent World Series winners have had a lot more balance to the roster in terms of depth and relief pitching, only a fool would look past the fact that all of these teams have ponied up for a big time starter who can pitch in the playoffs. All of them had another big time starter they had either acquired and developed or they developed through the farm.

    I’d be interested in seeing the WAR rankings of the front 3 starting pitchers of each World Series winner.

34. Wouldn’t it be something if Snit used Kazmar as DH?

35. @33 yeah you need an ace, a good #2, a slightly above league average #3 and then #4 and #5 doesn’t matter a whole lot unless they are god awful. Anything around +/- .500 Win% and an ERA under 4.75 will be good enough, IMO.

    In theory, the Braves have Soroka/Fried as the ace, but there are a lot of questions after that. I suspect Anderson is about to sophomore slump, Smyly is what he is, Ynoa is probably going to be maddeningly inconsistent. The others are all TINSTAAPPs.

    Great discussion and thoughts.

36. MikeM @27–those team WAR numbers are interesting. I’m probably missing something here, but don’t they just show that the teams that win the WS tend to be in the top third of major league teams? Wouldn’t we expect that, since only one third of the teams make the playoffs to begin with?

    OVer a 162 game schedule, the better teams are much more likely to make the playoffs than the teams that aren’t so good. My point, which I’m stealing from JonathanF (correct me if I’m wrong here), is that once you make the playoffs, the sample size is sufficiently small that being a demonstrably better team doesn’t make you all that much of a favorite to go all the way. Anything can happen.

    It does appear that the WS winners in four of the past five years probably were the best teams in baseball that year. But again I say, Small Sample Size.

    As to Chief’s point that offense wins the WS, and Donny Simpson’s that a big time Ace starter is essential, I’ll have some of each! Seriously, though, my response is the same: SSS.

    I haven’t looked it up, but I’d bet for the decade of the nineties that a certain team we all love had the highest WAR among the top three starters pretty much every year.

37. For much of my life, I adhered to the maxim that to win it all, you need three excellent starting pitchers. I learned that from my father when I was a kid, who insisted that as great as Aaron, Mathews, Adcock, et al were, the late fifties Braves were winners because they had Spahn, Burdette, and Buhl. It only occurred to me years later that while the 1957 Braves did win it all, the Yankees won the WS nine times between 1949 and 1962. Did they ever have three top line starters in that era?

38. @ 33 Donny – I agree. At some point, you gotta pay the market price for top-flight pitching. Go back a year farther than you did and the 2015 Royals traded in-season for a damn good Johnny Cueto as well.

    @36 TFloyd – Yes, my method does simplify things and of course any playoff team is going to rank well in those categories. But I don’t buy into the idea that once the 10 (or 8) playoff teams are set that it is an equal crap shoot for all. If you really think that then I’ve got some cash I’m willing to bet you for the next dozen Octobers.

39. It’s not a crap shoot with equal odds for all teams. But the small sample size does mean that underdogs (teams that are not as good objectively) have a better chance than many folks think.

40. We provided a very good example of the crapshoot dynamic with our path through the playoffs last year. If we win one more game against the Dodgers (and we had several opportunities), I’m reasonably confident that we go onto win the World Series. I think we’d have been heavy favorites. On the other end, if we had lost that 13-inning game to the Reds, I’m even more sure that we go onto lose that series, quite probably the next day. So we were possibly an at-bat turning out differently from being two and done and an AB or two turning out differently from winning the World Series.

41. @40
    That’s a good analysis.

42. I would DH Acuna.

43. #37
    Reynolds, Raschi, Lopat, Ford & later Larsen & Turley… those Truman/Eisenhower Era Yanks could pitch.

    The Dodgers of that era had a much deeper lineup, but didn’t quite match up on the mound. Plus, they played in a bandbox.

    Of course, the post-season back then was exactly one round.

44. Jonathan F is the winner!

    Lineup today:
    1. Adrianza (RF)
    2. Freddie
    3. Ozuna (LF)
    4. d’Arnaud
    5. Albies
    6. Pablo (DH)
    7. Dansby
    8. Riley
    9. Heredia (CF)

45. Heredia’s defensive numbers are interesting. His range factor/9 was better than league average (weighted by his positions) each of his MLB years before this one – 2016-20, with four teams, so it’s not just that he played for a single team with lots of flyball pitchers. It’s low this year, but in only 32 innings. It’s also better than league average for each outfield position over the course of his career. Over two years’ worth of outfield innings in his career, he has 14 assists, which seems decent. The summary fielding statistics listed on his BRef page (Rtot/yr and Rdrs/yr) don’t particularly like him as a CF, though. His sprint speed (through 2019) was average for a CF, but he has only 7 SB and 12 CS for his career, so maybe he gets better jumps as an OF than on the bases.

46. Interestingly, Brett Gardner is batting 3rd tonight for NYY. Of course, he has some positive history vs. Charlie Morton: 8 for 22 with 3 HRs & 2 2Bs.

    BTW, the Yankees are dead last in MLB for team OPS, an anemic .642. Like the Braves, they have some sluggers who just aren’t hitting at all. Hope those guys wait until Thursday to wake up.

    Just got my negative result for my required rapid antigen test… off The Bronx & the RF bleachers. Go Bravos.

47. Ford could really pitch, but I think some of the others — Allie Reynolds, Vic Raschi, etc. — were closer to the Andy Pettitte mold of a pretty good guy who got more hype than their baseball card’s worth, due to the bright lights and pinstripes.

    And that’s not nothing, since from Javy Vazquez to Randy Johnson, plenty of people have crumpled under the pressure. But still, that rotation looks like Whitey Ford and three or four guys who were good enough to yield fewer runs than Mickey Mantle & co. could score.

    (I’m being a bit unfair. Reynolds had one AMAZING year where he was second in the MVP; the rest of his career, he was pretty league-average. Lopat was the one guy who was really pretty near a star for a bunch of different years — from 1946-1953, he really was one of the better pitchers in the league.)

48. Yes, there were many good starters on those Yankees teams, but no one other than Ford had an ace type season for more than a year or two–although several had solid careers. It’s interesting to see that Casey spread the starts around much more than other managers of his era. He did not rely primarily on a couple of workhorses. He was the same with position players. He consistently spread playing time among the entire roster more than other teams did.

49. #48
    Not unlike the Torre Era Yanks (Key, Pettitte, El Duque, Wells, Cone, Clemens), that era’s rotation could match up with anyone, no matter who you were.

    I mean, Vic Raschi wasn’t as good as, say, a Bob Feller or Bob Lemon, but he did begin his career with the Yankees going 120-50. And all those guys have impressive WS numbers. They were good.

50. First, I’m a winner!

    Second, having just come from the golf course, I am a double winner to see TFloyd making all of the arguments I would have made. The grasshopper has learned well.

    The clear riposte to MikeM at 27 is: don’t look at who won. Look at who didn’t win. Teams that had higher bWARs and pWARs than the winners! You have to be good to win. You also have to be pretty good to lose. If you refer back to my series on this (https://bravesjournal.us/category/archives/stats/playoffs-are-a-crapshoot/) it also refutes the notion that the playoffs are an utter crapshoot in which every team has a ten percent chance of winning. Great teams have a twenty percent chance. You can make a lot of money, MikeM, by taking the five best teams as you enter the World Series at 10-1 each. You will lose your shirt betting on the best team at anything less 5-1.

    I’ll pick up my prizes and wear them proudly when and if I make the Braves Journal Group Outing.

51. Good points JohnathanF.

    Another quirk is that the divisional format used to keep some of the better teams out of the playoffs in lieu of inferior teams that took advantage of a weak division. This has been somewhat addressed by the expanded wild card.

52. The history of Yankees starting pitchers during their run from 1920-64 is fascinating. Setting aside Whitey Ford, if you looked at the career stats of the next best dozen or so and didn’t know which of them made the HOF, you’d almost be convinced the ones who did were chosen at random. Pettitte is a good comp for the group — he’d actually be near the top.

53. Please remind me once again how wonderful our shortstop is. An explanation as to why would also be appreciated.

54. The Braves have 4 hits tonight. 3 of those 4 hits have come from Adrianza, Heredia, and Sandoval. That was what most of us were expecting when we saw them during spring training, correct?

55. Ugh… FF is not right.
    Not much of the team is right, actually.

56. People want to criticize Dansby, but Ozzie and Freeman stink too. We make many pitchers look like deGrom

57. Matzek is pitching every single day. It ain’t helping.

58. We are primed for a triple Grybo

59. Nate Jones is making me nostalgic for Lance Cormier.

60. How much more of Nate F-ing Jones? AA should be questioned for leaving that idiot on the roster .

61. Chip: “What’s the old saying? Leadoff walks in the late innings of tie games are often problematic.” No, Chip: that’s not an old saying; there is no old saying that contains the word ‘problematic.’

62. I really wish they would stop trying to make Nate Jones a thing.

    Well at least it won’t be another 1 run loss….

    Who messed with the offense in the offseason?

63. Nate Jones doing what Nate Jones does

64. So somehow we will score one run in the ninth so the second run will be the killer

65. What had Nate Jones done in the last three years that would cause any GM to possibly think he could be viable in anything other than mop-up duty?

66. From the – “I don’t think that means what you think it means” department. Did anyone hear Chip talking about Morton (I believe) dropping a deuce? I think he was talking about two strikeouts in a row, but I’m not sure.

67. Lotsa Braves fans in The Bronx tonight… sorry, we pissed away a very winnable game against a team that’s really offensively challenged at present… losing on a wild pitch & a based-loaded walk is tough to take.

    Morton looked great, but after not doing much with Taillon, I was afraid it would become a battle of the pens & we needed a late-inning lead to make that work. And we definitely could’ve used #13 in the lineup tonight.

    Get ’em tomorrow with Anderson, I suppose.

68. I would think a deuce would be a curveball — that’s what the catcher is calling for when he puts down two fingers, I think.

69. @ #66

    Too funny.

70. @65 It’s not that Nate Jones is good. It’s that we have no one better. We are so LHP-heavy that it’s hilarious. When you’re wondering when Touki is getting back, and he’s had no success in relief, you know the RHP is thin as paper. Tomlin, Jones, and Jackson aren’t 8th innings guys, but that’s where we are. In another circumstance, Chris Martin is pitching the 8th. Or Newcomb if you didn’t feel you needed a RHP.

71. 70 – It’s almost like losing O’Day, Melancon and Greene is actually hurting the team…really need to sign Greene ASAP.

72. Recapped. This will also serve as tonight’s game thread.

    Yanquis 3, Martillos 1