NL East Review: Braves

Written by Akshay on July 11, 2008 – 6:43 am

I figured this would be a good time to get the review in, what with it being an off-day and all. Let me start off by saying I made a mistake earlier, I should not have said the Muts would be fourth in the division. After watching this team play the past couple of weeks, and with the state they are in right, I would be pleasantly surprised if we finished above where we are right now. To be honest, I feel like this team has regressed instead of progressed.

Who would have thought that Andruw’s absence would have been such a downgrade in power numbers over the past year. It was no surprise we weren’t getting much out of left field, we didn’t last year in terms of slugging and homers. Yeah, Andruw still hit 26 homers and surprisingly had 94 RBI, but about HALF of his at-bats were with runners on and 170 of his 570 at-bats had them in scoring position. Ridiculous, this season, we can’t get guys on, guys aren’t getting over and no one’s driving anyone in.

Yeah, we have the second highest run differential in the East, but about 90% of that is thanks to the ridiculous consistency we are getting from our pitching. How much better would we have been last year with a guy like Campillo (Campillo, btw, is hitting .222, same as Andruw last year, he may have had 90 RBIs batting in the position Andruw did in our line up) or if Reyes didn’t walk every second batter he faced?

2007: Keep in mind,  before you read these stats, these numbers are with Craig Wilson’s 58 at-bats (.172), Scott Thorman’s 287 at-bats (.216), Chris Woodward’s 136 at-bats (.199) and Ryan Langerhans’ 44 at-bats (just three hits in those at-bats, THREE! Julio Franco had that many in ONE game last year). All of those numbers right there are about an entire person’s average for a season, that’s 525 at-bats and 102 hits…seriously those are real numbers, that’s a .194 batting average between three guys. Lots of what-ifs surrounding last year’s team.

In 2007, the Braves finished third in the NL in batting average (.275), and scored the third most number of runs with 810. One of the reasons they were able to do so well was clutch hitting. Guys like Frenchy had ridiculous numbers in the clutch, but we’ll get to those later. With runners on at all, Atlanta hit .284…that went up with runners in scoring position to .291. They hit just .265 with runners and scoring position and two outs, but that was second in the league behind Pittsburgh (.267).

However, last season, just as they do this season, the Braves did hit poorly in close and late situations. Those situations, as described by The Language of Baseball are “situations in a baseball game in the seventh or later inning with the any of the following conditions: score tied. one team leading by a run, or with the tying run on base, at the plate, or on deck.”

In those instances, the Braves came in eighth at .257 with only 112 runs. Compare that to St. Louis who led the league with a .313 batting average and Houston and Philly who both scored 141 runs in those situations.

Fast forward to this 2008, Braves are down two guys that were stalwarts on the field in at least the past two seasons: Edgar Renteria and Andruw Jones since 1997. The Braves, after 92 games, are ninth in the league in runs scored (405, Chicago is tops at 487), yet third in batting average(.263, Chicago is tops at .282)…kind of makes you wonder. Read more »


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Posted in League Analysis |

10 Reasons To Throw In The Towel

Written by Colin on July 10, 2008 – 8:28 am

Yesterday we looked at 10 Reasons To Pull Out The Stops and go for broke in a quest to make the playoffs.  Today is time to look at the opposite side of the coin - with nearly an even split in our “Should we trade Mark Teixeira” poll, it’s clear fan opinion is split. Without further ado - 10 Reasons To Throw In The Towel.

  1. A Mark Teixeira trade would bring in young talent to build into the next few years.
  2. The entire outfield has been a bit of an offensive disappointment with Kotsay being the hot spot.
  3. The Phillies are rumored to be looking for ace-quality pitching talent.
  4. We’ve had 9 different starting pitchers, and Charlie Morton has as many starts as John Smoltz.
  5. The Braves going on a winning streak seems synonymous with Mike Hampton and his trip back to starting big league games.
  6. There is practically no winning record on the road.
  7. We’ve been starting Greg Norton in left field.
  8. John Smoltz will be back next year if he has anything to say about it.
  9. We’re too bogged down with big contracts on the DL ($37M) to make any legitimate moves for talent that would put us in serious contention (Hampton - 15M, Smoltz - 14M, Glavine - 8M).
  10. All of our starting position players except Mark Teixeira and Brian McCann have missed time due to injuries.  To boot, three of our starting pitchers are on the DL and at least two of those are done for the year.

There ya go - 10 Reasons To Throw In The Towel.  Should we be done with the year?  Speak up - I know 43% of you (at time of writing) think we should trade Tex.

Please jump in and comment and critique my thoughts - I’m sure I left some out and made up others in a poor attempt to be witty.  Speak up especially if you want to throw in the towel this season.


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