I found a lifelong Atlanta Braves fan, who happens to be a baseball blogger friend of mine, to exchange emails with over the last few days. We discussed the Braves’ limited strengths and attempted to downplay their weaknesses. Here’s the transcript of the conversation I had with Alex Remington. Many thanks to Alex for his role in putting this together.
Morash: I got the brilliant idea that we should collaborate on a Braves season preview post yesterday. We could do a back-and-forth about the Braves chances, strengths, and pitfalls.
Remington: Happy to! Shoot me some questions and we can go from there.
Morash: Awesome. We may want to keep it shorter as I suspect our prognostication could bring a tear to a Braves fan or two. So the way that I see it, the Braves’ season will boil down to how the rotation performs. There’s talent there with Julio Teheran and Alex Wood up front, with Shelby Miller and Mike Minor expected to back them up. Minor is obviously a wild card given that his shoulder will keep him from pitching in April, and the other young guys competing for the back end spots haven’t really looked the part in Spring Training. Mike Foltynewicz and Manny Banuelos are fun, but appear to be set for spot starts in 2015.
Effectively rounding out the Braves rotation mess are Eric Stultz and Wandy Rodriguez, both of whom look like they might start the season in the rotation until Minor returns.
With all the players laid out, do you see this as a good rotation capable of making Braves games entertaining (in a good way) in 2015? Or is it going to be “Julio Teheran, Alex Wood, and pray for rain?”
Remington: I think it’s going to wind up being a good rotation. But there’s a small nagging part of me that wonders whether I’m being a homer. Obviously, I love Teheran. And I love Alex Wood, though his career high in starts is only 24 and he’s never pitched a full season in the rotation. And I really like Shelby Miller, although his first-half struggles in both 2012 and 2014 are undoubtably causes for concern.
I’m a hell of a lot more worried about Mike Minor — his 2013 made him look like a star, but even if I was willing to shake off his miserable 2014, the fact that he opened a second consecutive season with shoulder troubles is terrifying. He clearly wasn’t right all last year, and I worry that the boy just ain’t right. Shoulder troubles are no joke. And the Braves have a frankly horrible recent track record with pitcher health, as Brandon Beachy and Kris Medlen can attest.
The fifth starter’s the fifth starter. Eric Stults and Wandy Rodriguez are fairly uninspiring, but I harbor secret hopes that Rodriguez could be something like what Paul Maholm was for a couple of years, a little lefty who didn’t really have a fastball but managed to stay more or less league average. Foltynewicz and Banuelos don’t remotely appear ready for prime time, and I’d rather keep Folty on the farm till he can find the strike zone with enough consistency to stay a starter. If he can’t, everyone agrees that he’ll be an electric closer, but he’s only 23 and the major league club has no need to hurry him.
All in all, I think Teheran/Wood/Miller’s a very solid 1-2-3 punch, Minor has more upside than most #4 starters, and Roger McDowell has a good track record of massaging league-average performance out of veteran castoffs like Aaron Harang. (Having Andrelton Simmons behind the mound doesn’t hurt, either.)
The Braves will probably have good pitching, like they always do. The real trouble is, almost everyone on the team hits like a pitcher, too.
Morash: I’m not sure if it’s a good thing that I mostly completely agree with you. It could mean that we’re both very wrong. However, I differ with you on Shelby Miller, as “really like Shelby Miller” is not in my vocabulary just yet. There’s reason to be optimistic with him given that A) Keith Law said he’s a breakout candidate, B) he posted a 2.92 ERA in the second half last year, and C) he’s still just 15 months older than Kris Bryant. However, there’s something about his K/9 dropping to around 6.5 last year that gets to me.
On the bright side, Miller hit .188 last year, which was only 20 points worse than BJ Upton. (From a historical perspective, should we call him BJ up to 2015 and then switch back to Melvin 2015 onward? I think we should. It just feels weird talking about Melvin Upton’s year’s in Tampa or Roberto Hernandez’s years in Cleveland.) I digress.
The offense is going to be a….. work in progress all year. Freddie Freeman is the one guy who will hit. He’s continued to improve and looks to be worth the $100 million that the Braves handed him. He’s still just 25 and has four straight years of 20ish homers with a career line of .286/.366/.465 that looks good in today’s offensively starved climate. But Freeman’s “protection” is going to be rough. I guess Jonny Gomes hits behind him? Maybe Chris Johnson?
But where the lineup will fail to provide dingers, it begins to make up for it with athletic ability. Andrelton Simmons is here for his defense and Christian Bethancourt is too, but both are athletic and don’t figure to be completely terrible. I’m optimistic about Jace Peterson. He’s always hit in the minors and has made some really nice plays at second base this spring. Nick Markakis is a gold glover and Chris St. John thought at one point he’d be destined for 3000 hits. I guess that’s about where my optimism ends.
Center, Left, and Third Base feel like positions that could realistically post negative WAR figures this year. The regulars at all three positions posted negative numbers last season with Gomes at -0.8, Upton at -0.3, and Chris Johnson at -1.3. For a professional major league team to be competitive, they can’t have four lineup spots (including the pitcher) this bad. Am I off here?
Remington: My basic feelings on Miller boil down to the following three things:
- He was an incredibly highly regarded prospect
- He has already experienced major league success exactly in line with what his profile would suggest
- His velocity’s fine
Obviously, every pitcher’s arm is a ticking time bomb, but I see no reason for undue concern about Miller.
That said, obviously, a team that writes off half the lineup can’t be successful. And make no mistake: these Braves won’t be. Jonny Gomes and Nick Markakis are a lot of things — bipedal, diurnal, apperceptive — but above-average isn’t one of them. To quote Dan Szymborski: “I’m not sure what’s scarier – the fact that the Braves think Markakis is their 2nd-best hitter or the fact they may actually be right.”
That said, this year the Braves claim that they’re planning to platoon a lot more than they did last year. So Melvin Upton, when he comes back, will split outfield time with Young (or Todd Cunningham, or whoever Fredi Gonzalez can charitably believe is the “hot hand”). Whenever Jose Peraza comes up, he’ll displace opening 2B Jace Peterson, who may be able to split time with the stone-gloved Chris Johnson. No one thinks that Jonny Gomes will start 150 games in left.
Only problem is, the scrubs on the bench are even worse than the stiffs in the lineup, and Fredi Gonzalez ain’t Casey Stengel. It’ll be a long year.
Morash: I just read through the replies on that Szymborski tweet. Pure gold. So 8 members of the Braves’ 2014 High-A team are projected to have a higher 2015 wOBA than Eric Young Jr., Christian Bethancourt, and Melvin Upton? Wowee. But something about this club makes me feel like we’re not heading for total disaster. Something about the new found grit, veteran leadership, and tomahawk lead me to believe this team won’t be a complete black mark on the legacy.
Remember when Eric Hinske seemingly won the Braves 5 games by himself in 2010, or Aaron Harang somehow managed the best FIP of his career for the Braves last year? This is a club (or uniform) that somehow never heads into the summer months completely irrelevant.
I’m equally pessimistic as you about Fredi’s ability to squeeze the most out of this (or any) roster. On the bright side of things, a totally terrible year could lead to a replacement at the managerial position.
I also want your full prediction on wins and losses. Fangraphs has them at 73-89. I’ve got them at 72-90, but way worse than that with respect to the “watchability” index. This is simply not going to be a fun team to watch.
Remington: I’m on record at 72-90, and I haven’t seen anything to make me think that prediction ought to change. Broadly speaking, I agree with you — this probably isn’t a 100-loss team, and it’s merely bad rather than historically awful. Both leagues are at a relative low ebb; other than the Nationals and Dodgers and Mariners and (maybe) Angels, there appear to be something like 20 teams clustered around 78-85 wins.
So the Braves, bad as they are, picked a good era to be bad in. If they catch a few lucky breaks, they’re within sneezing distance of respectability.
Still: the fact that Harang had a career-best FIP last year says a lot more about the league context than it does about him. (His FIP- was 97, a far cry from the 80 that he put up from 2005 to 2007, when he was legitimately one of the best pitchers in the league.) As Auguste Gusteau from Ratatouille might say: these days, anyone can pitch.
The biggest problem with the 2014 Braves, as you mentioned, was all of the sub-replacement level play: if the Braves could simply get 0.0 WAR out of third base and center field, that would be a significant improvement. So if I was going to try to talk myself into the Braves outperforming expectations, here’s what I’d assume:
- Andrelton Simmons settles into an offensive groove somewhere between 2013 and 2014
- Freddie Freeman adds a bit more power during his age 25 year
- The Peterson/Peraza situation at 2B winds up being roughly league average
- Nick Markakis is roughly league average, as usual
- The platoons at third base, left field, and center field all manage to stay above replacement level
- Roger McDowell does a good job of holding together the back end of the rotation and the back end of the bullpen, during the innings that Teheran, Wood, and Kimbrel can’t pitching
All of these things have happened before, but this isn’t Battlestar Galactica, so I don’t know that they’ll happen again. If it all breaks right, the Braves could win an extra six games and limp their way into a second-place finish in the NL East — they may be 20 games behind the Nats, but they’re not *that* much worse than the Marlins and Mets.
But I still think 72-90 is a lot likelier.
Morash: We can’t have the same prediction. I’m going back and changing my prediction to 71-91. This will be the worst Braves team since I have been alive (since 1990), even with the addition of Trevor Cahill. I’ll get to that in a minute, and would definitely like your thoughts on how that affects things.
All of your reasons for optimism have a legitimate chance of coming to fruition, but we’re still talking about players and lineup positions merely returning to league average. There are so many other ways that this team will find ways to be bad. The bullpen and bench are not great, and I’m not as confident in the 1/2/3 punch atop the rotation as you.
I’m especially concerned about the bullpen, even though this team has a way of finding bullpen arms from anywhere. (This story on Brady Feigl pitching in a rec league outside of Baltimore after college before the Braves found him serving as just another example.) But in February I was excited about the bullpen. The mix of the veterans and the young Shae Simmons/Arodys Vizcaino looked great. Then Simmons went down with Tommy John. Vizcaino was ineffectively wild. Jose Veras and Matt Capps didn’t have it anymore. And the Jim Johnson/Jason Grilli signings were always gong to be three month rentals to be shipped out at the trade deadline.
In August, we’ll be looking at a bullpen of Kimbrel, Josh Outman, Avilan, Feigl, McKirahan, and mystery call-up. I’d like to know how many of those guys the other Off The Benchers know. But this is a rebuilding team with much larger problems than who the sixth inning arm will be in August.
I’m a big fan of this Trevor Cahill deal. He’s a FIP darling, and the Braves are paying just $5.5 Million of his salary in the hopes that he can be more than a back-end starter. He’s 27 and seems like an ideal candidate to improve further with Andrelton Simmons at short. Plus, I think it opens up the door for the Wandy Rodriguez trade that I’ve been suspecting is coming for a few weeks now.
Remington:
Oh man. I don’t want to rain on your parade, but if the Braves trade Wandy, it will be for a significantly less exciting return than Josh Elander. And I’m about as excited to watch Eric Stults on TV as I am to watch Eric Stoltz on TV.
I like the Cahill deal. As Dave Cameron tweeted yesterday: “I’m a bit surprised by the anti-Cahill reactions I’ve seen. This is exactly the kind of gamble rebuilding teams should be taking. It probably won’t work, but if it doesn’t, the Braves are out $6M. If it does, they have a team-controlled asset for two more years.”
Obviously, I tend to believe that taking any pitcher out of Arizona (a good hitter’s park with a front office known for making poor trades) and standing him in front of Andrelton Simmons is likely to lead to improved results. Cahill is exactly the kind of buy-low that I like. But, again, the likeliest return here is still a back-of-the-rotation starter at best, and as you pointed out, the top of the rotation has its own question marks.
Still, remember: the thing that is bad about this team is the offense. Everything else is either decent, meh, or not worth worrying about.
To wit, the bullpen. The difference between a bad bullpen and a good one just isn’t that great. For example: last year, the Braves bullpen had an ERA of 3.31 and an RA of 3.60 — the 11th- and 10th- best marks in baseball — in 440 2/3 innings. The 20th-best marks were 3.71 and 4.07. At that number of innings, the difference between an RA of 3.60 and an RA of 4.07 is 23 runs — or, in other words, about two wins. Between McDowell and Kimbrel, the Braves aren’t likely to be more than a win or two worse in the pen than they were last year.
Don’t worry, whippersnapper, it won’t be as bad as the dreaded late ’80s.
Morash: Welp. Wandy was released this morning. I was holding out hope for something like the Horacio Ramirez- Rafael Soriano trade. I knew that Wandy held less value than Horacio did, but I thought the Braves could return to their well of reliever knowledge and work something out. I was wrong.
Let’s get this thing posted before the Braves make another deal and all of the things we discussed herein become outdated. Many thanks Alex. Time will tell if we need to pay attention to Game 162 to see if the Braves lose their 91st game and make my prognostication that much more accurate than yours. It’s going to be a long summer for us Braves fans, but it sure feels nice to say “Baseball is back.”
-Sean Morash and Alex Remington
