Catching Up

Sorry for the lack of content in recent weeks, but between work and my posts at SB Nation's Atlanta site, time has been tight.  For those of you who don't visit the Atlanta page on a daily basis, hang your heads in shame ... and then click on the tab that I added to the right that goes directly to my profile there.  That has a fill list of what I have been posting, both in shorter and longer form.  Some highlights from the last few weeks:

My predictable gloating over the Saints' little bounty issue:

The last parallel between the Ohio State and New Orleans scandals is that both relate to the most pressing issues facing their respective sports. College football has been plagued in recent months with significant scandals involving major programs and improper benefits, leading many to question the continued viability of a sport that is built on a fiction. For instance, the 2010 national title game was contested between a team whose star quarterback's father was trying to sell his son to the highest bidder and an opponent currently under investigation for paying a runner in Texas to direct players to Eugene.

The biggest issue facing the NFL is the long-term health impact of the sport, a dilemma that leads to a plausible scenario in which the NFL no longer exists. Through a combination of: (1) the school firing its head coach and suspending several of its best players; and (2) the NCAA tacking on a one-year bowl ban, Ohio State has essentially had to give up two football seasons. That's the message that the NCAA and its members have to send to deter money finding its way to the players who generate it.

I don't pretend to know what is in Roger Goodell's holster in terms of potential punishments, but it is clear that he is going to have to bring the hammer down because the participation of Saints' coaches in the team's bounty system and the acquiescence of the head coach and general manager in that system touches on the biggest problem facing the league. Goodell has to ensure that current and future authority figures in the league see what happened to the Saints and take the lesson that they have to stamp out incentives to injure opposing players.

This is one of those instances where I am quite happy that Roger Goodell has given himself untrammeled power to punish league figures who "damage the shield," to quote that preposterous phrase that was bandied about by authority worshipers when Goodell was disciplining Ben Roethlisberger for tawdry conduct that did not lead to criminal charges.  Let's see him use that power when the wrongdoers are management instead of labor.  That, after all, is the big issue with the Saints scandal.  It's not that the Saints had a bounty system, as that appears to be something that happens every now and again in the NFL.  It's that this appears to be the first instance in which a defensive coordinator, a head coach, and a general manager all either participated or at least knew about the scheme and did nothing.

My predictable counter to Forbes labeling Atlanta as the most miserable sports city in America:

Forbes would never permit this terrible reasoning when evaluating companies. Financial reporting is (at least theoretically) based on reviewing the entirety of a company's record to make the best evaluations possible. That same rigor apparently does not apply to sports analysis, where we define disappointment based on a "small sample size important; big sample size unimportant" framework.

The point of sports is to provide us with entertainment. We all want an escape from the ennui of the working world and games provide us with exactly that. A team like the Braves during their heyday provided great entertainment, as they consistently won more than they lost. Day after day, we could rely on the Braves to make us happy by beating down the rest of the NL East. Losing a playoff series was a sad experience, but was it enough to overwhelm six months of happiness? No.

Personally, this has been a pretty good period to be an Atlanta sports fan.  How many other times in city history can we say that two of our teams - the Hawks and Falcons - are playoff regulars and the third - the Braves - are at least on the cusp and have a roster full of promising young players.  Maybe my expectations were beaten down by two of the city's three teams being so bad in the 80s when I was growing up, but this seems fine to me.  It's unfortunate that the Hawks have reached their ceiling at the second round of the playoffs and the Falcons can't win a playoff game, but as between playoff disappointment and finishing in last place every year, I'll take the former.

I also finished a post that I've been meaning to write for weeks on the decline of the ACC as a basketball conference.  I offered four potential explanations: conference expansion, bad coaches, the Big Dance killing the regular season, and the possibility that we are just seeing a statistical blip.  The decline of the ACC stands out for me because of the juxtaposition with SEC football.  The latter is as strong as ever, as population trends have dovetailed with the ability of athletic departments to monetize fan passion - and thereby build facilities and hire coaches that create a recruiting advantage - to put the SEC on top of college football.  Those same shifts in population should be helping the ACC in basketball, but they aren't.  That leads to a chicken-egg question: is fan intensity down in the ACC because the product is weaker or is the product weaker because fan intensity is down?

 

Parrish Raus

So in an interesting turn of events at the end of last week, Frank Wren gave Larry Parrish his walking papers.  Wren did so a matter of hours after Fredi Gonzalez had stated that every member of the coaching staff would be back in 2012.  Politically speaking, this is a significant development because Wren is having to step in to make a change that Gonzalez should have made, but didn’t.  Already low after he presided over an epic September collapse, Gonzalez’s reputation went down further with Braves fans when he acted as if no changes needed to be made to the coaching mix.  Wren clearly agreed, stepping in personally to get rid of Parrish.  Not only will Wren be thinking “why did Gonzalez not figure this out on his own?,” but the fact that he made the change himself shows that Gonzalez’s position isn’t exactly set in stone for the long-term.

Why did Parrish need to go?  Can I interest you in some fancy numbers to illustrate that the Braves offense underachieved this year?  Baseball Prospectus relies on True Average as one of their go-to stats.  True Average accounts for both propensity to get on-base and the propensity to get extra-base hits.  The best way to think of it is BP’s way to come up with one number that represents offensive production as opposed to looking at a slash line.  Before the season, BP’s projection system generates an expected True Average number for every major leaguer, which is based on the player’s history of performance, his physical characteristics, his age, and just about anything else that might be relevant.  Those projections give us a baseline against which to evaluate the Braves’ performances at the plate in 2011. 

Here are the projected and actual True Averages for the seven regulars who started and ended the season in Atlanta:     

Player	Projected TAv	Actual TAv	Difference
Freddie Freeman	.263	.280	+.017
Alex Gonzalez	.241	.226	-.015
Jason Heyward	.292	.253	-.039
Chipper Jones	.299	.287	-.012
Brian McCann	.296	.284	-.012
Martin Prado	.275	.245	-.030
Dan Uggla	.291	.270	-.021

Notice a trend there on the right-side of the table?  Every Braves regular with the exception of Freddie Freeman performed below expectations.  In other words, a collection of players with the combined characteristics of the Braves’ regulars should have produced at a given level, but in reality, they collectively performed well below that level.  If that’s not a coaching failure, then what else can it be?  (Random statistical noise, perhaps?) 

Despite the depressing ending to the 2011 season, I’m feeling fairly optimistic about the Braves’ chances in 2012.  One major reason for this optimism is that the Braves were in playoff position for almost the entire season despite a millstone around their necks offensively.  Whether Parrish was that millstone is the big question.

From Each According To His $15M Salary, To Each According To ... Good Lord, We Really Are Going To Blow This!

What the f***?

Those three words best describe the collective feeling of Braves fans on the morning of September 28, 2011? The Braves are one loss from completing one of the great collapses in baseball history. After all of their terrible play over the course of the month, they woke up on Saturday morning with a three-game lead and five games to play. Since that time, they have lost four in a row, scoring a whopping four runs in the process. Last night, with the season very much hanging in the balance, Fredi Gonzalez pulled a Bobby Cox in October special, sticking with the underperforming veteran - Derek Lowe - until it was far too late. Yes, the Braves are in a difficult spot because of the injuries to Jair Jurrjens and Tommy Hanson,* but the rookies who have replaced them have been perfectly fine. Of the Braves' five starting pitchers this month, Randall Delgado and Mike Minor have the lowest ERAs of the five.  How much better would Jurrjens and Hanson have done than a 3.11 ERA in 52 innings?  Maybe they would have pitched a smidge deeper into games, but that's it.  Meanwhile, Derek Lowe, a guy who is taking up a smidge over one-sixth of the team's payroll, has an 8.75 ERA and a 1.99 WHIP in five starts.  He has been the losing pitcher in all five.  If by some simple twist of fate the Braves do make the playoffs** and Lowe pitches in any capacity other than long relief, then Frank Wren ought to relieve him of command on the spot.

* - Was anyone else completely non-plussed when Hanson and Jurrjens failed to return from the All-Star Break with their arms intact?  That's how baseball is now.  You have a good young pitcher and you immediately start counting the days until some arm injury that initially sounds innocuous, then the team can't figure out what's wrong, and then he's finally seeing Dr. Andrews.  Baseball manages to combine a turtle's pace with high-impact injuries.  Bravo, Abner Doubleday!

** - I'd put the odds at this stage at around 30%. They should win tonight with a favorable pitching match-up, but their odds in a one-game playoff will not be good.  The playoff would just be insufferable.  The Cardinals will be up 6-2 in the seventh and then Tony LaRussa will prolong our misery with a bevy of "look at me!" switches.  And G-d only knows what happens when he gets into the One-Game Playoff Supplement to his Compendium of Unwritten Baseball Rules.  Fredi could redeem a season's worth of frustration by decking LaRussa in a stupid, futile gesture at the end of a dispiriting collapse.  That would make the whole thing worthwhile.

And then, let's discuss the offense.  It has been a sore spot all year, with just about every offensive regular underperforming his PECOTA (or whatever Baseball Prospectus is calling it these days) projection, but September has been a total freefall.  The top of the order - Michael Bourn and Martin Prado - both have sub-.300 OBPs this month and have walked a grand total of nine times.  Brian McCann is in free-fall, having slugged .313 in September.  The team collectively has a .301 OBP in the month.  By way of comparison, the Giants - a team that is having a historically bad offensive season - have a .303 OBP for the year.  Parrish raus!

The glass half-full thought for a morning that desperately needs it is that I wouldn't trade places with a Cardinals fan for a second.  Yes, the Cards look likely to pull off a remarkable comeback.  All that gets them is a likely defeat at the hands of the Phillies.  Their franchise player is a free agent, which means that they are either going to lose him or they are going to have to sign him to a payroll-crippling contract.*  They don't have a single good, young position player now that their cantankerous manager chased off Colby Rasmus because his stirrups weren't perpendicular to his big toe or whatever else it is that LaRussa views as necessary to baseball success.  They rely on Dave Duncan to stitch together a pitching staff every year.  Their farm system is blah.  In contrast, the Braves have young keepers at first (Freeman), third (Prado), catcher (McCann), and right (Heyward), assuming that Parrish has not done permanent damage to some or all of them.  We finally have a lead-off hitter.  The Braves have five quality young starters and three quality young relievers, assuming that Fredi hasn't destroyed the relievers with overuse this year.  Do you detect a theme here?  The Braves' future is very bright if the on-field coaches don't screw it up.  Maybe the real silver lining here is that a collapse like this requires at least one fall guy in the dugout.

* - If you think that Derek Lowe making $15M next year is bad, think about paying twice that amount for Albert Pujols' age-39 season.

This is Going to be a Boring September

Consistent with how the rest of the pennant races in baseball are shaping up, the Braves are looking at the prospect of a no-drama close to the regular season.  7.5 games behind the Phillies, but eight games up on the Giants in the Wild Card standings, the Braves are a virtual lock for the Wild Card and a first round match-up against the Brewers.  According to the Baseball Prospectus, the Braves have a 96.5% chance of making the playoffs.  Barring a Mets-style collapse, we will have October baseball for the second year in a row.  Taking six of seven from the Giants and D-Backs saw to that.

One of the explanations for why wild card teams seem to out-perform their expected results in the playoffs has been that wild card teams are typically fighting until the end of the season to qualify for the postseason, so they enter October in form.  The best teams in baseball, by comparison, lose their edge in September as they go through the motions, knowing that their places in the playoffs are secure.  At least, this is something that I told myself when the Braves consistently lost playoff series to inferior opponents over the latter part of the 90s and the early part of the Aughts.  If this phenomenon is true, then the Braves are not going to be in great shape in October because they will have nothing to play for in September. 

It’s important that the Braves use the final month of the season to get ready for October.  Here is what Fredi Gonzalez needs to be doing to ensure that the Braves have the best possible lottery ticket:

1. Get Tommy Hanson and Jair Jurrjens back into form.  Hanson and Jurrjens were among the best starters in baseball up to the All-Star Break.  Jurrjens was a candidate to start the All-Star Game, whereas Hanson was unjustly omitted from the roster by Bruce Bochy, a factor that made the Braves’ success against the Giants last week even sweeter.  Since the Break, Jurrjens and Hanson have been injured and ineffective.  Because the Braves’ farm system has an embarrassment of pitching riches, the team has been able to steam merrily along, plugging Mike Minor and Randall Delgado into the rotation.  However, to have a good chance in October, Jurrjens and Hanson will have to be back.  The last 35 games should be used to get them the rest they need and then gradually get them back to form.  A late-season injury break could be good for both of them, as they will arrive in October with less mileage on their tires, but that only works if they come back from their current doldrums.

2. Give O’Ventbrel a Break.  This is self-explanatory.  With Aroldys Vizcaino emerging as a relief option and Peter Moylan on his way back, the bullpen is deeper.  Fredi needs to use that depth to reduce the workloads of his three top relievers.  The Braves haven’t had a bullpen like this since 2002, but they have to make sure that their modern day version of the Nasty Boys isn’t sucking wind at the end of the season.

3. Has anyone seen Jason Heyward?  Jose Constanza is a great story.  It’s rare for a 27-year old career minor leaguer to come to the majors and put up a .923 OPS in the course of almost a month of play.  That said, there is a reason why Constanza kicked around the minors for years, while Jason Heyward was a first round pick, one of the top prospects in baseball, and then an outstanding rookie in 2010.  There is no comparison, talent-wise.  Who would we rather see starting in right field in October?  To the extent that a manager can have an effect on these things (a debatable point), Fredi needs to be thinking about getting Heyward’s head right for October.  As with Jurrjens and Hanson, a late-season break could be good for Jason; the Braves need to exploit the chance.

4. Figure out the error of his ways on the basepaths.  There is a natural tendency for successful people to think that everything about their routines is the cause for their success.  Fredi has led the Braves to the fourth-best record in the Majors this year, right behind three teams with significantly higher payrolls.  He very well may think that his managerial style has caused this result.  He certainly deserves some credit, but he is not without flaws.  The most obvious is that he over-manages.  The Braves are fourth in the NL in sacrifice hits.  They are 14th in stolen bases, but fourth in times caught stealing, thus leading to the fact that only the Cardinals have a worse stolen base percentage.  Outside of Michael Bourn, this just isn’t a fast team, as evidenced by the fact that they are dead-last in the NL in triples.  The Braves bunt too much, they try to play hit-and-run too much, they squeeze too much, and they generally make too many outs on the basepaths.  This is a big deal for a team that isn’t great at getting on base and it is especially important headed into the playoffs where every chance to score is critical.  Fredi claims to be a stathead.  His management style reflects that he hasn’t processed many of the basic findings of the SABR revolution.  It would be nice if he took a critical look at the Braves’ stats and changed his style.

A Centerfielder Who Gets On Base!?! Where’s the Fainting Couch!?!

Frank Wren came towards the trading deadline with a team in dire need to a centerfielder who can hit.  The Braves have trotted out two players at the position during the year: Nate McLouth, whose production at the plate is average at best and who is a below-average defender in center, and Jordan Schafer, who cannot get on-base, but does add good defense.  Faced with an obvious weakness and armed with a deep farm system that is both a blessing and a curse at the trading deadline (a blessing for obvious reasons; a curse because potential trading partners know what the Braves have and therefore demand a higher price, not unlike trying to scalp a ticket with hundred-dollar bills peeking out of one’s pockets), Wren addressed the team’s need by fleecing the Astros for Michael Bourn.  Bourn gets on-base, he is one of the best base-stealers in baseball, and he is an above-average defender at a premium position.  For the first time since Rafael Furcal was playing for the team, the Braves have a true leadoff hitter.  And given Fredi Gonzalez’s insistence on playing fast guys in the lead-off spot, regardless of whether they can get on base, it’s critical that the Braves have a guy who fits the bill.

The reaction to the trade has been uniformly positive.  Here is David Schoenfield explaining that Bourn is a better player than Hunter Pence if we use wins over replacement as the measuring stick:

FanGraphs.com and Baseball-Reference.com calculate WAR in different ways, but both rate Bourn as the more valuable player since 2009:

FanGraphs WAR, 2009-2011
Bourn: 13.3
Pence: 9.9

Baseball-Reference WAR, 2009-2011
Bourn: 11.8
Pence: 6.4

The differences in value primarily come from different methods in evaluating fielding (FanGraphs likes both players' defense better than B-R).

You don't have to agree with or even like the WAR statistic. It's just a tool -- a very good one, in my opinion -- in evaluating player performance. I think the main confusion or disagreement comes in understanding the position importance. Bourn is compared to other center fielders; Pence to other right fielders.

For example, here are Bourn's 2010 and 2011 average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage lines compared to the average National League center fielder:

Bourn 2010: .265/.341/.346
NL CF 2010: .260/.329/.406

Bourn 2011: .303/.363/.403
NL CF 2011: .267/.336/.417

And here's Pence compared to the average National League right fielder:

Pence 2010: .282/.325/.461
NL RF 2010: .264/.334/.443

Pence 2011: .307/.355/.468
NL RF 2011: .265/.338/.437

That's a bunch of numbers, but it translates to: Bourn gets on base more than the average center fielder. So despite his lack of power, he's still a productive hitter for the position (more so in 2011). Pence is hitting better this year but overall he's about league average or slightly above for his position.

I was going to look at these numbers, but Schoenfield crunched them for all of us.  Braves fans should be very familiar with the premium placed on players who can both hit and run enough to play centerfield.

Here is Jayson Stark listing the Braves as one of the winners at the trade deadline:

They lost out on Pence. They got outbid on Carlos Beltran. The best bats on the market were dropping off the board. So the pressure was mounting on the Braves this weekend, not just to keep up with the Phillies and Giants, but to make a move that made a real impact.

Enter Michael Bourn. Take a guy who has a .354 on-base percentage, add him to an offense whose leadoff hitters ranked 26th in baseball in OBP 'til he showed up and see what happens.

Now consider the lineup-changing effect of Bourn's 32-SB wheels (injected into a roster that had swiped 42 all year). And, finally, add in his top-of-the-charts defense. And this was a monster of a deal, especially considering the Braves were able to make it without giving up any of the elite pitching prospects they had balked at trading for Beltran or Pence.

If Bourn fits in and does what he was imported to do, said one scout, "this team is going to be dangerous."

Now, it bears mentioning that Stark has both the Giants and Phillies listed as winners at the trade deadline.  Thus, by improving the team, the Braves essentially stayed in place relative to two other prime contenders in the National League.  That said, the Braves paid less of a price than the Giants and Phillies did, hence the plaudits for Frank Wren.

And speaking of that price, here is Keith Law savaging the Astros and salving the consciences of Braves fans that the team gave up too much ($):

Bourn's best tool is his glove -- he covers a ton of ground in center and is one of the league's best half-dozen or so defenders at the position. At the plate he has almost no power, but despite that can at least foul off better fastballs that beat most zero-power hitters, and he draws enough walks to keep his OBP up over .340; his OBP of .363 this year would be third in Atlanta's lineup. Bourn is probably worth more than a win to the team during the rest of the regular season, but this move looks like it's more about improving run prevention in the postseason while reducing the number of automatic outs in Atlanta's lineup by one. He's under control through 2012, solving one position for the team for next year as well.

The return for Houston, however, is shockingly poor -- quantity over quality, to say the least -- and can't do Ed Wade any good in extending his status as GM beyond "lame duck." It makes me wonder if Houston had a ranking of Atlanta's top 25 prospects but looked at it upside-down.

Again, the merits of the deal won’t be felt so much this year – the Braves are better, but the Giants and Phillies also added outfielders who can hit – but rather over the coming years when the prices of the three deals in terms of prospects come into full view (assuming that the general consensus of the value of the minor leaguers traded by the three contenders turns out to be correct).

Here is R.J. Anderson of the Baseball Prospectus noting that the deal will increase the Braves’ already-excellent odds of making the playoffs and it will also have the knock-on effect of reducing the odds that the team will pick up Nate McLouth’s 2012 option ($):

With that in mind, Bourn is going to solve two problems for Atlanta. The first is obvious, as he will take over center field on an everyday basis. The Braves have not received much production out of the position from Nate McLouth or Jordan Schafer this season, and along with the other options they’ve run out there, they have a cumulative line of .241/.322/.324. As for the Braves leadoff hitters, they have hit .254/.306/.365 this season but somehow have managed .320/.389/.443 to open games. There probably isn’t much to that discrepancy other than selective sampling breeding some weird results, and Bourn should be an upgrade overall.

Bourn will not qualify for free agency until after next season, so this isn’t the typical rental situation. The guy who stands to lose the most in Bourn’s acquisition is McLouth as he will concede playing time and now stands even smaller chance of returning next season—although his play and the looming team option valued at over $10.5 million were doing a nice job of eliminating that possibility on their own. Barring the Braves doing something silly, like demoting Jason Heyward, McLouth figures to slide into a reserve role once he returns from the disabled list.

The Braves held an 87 percent shot at the postseason prior to today’s trade; look for those odds to increase and for Bourn to appear in the playoffs for the second time in his career this October.

The only downside will be for headline writers, who will now have to pick between bad “Brave New World” puns and even worse “Bourn[e] Identity” puns.

Stay Calm and Carry On, Trade Deadline Edition

Yes, it’s hard to watch the Braves abortive attempts to score runs.  Yes, I have a hard time looking at the batting averages of the position players and processing the fact that the local baseball collective has the third-most wins in baseball.  Yes, I would like Frank Wren to acquire a centerfielder who can hit.  Yes, a friend forwarded me Buster Olney's tweet:

Observation from an NL official about the Braves' interest in Hunter Pence: "They don't value on-base percentage as much as other teams do."

And I nearly lost my lunch.  (Further grist for the mill that the Braves’ sterling patience at the plate last year that led to the best on-base percentage in the NL was a big accident like the discovery of penicillin.) 

All that said, the Braves should not mortgage the team’s future to add a bat.  If the Phillies want to give up their two best prospects for two years and change of Hunter Pence, the more power to them.  Almost every member of that team’s core is at or over the age of 30, so they are in a win-now mode.  The Braves have a wealth of young pitchers, as well as Freddie Freeman, Jason Heyward, Brian McCann, and Martin Prado.  The future of the franchise is bright.  It would be nice to win the World Series this year, but it would be just as good to win it in 2015 and that goal is significantly more realistic for the Braves than it is for the Phillies.  That’s why Frank Wren’s seeming conservatism makes sense.

But don’t take my word for it.  Here is Jayson Stark explaining the Braves’ reasoning:

So an official of one team who spoke with the Braves said he was told, "We've only got to weather the storm for 14 days, until [Brian] McCann gets back." By then, they hope Chipper Jones will be healthy; Peter Moylan will be back in their bullpen; and they will feel like the urgency to DO SOMETHING will have lessened. If not, there's always August.

After all, what month was it last year in which the team that won it all picked up its World Series cleanup hitter (Cody Ross)? It wasn't July. It was August -- on a waiver claim. And how'd that work out?

It’s possible that the Braves made the statement about simply needing to wait for August as a negotiating posture.  After all, it’s easier to get a good price when you are not desperate.  That said, if Stark is right that the Astros’ asking price from the Braves was two of Teheran, Vizcaino, Delgado, and Minor, then Wren would have been nuts to pull the trigger. 

And here is Mark Bradley also advocating for patience:

Wren wants to win a World Series, same as you, but there’s no assurance a big-ticket hiree makes you a champ. Fred McGriff panned out. Teixeira didn’t. B.J. Surhoff, acquired by the Braves at the 2000 deadline, didn’t. Denny Neagle, acquired in 1996, didn’t. (Though he would win 36 games in 1997 and ‘98.) But Mike Devereaux, who arrived in an afterthought trade for the minor-leaguer Andre King in August 1995, became the most valuable player of the NLCS en route to the Braves’ only World Series title.

This touches on something that has seemed odd to me about all of the trade deadline hysteria.  The Braves are very likely to make the playoffs as the wild card team.  Baseball Prospectus has the Braves at 85% likely to play in October.  If an outfield bat were the difference between making the playoffs and watching them on TV, then it would be important to get a bat.  However, with the Braves in great position to make the playoffs, the new bat would be relevant for as few as three games and as many as 19.  The baseball playoffs are a lottery.  Some teams have better odds than others, but in the end, there is a high degree of chance involved.  Making the team better at one position is nothing more than buying a slightly better lottery ticket.  With the small sample size involved, there’s no telling who is going to be Mike Devereaux and who is going to be B.J. Surhoff.

Update: Baseball Prospectus crunches the numbers on deadline deals and finds that the vast majority do not make a difference in whether a team makes the playoffs ($):

Looking at deadline deals since the introduction of the wild card in 1995, we see a bevy of moves. By rough count, looking at the past-season WARP of the players acquired versus the players given away, we can see that 180 of those deals were ones in which a team was buying talent as opposed to selling, or moves in which little talent was moving in either direction. (In this instance, the buyer is the team that acquired the player with the highest same-season WARP.) But how many of those deals had a significant impact on the division race? Reviewing the record, there are just 10 teams that made "impact" deals…

Finding one or two players who can combine for significant value is difficult, and getting those players to have a hot streak on cue is harder still. Most teams get into a position to acquire talent at the deadline by having a roster stocked with talented players, and how those players perform down the stretch is generally far more important than the work of one or two players brought in to bolster a squad.

That last sentence is a perfect description of why deadline deals are typically overblown.     

Question Time

The right honorable gentleman from North-Decatur-upon-Lullwater wants to know two things:

1. If Chipper Jones would have been drafted by the Cardinals instead of the Braves, how would his career have been different?  In other words, how would things be different after the inevitable blow-up between Chipper and Tony LaRussa as to Chipper’s reliance on his father for hitting advice?  That advice surely violates one of LaRussa’s myriad unwritten rules for baseball, like “I get a virgin in heaven for every pitching change I make” and “a pitcher can hit a batter only in one of the following 17 situations…”

2. In light of the fact that Bret Bielema is apparently the best coach in the Big Ten now that Jim Tressel is no more, how many head coaches in the SEC are better than the best coach in the Big Ten?  Put another way, would Georgia fans trade on-a-seat-of-indeterminable-warmth Mark Richt for any coach in the Big Ten?  Would LSU fans take any coach in the Big Ten over Les Miles?  Am I being too partisan here or does Jim Tressel’s demise at Ohio State really bring into full view the sorry state of coaching in a conference that has the money to do so much better?

Why I Hate New York Teams, Vol. XXIV

My morning sports consumption, in three acts:

1. Wake up just before six and do a quick check of the headlines on ESPN.com. I learn that the Braves played a 19-inning game against the Pirates that ended with one of the worst calls in recent memory.* Is this game, a match-up between the NL Wild Card leaders and the team that is improbably in first place in the NL Central after almost two decades of consistent failure, the lead story on ESPN.com? Does it get top billing in light of the fact that it was the longest game of the season and ended in a bizarre fashion? Nope. The top story was CC Sabathia shutting down the Mariners. Yes, the captivating story of the highest-paid pitcher in baseball dominating a historically bad offense was the big story in American sports yesterday.

* - I went to sleep in the tenth inning when Scott Linebrink came in and gave up a one-out single. That seemed like a sufficient indication that the Braves were going to lose their fourth in a row. Imagine my surprise this morning when I realized that I had missed a complete game shutout from Scott Proctor and the Lisp.

2. Watch SportsCenter while getting ready. What's the big story in the middle of the show? An interview with Jerry Jones in his car, followed by a lengthy feature on Rex Ryan and the Jets.

3. Listen to sports radio on the way to work. Surely, after my education on all things New York from ESPN, I'll get some local content, right? After all, the Falcons are about to wade into free agency and the Braves just played an epic game last night. Instead, for the majority of my commute, the Mayhem crew were peppering former 790 the Zone employee Chris Cotter (whom I always liked when he was on the air here) with questions about what it was like to cover Willie Randolph when Randolph was the manager of the Mets and what New York City is like in terms of interest in college football and the NFL.

So, if you ever want to know why I have a per se rule against rooting for New York teams, this is the evidence for the rule. Regardless of merit, their teams get showered with attention.*

* - This reminds me that I have a rant percolating in my head about the lionization of the New York Cosmos. Don't let me forget to write that in August.

Drew Sharp: The Most Ironically Named Man Outside of Rush Limbaugh

Newspaper columnists tend to be respectful to one another.  Whereas bloggers are prone to pissing matches of all shapes and sizes, our mainstream media counterparts will rarely call one another onto the carpet.  They represent the civility of a bygone age … or they just don’t get the fun of calling another writer a mouth-breathing troglodyte.  Either way, a columnist has to have written something really dumb in order to get another columnist to spend an entire piece railing on a bad argument.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Drew Sharp.  I read Sharp for my four years in Ann Arbor and his sole value was to raise my blood pressure.  Sharp is a Michigan graduate who quickly figured out that his place in the world is to make bomb-throwing statements to anger the local fan bases, most prominently that of his alma mater.  In his mind, Sharp probably thinks of himself as a noble scribe telling truth to power, regardless of the reaction.  In reality, the next well-constructed argument he makes will be the first.  Remarkably, both approaches can lead to a negative reaction, only Sharp (and apparently his bosses at the Detroit Free Press, who have employed Sharp for years) doesn’t understand the difference between the two.

I haven’t clicked on the Free Press’s web site since that newspaper committed journalistic malpractice by giving Mike Rosenberg license to publish a wildly slanted and misleading piece about the practice habits of Michigan football players.*  Mark Bradley does not operate under the same constraints, so he found Sharp’s piece about how Jair Jurrjens would be a .500 pitcher in the mighty American League and tore it to pieces.  Again, when you have caused a veteran columnist to go Fire Joe Morgan on you, then you have really screwed the pooch.

* – Here’s a thought experiment: if Michigan took Ohio State’s approach to NCAA violations, what would it’s response to the NCAA’s notice of inquiry have been?  Maybe a letter suggesting that Michigan get more practice time than the rules permit for the trouble of having to respond to such trivial allegations?  Seriously, look at the disparity between one school referring to “a day of great shame” when it concluded that it had misclassified stretching time and another school stating that it would be “shocked and disappointed and on the offensive” if the NCAA went beyond the ludicrously light sanctions suggested by the school in response to its head coach burying evidence of violations and thereby riding five ineligible players to a Big Ten title.  With that hyper-partisan aside behind me, we can get back to mocking Drew Sharp.

Because he is polite and I am not, I was expecting to have to pick up where Bradley left off, but Mark hit all of the high notes: the minor statistical difference between the AL and NL (Sharp has apparently missed the fact that offense is down in both leagues this year), the fact that Jurrjens has done well against the AL in 2011 (in two starts, Jurrjens has allowed one earned run in 14.1 innings, striking out 12 and walking three), and the fact that velocity isn’t the be-all, end-all for pitching (a point to which Braves fans are especially keen after years of watching Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux mow through opposing lineups without cracking 90 on the radar gun). 

The one point that I would add to Bradley’s fine work is that Jurrjens has gotten better this year despite dropping his average fastball velocity from 91 to 89.  Dave Allen at Fan Graphs noted this change at the start of June, positing that Jurrjens controls his slower fastball better, thus leading to fewer walks and more bad contact as Jurrjens gets opposing hitters to swing at pitches just outside of the strike zone.  Christina Kahrl has noticed that Jurrjens has dropped both his walk rate and his opponents' ISO rates.  We are dealing with a sample size of 110 innings, so there is a good chance that there is noise in the numbers.  It’s eminently reasonable to assume that Jurrjens will not be able to keep his ERA at Maddux levels for an entire season.  However, there’s no way to deny that Jurrjens has been outstanding in 2011, possibly because of a reduction in velocity that has yielded better control.  In that sense, Drew Sharp is backwards when he criticizes Jurrjens for noth throwing hard enough.  After a sample size of thousands of columns, we can safely say that Sharp’s performance is representative of his true quality.

Relievers, Please

In assessing the Braves at the All Star Break, my prevailing sense is “how is this team 16 games over .500?”  The pitching has been phenomenal, but it’s painful to look at the current batting lineup, where most of the starters are hitting under .250 (and not drawing enough walks to make up for their low averages).  As usual, the Braves are getting below-average production from the outfield spots, and this despite the fact that Nate McLouth has exceeded expectations.  Martin Prado got off to a terrible start and then got injured as he was dragging his numbers back to respectability.  Jason Heyward has been a major disappointment, struggling through injuries that raise the question as to whether he’s a German Tiger or Panther tank.  (Awesome when functioning properly, but prone to breaking down and hard to repair when they do.)  Jordan Schafer has had to fill in and his on-base percentage is below .300, which is something of a problem for a leadoff hitter. 

The outfield seems to be the most logical place to upgrade the team, ideally with a new centerfielder so Nate McLouth can become the fourth outfielder and Jordan Schafer can go back to Gwinnett.  If the Mets find themselves out of the race, then Carlos Beltran will be a logical option if Liberty Media is willing to add payroll.  Fred Wilpon is certainly looking to shed it.  Whether the Mets would be willing to help a division rival is an open question.  Maybe Frank Wren can convince them that they are really screwing the Phillies.

The other obvious spot for an upgrade is the bullpen.  The top of the pen is outstanding.  Jonny Venters, Eric O’Flaherty, and Craig Kimbrel have all been outstanding this year.  We should feel fortunate to be watching a modern incarnation of the Nasty Boys, although that happiness is tempered by the knowledge that all three pitchers are headed for a ludicrous number of innings and appearances because: (1) the Braves play a lot of close games because of the team’s weak offense; and (2) there is a huge drop-off from those three guys to the rest of the pen.  Those three pitchers combined for a 6.2 WAR.  In other words, they have been worth a tick over six wins to the Braves.  The rest of the bullpen has been worth 1.8.  By most other measures (ERA, WHIP, etc.), there is a major drop-off from those three to Scott Linebrink, George Sherrill, Scott Proctor, and whomever else is filling out the roster.  In terms of gut feel, I just don’t have confidence that the Braves can win close games when the top three have been used.  If we envision a meeting with the Phillies in October, Friday night’s game is a frightening prospect: a tight, defensive battle that is decided as soon as the Braves deploy one of their suspect relievers.  Even Saturday was dicey, as Sherrill came dangerously close to losing the game in the tenth before the Braves’ offense could win it in the eleventh.

There are three potential solutions here.  One is that the Braves use one or more of their mega-prospects in a Neftali Feliz-type role in September or October.  Julio Teheran and Arodys Vizcaino would both seem to be candidates for that task.  It would be a nice introduction to Major League Baseball: get these three guys out in a massive situation in October.  The second is that Peter Moylan and Kris Medlen will get healthy and fill roles.  I would take either of them over the Scotts.  Third, the Braves would acquire one or more relievers on the market.  Relief help is usually easy to find on the market in July.  What good does a top reliever do for a bad team when most relievers are on short-term contracts and their performance varies from year to year?  Knowing Liberty Media, they will opt for options one and two.  Regardless of what they choose, the goals are simple and achievable: (1) reduce the workload for the three top relievers by finding other options who can be trusted in the late innings of a close game; and (2) ensure that no one named Scott throws an inning of consequence in October.  

Jurrjens’ Gem

Nine innings, no runs, one hit, eight strikeouts, one walk.  According to ESPN’s Game Score measure, Jurrjens’ start was the fourth best of the season in all of baseball.  Jair’s ERA is now 1.89, which is a half a run better than anyone else in the National League.  (If you look at defensive-independent ERA, then Jurrjens drops to 16th, right behind Tim Hudson and Tommy Hanson.)  He came into his start against Texas two weeks ago with an ERA of 2.13 and he has lowered that ERA in each of his last three starts.  I keep waiting for regression to the mean and Jair keeps making great starts.

I can keep going with the stats.  Jurrjens is first in quality start percentage, fifth in WHIP, and fourth in opponents’ OPS.  (If you want to know why the Phillies and Braves have emerged as the two best teams in the NL, look at this list.  Their pitchers hold six of the top seven spots in opponents’ OPS.)  Jurrjens doesn’t strike many batters out, but the flip side is that he is highly efficient.  He’s second in the NL in fewest pitches per inning and tenth in fewest pitches per plate appearance.  While Jurrjens is like Tim Hudson and Derek Lowe in that he doesn’t strike or walk a lot of hitters, he isn’t a groundball pitcher, as his groundball to flyball ratio is less than one.  Lowe and Hudson are third and fifth in the NL in groundball ratio; Jurrjens is 37th.  Jurrjens is, however, very good at avoiding preventing line drives; he is fifth in the NL in lowest line drive percentage.  Combine that low line drive rate with Jurrjens’ fofth place showing in lowest homers allowed per nine innings and  our lesson should be that Jair is pitching to bad contact.  Opponents can put their bats on balls, but not the good parts of their bats.

ESPN’s Dan Braunstein has two interesting notes on Jurrjens’ performance last night:

• Jurrjens kept the ball down, with 63 of his 112 pitches (56.3 percent) tracked down in the zone or below it. Jurrjens got 15 of his outs and six of his eight strikeouts on low pitches. For the season, Jurrjens is 5-0 with a 1.00 ERA in five starts this season when more than 50 percent of his pitches are low.

• Jurrjens took advantage of a generous strike zone. He got 11 called strikes on pitches out of the strike zone, tying his most in a start in the last three seasons. Six of Jurrjens' eight strikeouts came on pitches out of the zone, tying his most in a start in the past three seasons. Five of those strikeouts were on pitches the Orioles chased out of the zone.

The liberal strike zone.  Jurrjens got one strikeout of Matt Wieters in the seventh on a called third strike that was a good nine inches outside.  Eric Gregg would have been proud of that one.

Ode to an Oft-Whiffing Shortstop

The Braves passed the halfway pole of the season yesterday by scoring five runs against Felix Hernandez (I know, I’m as surprised as you are) to complete a sweep of the Mariners in Seattle and move 12 games over .500.  Despite an offense that has been painful to watch, the Braves have a three-game lead over the field for the wild card spot.  As we learned repeatedly through the 90s and 00s, all that matters in baseball is getting your playoff lottery ticket.  When it comes to winning the World Series, William Munny was right: deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it. 

So why are the Braves having a good season?  The pitching is an obvious answer.  As Joe Lemire points out, the Phillies and Braves are both in striking distance of becoming the first teams in 22 years to have a team ERA below 3.00.  This morning, I want to give credit to a less obvious candidate: Alex Gonzalez.  I was not happy when the Braves swapped Yunel Escobar for Gonzalez, reasoning that we were buying high on a player who was hitting at an unsustainable level.  A year later, my fears about Gonzalez regressing to the mean offensively have been realized.  Gonzalez has a miniscule .274 on-base percentage and an OPS+ of 76, which means he is well below the norm in terms of his production at the plate.  After his 23 homers last year, he has all of seven this year.

Despite being close to Uggladom with the lumber, Gonzalez is second among the Braves’ position players in WARP (Wins Over Replacement Player).  How is that possible?  Well, according to the Baseball Prospectus, Gonzalez has been the most valuable fielder in all of the majors in 2011.  His glove work has generated ten runs of value for the Braves above and beyond what a replacement-level player would have done in the same spots; no other player in baseball is above nine runs of value.  This is one of those instances where an advanced fielding metric matches up with what our eyes tell us.  I am certainly not alone among Braves fans in having marveled at Gonzalez’s work in the field this summer.  It’s been a pleasure to follow my Twitter feed during games to see fans repeatedly compliment the guy for being an ace with the leather.  Jair Jurrjens, Derek Lowe, and Tim Hudson – a trio of low strikeout, low walk, groundball machines – ought to be particularly grateful to be playing with Gonzalez.  If there is any justice in the world, then Gonzalez will win a Gold Glove.  It’s just too bad that he’s not in the AL so he could lose to Derek Jeter.

It’s good that Gonzalez is having such a good year, because otherwise, it’s a grim season for Braves position players.  Because of an average year at the plate and a bad season in the field, Chipper has been a tick below replacement level.  Freddie Freeman has been at replacement level, which is good by the standards of Braves first basemen since Andres Gallarraga and is forgivable for a young player in his first year as a regular in the majors, but still isn’t going to get a team to the playoffs.  Whether because of a sophomore slump or bad instruction (I refuse to consider that he isn’t going to be a great player), Jason Heyward has been one of the lowest-performing right fielders in the NL.  Martin Prado has recovered from a bad start to be solidly average, but that’s a major step down from his 2010.  Nate McLouth is only passable in comparison to his lost 2010.  And the less said about Dan Uggla, the better.  The Braves have experienced a team-wide offensive collapse.  Other than Brian McCann, every player on the team is at or below expectations offensively.  That’s a sign of a coaching failure, which means that the Braves need to be thinking about making a change with the hitting coach.  It would be a shame to waste an MVP-type season from McCann, a Gold Glove-type season from Gonzalez, and a terrific season from the pitching staff collectively because Larry Parrish has apparently told the Braves to go up there and swing at everything that moves.

The team’s weak performances with the bats make me a little leery of the idea that trading for a big bat in the outfield will be a panacea.  Normally, I would look at this team and say to myself “man, we are one bat away from being right there with the Phillies.  It makes financial sense for the Braves to push themselves over the top.  Let’s not let the desire to save money in left field be the difference between making the playoffs and staying home in October.”  That said, if Parrish can turn Dan Uggla into the second-worst second baseman in the National League, then what is he going to do with Carlos Beltran? 

I can also see an argument on the part of Liberty Media that the team’s attendance does not justify an increase in the payroll.  The Braves are 15th in the majors in attendance, despite the facts that they are coming off of a season in which they made the playoffs and they have been over .500 for the vast majority of the year.  At times, it has seemed as if the Braves have more fans on the road than they do at home, a popular team that doesn’t draw at home as well as they should.  Liberty Media is not in the business of losing money, so the argument for taking on a big, expensive bat in the outfield is less persuasive than it would be if the team were drawing 35,000 per game.

How did I start this post singing the praises of Alex Gonzalez and then end on such a grim note?

An Ode to Jonny Venters

Three thoughts triggered by this article in the Baseball Prospectus about Jonny Venters($):

1. The Braves should hold a parade down Peachtree Street for whoever made the decision to convert Venters into a reliever and convinced him to drop everything but his sinker and slider:

While it might be interesting to look forward two years and speculate about what kind of money Venters could make in arbitration, it is also instructive to turn the clock back two years. In 2009, Venters was promoted to Triple-A Gwinnett after making 12 starts for Double-A Mississippi to begin the season. He posted a 5.62 ERA in 17 starts and 91 1/3 inning,s as International League hitters averaged 10.1 hits per nine innings. Venters also walked 4.1 per nine while striking out just 5.7, and it appeared that the Braves' 30th-round draft pick in 2003 had hit the wall.

However, the Braves decided to switch Venters to relief last year, telling him to junk his changeup and curveball and stick to a sinker/slider combination. It proved to be a wise decision, as Venters has been dominant since moving to the bullpen, averaging 94.5 mph on his sinker and 84.9 mph on his sinker (hat tip to Fangraphs), rare velocity for a left-hander. Many scouts believe that Venters has the best sinker in the game because of both its velocity and its movement.

"When I was a starter, I'd get tired and just run out of gas," Venters said. "I never really learned how to pace myself. I'd go all out on every pitch, then be dead by the fourth inning. Now, I can put everything I have into every pitch, and it's more fun for me to pitch that way."

Now, can the Braves replicate this decision three more times so we no longer have to trust games to Linebrink and Sherrill?

2. I doubt that Fredi has thought this through, but the Braves are saving themselves a lot of money by keeping Venters in the set-up role because relievers get paid for saves and Venters isn't getting a chance to save games.

3. It's fun to root for a team full of players from the region:

Venters and Kimbrel, a couple of Southerners, have become best friends. Venters hails from Altamonte Springs, Fla., and Kimbrel has his roots in Huntsville, Ala. Because of that friendship, Venters says he is not concerned about who generates more publicity.

"Craig and I have just a great relationship," Venters said. "We don't really care who has what role. It's just awesome for us two to be pitching together late in the game. Craig is a great kid, and we have a lot of fun. We laugh a lot down in the bullpen and have a good time until it's time to get serious and go to work."

With Venters, Kimbrel, Heyward, Chipper, Hudson, Minor, McCann, and Uggla, this team has a connection to the region that supports them, unlike some other teams in markets that allegedly love baseball a lot more than this one.

From Each According to his Ability, to Each According to his Service Time in the Majors

Tommy Hanson's outstanding performance against the Marlins last night drove home a point for me: the Braves' salaries are inversely related to their performance. Jair Jurrjens sports a league-leading 1.75 ERA and is being paid $3.25M.* Tommy Hanson's 2.59 ERA gets him $456,500. Conversely, Tim Hudson and Derek Lowe are being paid $9M and $15M and they both have ERAs a tick over four. If baseball players were paid in a truly free market, then Jurrjens and Hanson would be significantly more valuable than Hudson and Lowe, especially in light of the fact that they are younger. This would have been true even before the season (moreso for Hanson than for Jurrjens, as Jair had an injury-riddled 2010).

* - Jurrjens' ERA is unsustainable at its current microscopic level, but he is doing such a good job of preventing homers and refraining from walks that it's reasonable to think that he'll keep pitching at a high level for the Braves this year, even with a pedestrian 5.5 K/9 ratio.

A true free market does not exist because of the collective bargaining agreement between MLB and the players' union, which forces players to play for six years before they achieve free agency and three years before they are even arbitration eligible. This system makes sense in that it encourages teams to invest in their farm systems, knowing that the players they produce will be captive assets for more than a half a decade, but we shouldn't kid ourselves that baseball players are paid their true worth on an open market.

I bring up the imbalance between pay and performance because it's relevant in the discussion about paying college football players. The argument against the current system (and I have made this argument) is that players generate trmendous revenue for their schools, but they are not rewarded with a cut of the revenue, except in scrip from the company store. A free education may be valuable to some players, but for others, life in a lecture hall is just not their highest and best use. However, college sports are not unique in that they have rules preventing players from capturing the value that they create. American pro sports have similar rules, although there is a difference in scale. It's one thing to be paid six- or seven-figure salaries when you deserve eight; it's another to be paid in a barter system when you deserve thousands or millions of dollars.

There is an additional analogy to be made between college and pro sports compenation: both rely on a deferred compensation element. In baseball, young players perform for lower salaries, knowing that good performances will lead to a payday down the road. Tommy Hanson knows that he's playing for a relative pittance now, but he is positioning himself for a massive deal in 2-3 years, a deal that will be especially big because he won't have to compete against pitchers who come after him because those guys will be restricted from entering the market in the same way that Hanson is now. Likewise, college football players play for classes and room & board in the hopes that their performances will lead to NFL riches. The college system seems less equitable because Ohio State and Alabama don't end up having to pay out the deferred compensation, whereas the Braves will have to do so for Hanson and Jurrjens (or their replacements if Jair and/or Tommy leave). That said, the point remains that the NCAA's amateurism rules seem antiquated, but they are not without parallels in American pro sports. This is not a situation like English footie in days of yore when clubs could not pay their players and the players had no expectation of ever cashing in. The payout may be delayed, but it's not denied.

The Gaping Hole

In reading a typically strong effort from Joe Posnanski about the payroll sinkhole in which the Yankees will find themselves in two years, I was struck by the passage on Mark Teixeira:

Mark Teixeira (33 years old, $22.5 million). Tex has five years left on his contract after this year. I think this contract could actually work out fine. Tex plays hard, he’s a switch-hitter, he’s good defensively, he will take a walk — I think his skills could stretch out.

The problem with Tex has little to do with Tex — it’s that we live in an era in which hard-hitting first basemen are everywhere. I’ve been over this list before, but again, I would ask you to choose from these first basemen:

• Mark Teixeira
• Albert Pujols
• Adrian Gonzalez
• Miguel Cabrera
• Joey Votto
• Prince Fielder
• Ryan Howard
• Eric Hosmer

Where would you draft Tex from that list? Third? Fifth? Last? And you can throw in Ike Davis, Justin Smoak, Matt LaPorta, the surprisingly hot Gaby Sanchez, the now-third-baseman Kevin Youkilis, the surprisingly sturdy Paul Konerko, the former MVP Justin Morneau and a bunch of other young guys. Tex’s all-around play and the hope that he will age well might move him near the top. But we seem to be moving to a time where just about every team in baseball will have a first baseman who hits roughly like Mark Teixeira.

Except the Braves.

Our Pitching is Better Than your Pitching!

We are roughly one-fifth of the way through the baseball season and the Braves’ pitching has been phenomenal. One way to look at this strong run is to try to think of the last time that a Braves starter made a truly bad start. I came up with April 20, when Derek Lowe lasted only three innings against the Dodgers. Another way is to look at the Braves’ numbers in comparison to those of the Phillies, who were supposed to rival the Braves of the 90s in terms of having an all-time pitching staff. Viva the (lack of) difference:

	Braves	NL Rank	Phillies	NL Rank
Runs Allowed	2.97	1	3.27	2
ERA	2.85	1	3.06	3
Fair Run Average	3.58	1	3.78	5
Team Shutouts	6	1	6	1
HR/9	.5	1	.6	3
BB/9	2.5	1	2.6	2
K/9	7.6	6	8.4	1
K/BB	3.00	2	3.29	1
Hits/9	7.4	2	7.8	4
WHIP	1.102	1	1.145	2
VORP	56.5	2	48.3	4
BABIP	.272	13	.287	9
Ground Ball %	52.0%	1	49.7%	5
Line Drive %	14.9%	1	17.5%	6

Other than the facts that: (1) the Phillies’ pitchers are better at striking out opponents; and (2) the Braves’ pitchers have been a little lucky in the BABIP department (or the Braves’ defense has been surprisingly good; the team is third in the NL in defensive efficiency, despite the fact that this was supposed to be a weakness coming into the season), the Braves’ hurlers have turned in the better performance so far in the season. Drilling down into the numbers, we see a few particular strengths:

1. As one would expect from a pitching staff with Tim Hudson, Derek Lowe, and Jair Jurrjens comprising 60% of the starting rotation, the Braves do a great job of forcing opponents to hit ground balls and they allow very few homers or walks. It stands to reason that this staff would excel at two of the three true outcomes (walks and homers) and be less dominant in the third (strikeouts). That said, the Braves’ strikeout numbers are quite good, in no small part because Brandon Beachy has been a revelation. Beachy is seventh in the NL in K/9, a hair behind Roy Halladay in sixth place. Small sample size, I know, but wow!

2. The Braves have allowed four unearned runs all season. By way of comparison, the average NL team has allowed 13 and the Phillies have allowed nine.

3. As evidenced by that league-leading line drive percentage (not to mention the league-leading number in fewest homers allowed), the Braves are not permitting opposing batters to make solid contact.

Put all of this together and you see why the team was willing to let Roger McDowell escape with a two-week suspension for his vaudeville act in San Francisco. You also see that when Dan Uggla and Martin Prado start hitting and if the pitchers can sustain this level of performance, then the Braves will have a legitimate shot at being the best team in the National League.

An Annual Complaint

In every season since the end of the 14-year run of division titles, the Braves have finished with an actual record that is worse than their run differential.  Continuing with the trend, the Braves are 14-15 in 2011, but with their run differential, they should be 17-12.  The Braves are the only team in baseball with a record three games off of their expected record. In baseball parlance, this means that the Braves have been unlucky, but when the same thing happens again and again, can it really be seen as bad luck?  Here is what I wrote about the subject last May:

Sure enough, we're six weeks into the 2010 season and the Braves are two games under .500, but with their run differential, they should be two games over. Normally, I wouldn't care about about a two-game disparity, but coming on the heels of four straight "unlucky" seasons, this is a a problem. I'm at a loss to come up with an explanation, so I need some help. The bullpen is normally the first explanation for a team underperforming its expected record, but the pen was good last year and it has been good this year. Here is the best I can come up with:

1. The Braves are not good at situational hitting, so they struggle to eke a run across when they really need one.

2. The Braves are slow, so they can't manufacture a run in a close game.

3. Bobby isn't a good tactical manager at the end of a close game.

4. Karma is punishing us for 1991-2005.

5. ???

This year, we can add a suspect bullpen back into the mix.  We should have seen this issue coming, but the Braves basically replaced Billy Wagner and Takashi Saito with Scott Linebrink and George Sherrill.  The club’s approach was that Craig Kimbrel and and Jonny Venters were replacing Wagner and Saito, but then who was replacing Kimbrel and Venters?  Thus, the team has fairly reliable eighth and ninth inning guys (although this weekend was not a good one for Kimbrel), but no bridge to them, especially with Peter Moylan injured.  How many times has Venters had to enter a game to put out a fire started by one of the other relievers in the pen?

Otherwise, the other factors remain true, with the only difference being that Bobby Cox’s tactical issues have been replaced by those of Fredi Gonzalez.  I have thoroughly enjoyed Braves Journal’s invective launched at Fredi over the past several weeks, but yesterday’s post takes the cake:

You have to hand it to the Braves players. Despite heroic efforts by the manager to lose the game, they managed, barely, to pull this one out and salvage at least one win in the series. Fredi’s utter contempt for what wins in baseball began with his version of Bobby‘s Sunday Surrender lineup. He did start Brian McCann — with no off-day tomorrow and a lefty going, so if you’re ever going to rest him, it’s now — but decided to give a start, at first base, to Joe Mather, who has about as much business in the major leagues as he does leading an expedition to the headwaters of the Amazon. Somehow, it worked out, and no doubt Fredi will inform us that he is a super-genius and should never be criticized or questioned.

Watching Mather try to get a bunt down on Friday night was painful.  The episode illustrates the facts that the Braves aren’t good at situational hitting (compare the hit and run that the Cards executed in the ninth to tie the game with … well, everything that the Braves do), that the bench is weak (the appalling lack of pinch hits from this team are a major reason why they struggle in close games), and that Joe Mather is not a good major leaguer. 

One other factor contributing to the Braves’ poor record in close games: Tim McClelland.  Showing the value of a degree from Michigan State, McClelland put on the worst umpiring performance I have ever seen.  I kept comparing him to Frank Drebin, with the major difference being that Drebin over-embellished every call, whereas McClelland couldn’t be bothered to make a strike call for several seconds after a pitch.



  McClelland’s third strike call on Freddie Freeman in the eleventh was unbelievably bad, as the pitch was both low and outside by several inches.  In fact, the call was so bad that the Braves decided to show a replay of it on the big board as Tony LaRussa was over-managing by making a pitching change with two outs in the eleventh.  I have never seen the Braves use the giant screen for the useful purpose of showing a call that went against the home team.  Apparently, McClelland hadn’t seen such a tactic either, because he immediately started complaining to Fredi about it.  You know, because it’s easier for McClelland to complain about the video board than to actually do his job by calling balls and strikes in a competent, consistent manner.   

Quick Thought on the Braves

The Braves' three-game winning streak ended last night at Petco Park. Likewise, the team's improved patience at the plate that saw them walk 16 times in three game against the defending world champions disappeared, as the Braves managed to go for an entire 13-inning game without getting a single free pass. The series against the Padres matches the teams with the two lowest on-base percentages in the NL. Not surprisingly for two teams that can't get on base, the Braves are 14th in the NL in runs per game and the Padres are dead last. Also not surprisingly, two teams that combine to average 6.71 runs per game were 3-3 at the end of nine innings.

Based on a subjective feeling that the Braves are hacking at everything, I expected to look at the league offensive numbers and see the team at the bottom of the NL in walks. That's not the case. The Braves are fifth in the NL in walks, while the similarly punchless Padres are second. The problem with these teams' offenses is not that they are hacking at everything; it's that they aren't getting hits when they put balls in play, as they are 15th and 16th in the NL in BABIP. Now, I only know enough about advanced baseball stats to be dangerous to myself, but doesn't this imply that both teams are a little unlucky? I know that BABIP isn't a luck issue for batters the same way it is for pitchers, but there has to be something of a luck element going on here. The Braves are second in the NL in homers, they're fifth in walks, and they're right at league average in strikeouts. Their three true outcomes are indicative of a team that should be a little above average in offense, not scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Anyway, these are the things I tell myself after they scored three runs in 13 innings.

Question for Fredi

Like your team, the Dodgers have a top-heavy lineup. You're in the 12th inning. One of the Dodgers' two good hitters just doubled with one out. Their other good hitter, a guy hitting .411, is at the plate. The next three guys in the order are batting .221, .000 (the pitcher is second in the sequence), and .190. (My apologies for using batting averages after complaining about Mark Bradley doing the same. I am doing this on the run.) First base is open and you lose if you give up any runs in the inning, so there is no difference between having one runner on or two runners on.

So, with this in mind, how in the world do you let Cristhian Martinez pitch to Matt Kemp so he can give up the winning home run? Is there some law that says that Braves managers have to make atrocious bullpen decisions in the last game of a series at Chavez Ravine?

The Braves’ Lineup and Sports Media in General

When I saw the Braves’ batting lineup on Opening Day, it didn’t take 140 characters to convey disappointment:

My first ever Fredi complaint: McLouth hitting second?

After Joe Sheehan wrote in Sports Illustrated that Gonzalez was making a mistake by putting his best hitter so low and his worst hitter (or one of his worst hitters) so low, Rob Neyer has also made this point, although he downplays the significance of the batting order:

Of course, you know as well as David Schoenfield that it really makes little difference where McLouth and Heyward bat. Granted, McLouth's will cost the Braves a few runs over the course of the season if he stays in the No. 2 slot all season. Which he won't. And Heyward might account for two or three more runs if he were batting third or fourth rather than sixth. But the odds against the Braves missing a playoff spot because of Fredi Gonzalez's batting orders -- as opposed to the players he actually uses -- are exceptionally long.

Really, this is about aesthetics more than anything. It just looks wrong for McLouth to be listed four slots ahead of Heyward. And yes, I wish Gonzalez would stop it. If only because we don't get to see Heyward hit quite as often. And because we have to watch McLouth bat more.

An interesting discussion ensued in the comments section.  As I read the article, I thought to myself that this is a good indication that sports media is far, far ahead of where it was when I was becoming a baseball fan in the 80s, let alone what the media must have been like during baseball’s glory days.  (You know, the era when the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers played in the World Series every year, because the true test for a sports league is whether the teams in Gotham are doing well.)  Not only do we understand baseball much better now as a result of the proliferation of sabermetric analysis, but that analysis has infiltrated a number of different platforms.  Thus, if I’m dissatisfied that AJC columnists still talk in terms of batting averages, I have a plethora of options, both team-specific and national-oriented.  You have a relatively minor issue like Jason Heyward’s spot in the batting order and a number of smart takes on it.

The Heyward issue reminds me of a terrific piece by James Fallows in last month’s Atlantic about the changes to political media.  Fallows is generally excellent at exploding hysteria-producing myths (his writing about China is excellent and it led to a terrific piece about America's strengths and weaknesses) and his piece on the media was no different.  He does a nice job of attacking the notion that we are somehow less informed now because of the media:

[Jill Lepore, a professor of American history at Harvard] added that since the 1940s, political scientists had tried to measure how well American citizens understood the basic facts and concepts of the nation and world they live in. “It actually is a constant,” she said. “There is a somewhat intractable low level of basic political knowledge.” When I asked Samuel Popkin, a political scientist at UC San Diego, whether changes in the media had made public discussion less rational than before, he sent back a long list of irrationalities of yesteryear. One I remembered from my youth: the taken-for-granted certainty among some far-right and far-left groups in the 1960s (including in my very conservative hometown) that Lyndon Johnson had ordered the killing of John Kennedy. One I had forgotten: Representative John Anderson of Illinois, who received nearly 6 million votes as an Independent presidential candidate against Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter in 1980, three times introduced legislation to amend the Constitution so as to recognize the “law and authority” of Jesus Christ over the United States.

Fallows then identifies four potential problems with the direction of media before proceeding to cite potential evolved responses that can address them:

If we accept that the media will probably become more and more market-minded, and that an imposed conscience in the form of legal requirements or traditional publishing norms will probably have less and less effect, what are the results we most fear? I think there are four:

• that this will become an age of lies, idiocy, and a complete Babel of “truthiness,” in which no trusted arbiter can establish reality or facts;

• that the media will fail to cover too much of what really matters, as they are drawn toward the sparkle of entertainment and away from the depressing realities of the statehouse, the African capital, the urban school system, the corporate office when corners are being cut;

• that the forces already pulverizing American society into component granules will grow all the stronger, as people withdraw into their own separate information spheres;

• and that our very ability to think, concentrate, and decide will deteriorate, as a media system optimized for attracting quick hits turns into a continual-distraction machine for society as a whole, making every individual and collective problem harder to assess and respond to.

It’s an interesting exercise to apply these elements to sports media, if for no other reason than to illustrate that sports fans seem to have fewer of the qualms about the direction of media than political junkies.

1. Truthiness – there is a certain validity to this criticism.  With every team having its own media apparatus, we have evolved into a post-modern world where all the truth adds up to one big lie.  Yahoo! publishes a heavily-researched series of pieces illustrating that USC was looking the other way as Reggie Bush got improper benefits, so the rest of the college football world nods its collective head at the Trojans’ ultimate punishment while the USC fan media refuses to go along and thereby provides its readers with the content to reject what everyone else accepts.  This pattern plays out with every college football team that finds itself under the NCAA microscope.  That said, this just doesn’t seem to be a big issue because fans can differentiate between USC’s Rivals site and credible media outlets.  At the end of the day, USC fans can think that they were railroaded, while everyone else dismisses that position as self-interested claptrap.  Is that any different than how things would have been before the media avalanche?

2. Too much fluff – yes, there is plenty of sports fluff (watch College Gameday if you disagree), but there has always been sports fluff.  The difference now is that there are more outlets competing for eyeballs, so there is far more material with substance.  AS a Michigan fan, I’m privileged to get to read MGoBlog’s UFRs after every game.  For those of us who want analysis that goes deeper than “Michigan State was the tougher team,” there are a wealth of options.  And moving away from x’s and o’s to macro issues, there is far more investigative work done now by outlets like Yahoo! than there ever was before.  The various scandals that have broken in college football over the past several months have led to several writers questioning whether the sport is destroying itself, but what we’re really seeing is the net result of an increase in scrutiny because there are more media outlets covering the sport.  A little more attention and transparency are not bad things.

3. Balkanization – Let’s see, we have ESPN, which covers just about every major sport in depth and employs a small army of writers.  We have Sports Illustrated, which has gone from a weekly magazine to a weekly magazine plus a detailed web site that has a number of talented sport-specific writers.  We have Yahoo!, CBS Sports, SB Nation, and Deadspin.  These are all national sites.  The avalanche of media includes a bevy of team-specific entities, but it has also increased the volume of national coverage.  There are plenty of outlets to suck fans into the vortex of national issues.  Fans are now like the yeoman farmers of the first half of the 19th century who feared that the national economy would pull them out of their traditional existence; for better or worse, we are pulled into a world where we all have opinions on Brett Favre.

4. The Continual Distraction Machine – Mrs. B&B is surely nodding her head right now.  On the one hand, this is a valid criticism.  As opposed to going to games and paying attention to the actual contest, we are now distracted by our smart phones, Kiss Cam, the cheerleaders, and t-shirt cannons, among other niceties.  We’re less likely to come out of a game thinking “man, we should have run more screen-and-rolls with Hinrich and Horford.”  On the other hand, if the criticism is that media is trending towards shorter, fluffier articles, then I’m not inclined to buy that criticism in a world of SmartFootball.com and ZonalMarking.net.

In sum, despite the fact that I devote a good chunk of this blog to media criticism, I see the progression of sports media has being very positive.  We have more choices and content from which to choose.  Moreover, with fewer barriers to entry, the current sports media universe is more likely to produce and reward superior writers because consumers can choose winners with clicks as opposed to editors choosing winners based on who interviews the best.  The question that now arises is whether these same positive developments apply to coverage of weightier issues, or if political media is inherently different than sports media.