I feel like I haven’t talked about Jason Heyward as much as I probably should have. I was constantly reading about his woes, and shoulder issues, and change of pace at the plate, etc. on other sites so I figured you guys had enough of that too. But with Spring Training on the horizon it’s probably a good idea to take a look at what was wrong with Jason Heyward last year and what could hold him back in the future.
The first topic will be a bit briefer than the second because no one really knows why Jason Heyward had such a rough season. The most likely reasons however, are the shoulder issues he suffered throughout the season as well as an entire year being influenced by Larry Parrish. If you don’t know Larry Parrish brought an extremely aggressive approach to the team and even Chipper Jones (14.3 BB% for his career and 16% or higher the past three seasons) saw a significant drop in his walk rate.
Jason Heyward’s walk rate in 2011 was 11.2%. That is still an above average walk rate but he dropped off three points from his rookie season (14.6%) when we would expect it to stay the same or improve. It is possible that Heyward’s freshman campaign was an above average plate discipline year for him but it is unlikely. Here are Heyward’s walk rates in advanced leagues the past couple of years:
As we rapidly approach February and the start of spring training the Braves still haven’t made any trade or free-agent moves, while our NL East rivals have massively improved this offseason. Miami leads the way, but Washington has made substantial improvements and the Phillies are as strong as ever, it doesn’t look good does it?
But maybe it isn’t all doom and gloom.
Coming into the offseason, I and I’m sure every other Braves fan had high hopes that we would be acquiring a new power hitting outfielder through trades. This never happened, but it meant that we didn’t dispose of the two players who were most linked with trades, Jair Jurrjens and Martin Prado, both of which I feel are valuable players.
Jurrjens was the league leader with a 1.87 ERA and led the National League with 12 wins heading into the All Star break, so why would we dream of trading arguably our best starter? It was his return from the All Star break that was concerning, achieving an ERA of 6.26 in four starts. Before he could find his stuff again, he was placed on the DL after his surgically repaired knee was giving him discomfort. The righty has struggled with injuries and his knee requires a brace to start the 2012 season, but when he isn’t injured Jurrjens has proved he is a solid starter and one that can be relied on to get a result. Yes, we have the top right handed and fourth overall prospect in the league in Julio Teheran ready to fill the void left by Jurrjens, but in a division that is stronger than ever, do we really want to risk a young arm?
Martin Prado has been one of the Braves most solid players in the past few years, last year even with a staph infection that placed him on the DL Prado had just 18 less hits and one less run than Braves hit leader Freddie Freeman in 20 less at-bats. In 2010 Prado led the Braves line-up with 184 hits and 100 runs, 17 more than second place Jason Heyward. If those stats don’t impress you then his hardworking work ethic and positive clubhouse influence are surely good reasons not to have traded the versatile Venezuelan.
But keeping those two in the Braves ranks aren’t the only positives of not getting involved in the trade-market. Most importantly we didn’t part ways with one of our highly coveted prospects. Imagine if we had acquired Orioles OF Adam Jones but given up a future starter like Randall Delgado or Mike Minor, although it’s great to win now, sometimes patience is more important. With such a rich crop of prospects the Braves future is bright and it would be disappointing to see us part ways with some of these guys to end up with another Nate McLouth on our hands.
Another reason to be positive about 2012 is the juggernaut back end of our bullpen. 2011 NL Rookie of the Year Craig Kimbrel notched 46 saves in 54 attempts, striking out 127 batters and allowing just 3 home runs in his debut season. Jonny Venters is just as impressive, a 1.84 ERA in 88 innings with 96 strikeouts and 2 home runs allowed is an impressive feat and paired with closer Kimbrel combine for a dangerous duo. That’s not forgetting 2011’s most underappreciated player, Eric O’Flaherty. While all the attention was on the aforementioned, O’Flaherty was quietly achieving a MLB record 0.98 ERA in 78 appearances, the first pitcher ever to achieve an ERA of less than 1.00 in over 70 appearances. The likely return of Peter Moylan and Kris Medlen, along with the impressive Arodys Vizcaino means Fredi Gonzalez will be less reliant on his big three in 2012, allowing the fatigue experienced in September to hopefully, ne non-existent in 2012.
Rebounds are another reason to be positive; I’ve already mentioned Jair Jurrjens and Martin Prado who I both expect to return strongly from stints on the DL and slumps in 2011. But perhaps the biggest disappointment last year was the slump that Jason Heyward endured. With 169 less plate appearances in 2011 than in his rookie season Heyward hit 54 less times, hit four less home runs and achieved an OBP of .319, worse than Nate McLouth. If Heyward can rebound this season and avoid injuries we could see one of the pieces of the puzzle that was missing last September fit right into place.
Braves fans, don’t be negative about 2012. So we didn’t splash out on free-agents or hit the trade market as hard as we would have initially liked, but look at the positives. We have strong pitching, both in our rotation and our bullpen and our batting is only set to improve with Prado and Heyward hopefully rebounding from injuries in 2011. Our rivals may have improved, but we weren’t afraid to stay firm and keep an already strong team intact and I think that’s the best route we could have taken this season. Let’s go Braves!
You guys might have noticed already but here comes the official announcement. Recently we have had a few staff changes on Tomahawk Take including adding two new writers, Sam Fry and Adam Lawson. Adam’s first piece went up two days ago and Sam’s is sure to come soon as well. Unfortunately Clint, and Mike will no longer be with us here on the Take and I would like to wish them the best of luck with whatever they are doing at the moment and in the future. I will be stepping into the editor role and Fred will be holding on to his previous role of Senior Staff Writer.
As always we are going to continue to give you guys quality Braves content, and we hope that you stick around and check out all of our hard work.
Thanks for all of your support, we couldn’t do this without you.
I did my scouting report on Terdoslavich a while a go, so I am just going to link to it for this. I would do more, but since there has been no baseball between now and when I wrote the first report on him I figured not much of it would change. Look forward to next Wednesday’s report on Zeke Spruill however, he is one of the less covered prospects in the Braves system. It should be a pretty interesting read if you’re trying to get into the Braves minor leagues and prospects.
*I’d like to use this post to say that I am absolutely stoked that Prince Fielder has signed with the Tigers! If the Nationals had gotten him it really would have been a chore getting to the postseason. You can use the comments here to react to Prince signing with Detroit/how you feel about the Braves chances now.
Since my top ten scouting reports are coming out every Wednesday, we are going to have to talk something other than Braves baseball, or the NFL playoffs this Sunday (although I want the Super Bowl to come down to Patriots/49ers because I hate the Ravens, and think Eli is a wuss). The Prince Fielder saga actually has a lot to do with the Braves and if he does sign with the Nationals then he will make life a lot more stressful for die hard Bravos. If Fielder becomes the best first baseman in the NL East he will have out the Nationals on an even level with the Braves, and playing in October will become a much bigger task than it is right now. We need to be crossing our fingers for him to sign somewhere else.
The good news though is that Fielder has not yet signed anywhere. This makes me think that Fielder really doesn’t want to sign with the Nationals. They have been seriously pursuing him for a while now and nothing has happened. There are realistically two reasons for this:
Scott Boras needed more teams to get involved so he could start his annual bidding war, and the Rangers needed to finish up with Yu Darvish.
Prince really doesn’t want to go to Washington and was waiting for the Rangers to sign Yu before they came after him.
While both of these could easily be possible I think that it has to be the second scenario. My reasoning is simply that I hope this is the case. Of course I don’t want Fielder to sign with the Nationals, by all means let them keep playing Adam everyday that’s perfectly fine. Our chances at post season baseball are much better that way. So keep your fingers crossed, with every day that goes by it seems less and less likely that the Nationals will land the slugger, and that’s an ideal situation for us all, even if the Rangers take over as the Juggernaut of baseball.
I hope everyone has a nice start to their weekend. Your editor is going gambling this weekend folks. That’s right, daddy needs a new pair of shoes. Hopefully I’m slightly more successful than my bachelor party in Vegas last summer. I’m probably lucky that I still have a job, own a laptop, and have clothes to wear after that trip. But I did meet and spend an evening partying with the lead singer of Blues Traveler. A story for another day.
Thank you for your continued support of Tomahawk Take.
This isn’t good enough to earn the ‘Take Classic Video of the Day tag, but it’s noteworthy. I guess. If you’re into this kind of stuff. I’ve personally never thought that the whole Eastbound & Down/Kenny Powers schtick was very funny, but it makes me about the only guy in my office who is in that category.
This season Kenny Powers plays for a team in Myrtle Beach. And I’m sure he’ll predictably find his way to all of the garbage on the beach that relates to college humor that I stopped laughing about ten years ago. Alright, maybe three years ago but still.
This is exciting news for some of you I’m sure. The show will premiere on Sunday February 10th at 10 PM. Set your DVR’s now. Interesting note, my wife’s ex-boyfriend plays for the real Myrtle Beach Pelicans. So that’s good.
Kenny Powers, signed on at HBO for another season. Carry on.
This is Bill James. We’re going to be examining Mr. James’ projections for most of the everyday Braves’ on the 2012 club. Today we’ll take a look at Freddie Freeman. All projection data gathered from the fine folks at FanGraphs.
The key with any second year player who enjoyed success as a rookie is the ability to be able to sustain. The book is out on how to get you out now. Word is leaking in your division of your perceived weaknesses or flaws and word quickly travels fast to the rest of baseball with the proof being in the form of video tape, data, or advanced scouting tools.
As we all saw last year with Jason Heyward, there’s no one who is immune to the often discussed ‘sophomore slump’. By looking at the Bill James projection for Freddie Freeman’s upcoming season, he believes Freeman will be able to escape a tough second year campaign with a solid and respectable line of production.
I was very surprised at the plate maturity Freeman displayed last year. I didn’t expect anything close to his production as a rookie and I’m sure many within the Atlanta organization felt the same way. He had a year that in many ways was as good or better than Jason Heyward’s 2010 rookie season, despite not being quite as heralded of a prospect.
Freeman went .346/.448/.795 as a rookie last season and cracked 21 home runs. He struck out over 140 times and his K rate was 22.4%. One big improvement that James sees coming for Freeman lies within those strikeouts. James expects the young first baseman to strike out reasonably less in 2012, lowering his K rate to 19.4%.
If you believe in Bill James, his message to us about Freddie Freeman’s sophomore season is that his contact rate improvement will be the biggest factor in keeping this young player on the right track in his second full big league season.
![Yawn 2[1]](http://tomahawktake.com/files/2012/01/Yawn-21.gif){kind=small}
Blogging Dirty
Call to the Pen
Dawn of the Dawg
FanSided
Fantasy CPR
Soaring Down South
Thrasher Backer
Around the Foghorn
Birds Watcher
Blog Red Machine
BoSox Injection
Chicken Friars
Climbing Tal's Hill
Cubbies Crib
District on Deck
Halo Hangout
Jays Journal
Kings of Kauffman
Lasorda's Lair
Marlin Maniac
Motor City Bengals
Nolan Writin'
Puckett's Pond
Rays Colored Glasses
Redbird Rants
Reviewing the Brew
Rising Apple
Rox Pile
Rum Bunter
Singin' A's
Sodo Mojo
Southside Showdown
That Balls Outta Here
Venom Strikes
Wahoo's on First
Yanks Go Yard
Loading ...
