Atlanta Braves Infielders Are Complaining About the Infield

Turner Field Infield Conditions May Trigger Formal Complaint to the Players’ Association

Grounds for a complaint.  Well, this story seemed to come out of left field yesterday when it broke from ESPN:

"Unhappy over the conditions of the Turner Field infield, Atlanta Braves players are considering contacting the players’ union to see if they can pressure their own club to make improvements, a source within the organization told ESPN on Thursday."

There’s a lot of rampant speculation that is going along with this report – speculation repeated without any substantiation on any site in which this story has been copied – that the Braves are going cheap with field maintenance this season, given that it’s their last year in at Turner Field.

The bigger question might be this:  is there evidence to back up the claim that field conditions are sub-standard?

Unfortunately, the answer seems to be… yes.

Fielding Logs for Turner Field Games in 2016

• Game 1 vs Nationals:  2 errors (Aybar/ss, Beckham/2b)
• Game 2 vs Nationals:  1 error  (Freeman/1b)
• Game 3 vs Cardinals:  2 errors (Gyorko/ss – both)
• Game 4 vs Cardinals:  6 errors (Diaz/ss, Carpenter/3b/Adams/1b)(Garcia/3b, Aybar/ss, Markakis/rf)
• Game 5 vs Cardinals:  1 error   (Wong/2b)
• Game 6 vs Dodgers:    3 errors (Turner/3b [2], Seager/ss)
• Game 7 vs Dodgers:    3 errors (Seager/ss, Markakis/rf, Teheran/p)
• Game 8 vs. Dodgers:   4 errors (Thompson/of, Garcia/3b [2], Francoeur or Smith)

Summary:  between both opponents, 22 errors in 6 games, all but 4 of these committed by infielders.

Notes of relevance:

1. I make no distinction between ‘fielding’ and ‘throwing’ errors here.  Most of the infield errors committed in these games have been of the fielding variety.  However, fielding issues can leading to throwing issues:  Adonis Garcia (for instance) picked up a throwing error on a play in which he never really fielded the ball cleanly at all.
2. Anecdotal evidence tends to support the ‘bad field’ theory:  the Dodgers had no errors as a team until they showed up at Turner Field this week.
3. More anecdotalism:  the Mets are generally considered to be a poor fielding team.  At this point, they had committed just 4 errors as a team.
4. In the Braves’ road games (4 at Washington, 3 in Miami), there were just 3 Braves’ errors… all of them by Garcia.
5. The very first pair of chances Jed Gyorko had in the first Cardinals’ game both resulted in errors.

All of this said, we aren’t really dealing with current Gold-Glovers here:  Aybar’s error counts have jumped since 2007 – typically 15-20 per season… slightly more fielding than throwing.  Jed Gyorko isn’t a shortstop.  Garcia has been barely adequate at third base (upon further reflection, even that’s a generous statement – he’s actually just bad there).  The errors by Seager and Turner are more telling.

UPDATE (3pm Friday):

This is interesting, for it completely contradicts everything said from ESPN’s source:

Next: Throwdown Match: Markakis or Heyward?

We’ve heard nothing from the Braves about this budding controversy… but if nothing changes, we likely will soon

.  I’ll now change that to “get the popcorn.”