2017 Atlanta Braves Season Preview: Left-Handed Reliever Ian Krol

The first pitcher to be previewed is left-handed reliever Ian Krol. After having his best season ever in his first year in Atlanta, there’s good reason to be excited for his future.

The Braves acquired Ian Krol from the Detroit Tigers after the 2015 season ended.

Just by looking at the responses to this tweet below, you can tell exactly what Braves’ fans thought of this acquisition:

…yeah… not so good. However, the fans weren’t necessarily upset that we got the 6’1″ 210-pound lefty in return, it was the fact that we just traded away Cameron Maybin, our 0.6 WAR center fielder.

We can look back and laugh about it now, however, in 2015, trading Maybin after the season was over seemed like nonsense for two reasons:

• We had just suffered through two horrendous years of Melvin Upton Jr. manning center. Here comes along a player who actually has a positive WAR and we ship him out after one season? 
• We sold way-low on Maybin.

Maybin’s 2015 splits are exactly that– a complete split. Pre-All-Star break, he hit .289 with a very respectable OBP of .356, both of which would’ve been top-10 for NL outfielders had he carried them through the end of the season.

For good reason, teams were interested in trading for Maybin. The best fit seemed to be the Giants, who were in the playoff hunt and needed an outfielder badly with Hunter Pence being out with an injury.

Could we have gotten an over-payment out of them? Probably.

The Braves held onto Maybin, and he hit a brick wall. His second half slash line was .240/.289/.311. Along with his home run numbers, his steal numbers completely fell off in the second part of the season, as well.

Once the offseason came, anything that we would’ve gotten for Maybin was a sell-low– or was it? 

Krol’s 2016 Season

Krol was a very nice surprise last season and was one of the bright spots for the major league club.

After three seasons in which Krol averaged under 30 innings per year, he ate up 51 innings in 2016 and had a career-best 3.18 ERA.

The lefty was especially good at home, where his ERA was 2.76 and his BAA was .226. On the road, however, his ERA dipped to 3.74 with a not-so-good .323 BAA.

94.2% of Krol’s pitches were either a fastball or a cutter, with the fastball making up about two-thirds of them. He sits around 94 mph on his fastball and his cutter about 87 mph.

This is one of the main reasons why he had his best season ever last year. From 2015, with the Tigers, to last season, Krol’s curveball usage went down from 9.0% to 3.2% and his cutter usage shot up from 22.5% to 29.4%.

He was throwing pitches that he was more comfortable with last season and it worked out well for him.

2017 Season Preview

The 25-year-old was a part of the 2016 Atlanta Braves bullpen which accounted for 567.1 IP, the fifth highest in MLB.

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If the Braves’ starting rotation can improve upon their 2016 IP total (28th in MLB last season) and ERA (28th, also), some of the unproven relievers will almost certainly see less innings this season. Krol doesn’t figure to be one of those guys.

Krol, who had the second-most strikeouts out of the pen last season, projects to be a leaned-on option who is not competing for the closer job. He doesn’t have blow-by-you stuff like Arodys Vizcaino or Mauricio Cabrera, but with a BB% of only 6.0% in 2016, he’s earned his spot on the team.

Steamer Projections predicts that Krol will have another productive season in 2017, pitching to a 3.36 ERA in what would be a career-high 55.0 innings.

These projections seem entirely fair as it will be unlikely that he sustains his BB%, which was the 11th-best mark of NL relievers with at least 50 innings last season. Steamer Projections predicts this number to rise to a more realistic 9.3%.

As the best lefty reliever in the Braves’ pen, expectations are starting to fall onto Ian Krol’s shoulders, especially as the Braves are starting to gear up for NL East contention. 2017 could be huge in his pursuit of being a staple in the Braves’ pen moving forward.

Next: 2017 Braves Season Preview: Dansby Swanson

Note: The Ian Krol- Cameron Maybin trade looked like a legitimately good trade by both sides as Maybin had by far his best year ever with the Tigers last season. The Tigers, however, pulled a similar move that the Braves did and traded Maybin after only one season to the Los Angeles Angels for Vicor Alcantara, who is now ranked 26th in Detroit’s farm system by MLB.com.