Atlanta Braves and the pursuit of 40 WAR

The math isn’t quite adding up yet…but for the Braves to become a true playoff contender, there’s some WAR fighting that needs to happen.

The Atlanta Braves did not contend this season… that much is certain. But opinions can rightly differ about how close they might have been.

At the end of October, I ran through a series of posts that reviews each non-pitching position on the field and compared these – and the Braves’ players manning these spots – to their counterparts across the major leagues.

Here’s the summary post about all of that – you can use that to jump into any specific position discussion from there.

But in these days of analytics, there’s a fairly simple stat (granted, there’s a lot of meat behind it) that has been holding steady as a bellweather for playoff contention as I’ve been studying it for the past few seasons: the fangraphs WAR.

The Magic Number

Here are the charts:

Wanna make the playoffs? You need 40 total fWAR to get there. That’s as plain as I can state it… and the numbers back me up:

2017 PLAYOFF TEAMS: Nationals, Indians, Red Sox, Astros, Cubs, DBacks, Dodgers, Yankees, Twins, Rockies.
2017 TEAMS OVER 40 WAR: Nationals, Indians, Red Sox, Astros, Cubs, DBacks, Dodgers, Yankees, Cardinals

The Twins were an exception on the positive side: 34.1. So were the Rockies (31.9). Both were ousted immediately as nature corrected itself, but those indeed are roughly the lowest team WAR numbers seen since I’ve been monitoring this data. Minnesota was 12th overall in total team WAR and Colorado 15th, so both were at least credibly close to the Top 10.

On the flip side, the Cardinals were a reverse exception… they were the last team over 40 WAR this season, but they couldn’t quite pull it all together in that last month to overcome leads built earlier by others out West.

The Braves? 18th in the majors at 26.4 fWAR (tied with Cincinnati, who always seems to have higher numbers than they put onto the standings – I blame their stadium). That’s still noticeably up from recent years.

But there it is: 8 of the 10 playoff teams were over 40 WAR; the others were in the Top 15 overall, and one team under-achieved. 40 should be the goal.

The Braves’ Needs

What they need is 14 more fWAR.

8 players scored above 1.0 fWAR in 2017; Freeman, Inciarte and the catchers combined for 12.7 by themselves.
6 pitchers were at or above that mark… and none of them above 1.8

Addition by subtraction? The math works on that, too:

Bartolo Colon only accounted for 0.3… or 0.1 total if you “add” his offense.
Josh Collmenter and 6 others combined for -1.9
Emilio Bonifacio scored -0.6… barely ‘beating’ Matt Kemp‘s -0.5
Jace/Adonis/Danny: combined for a -1.1 off the bench.

We’ve already mentioned – a lot – that Atlanta needs more out of left field, shortstop, and third base. Right field is semi-optional, but something in the 2.0 range should be the minimum expectation.

If the 8 positions averaged 3.0 WAR, the bench 0.5, the starting pitchers 2.0, and the relievers 0.5… you would get about 42 fWAR. That’s what this team needs.

That’s not unreasonable from Dansby Swanson and Ozzie Albies. Swanson would have to bounce back significantly, but Albies needs merely to stay on his current trajectory.

More from Tomahawk Take

Matt Kemp… nagging injuries, sure, but the Braves can’t afford to have him limp through the Summer again.

Third base? Johan Camargo could have gotten to 3 WAR, given the chance (1.2 over 82 games, a lot of that part time (256 PAs)).

On the pitching side… well, you know: the kids will take a bit of time, yet.

So the bottom line is… pretty much what we’ve we’ve been looking at all along: the Braves will need more production out of the lower-producing spots on the field and to cut off the spots that aren’t helping. That with better pitching overall.

Can they get there? I think plausibly so, with extra help.

Next: Double Gold!

It’s what we’ve been saying all along. But now with the numbers to back it up.

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