How Atlanta Braves position players stack up in the NL East: 2nd base
This is the third in a series on ranking the Atlanta Braves position players against their counterparts in the NL East. Today, it’s the Keystone sack.
The Atlanta Braves have had an interesting group of second baseman man the position for them over the years.
Unlike first base, which had seen a Who’s Who of players checking in and out like families at a time share, this position has been a little more stable over the past couple of decades.
When doing the research for the first basemen post (and a few other recent looks at that position), I was marveling at just how far Freddie Freeman has already jumped out in front of the Atlanta Braves’ team stats for that position already in his still-young career.
Freeman has over 10,000 innings at the position. The next closest in the past 30 years is Fred McGriff at 5,476; Adam LaRoche a distant 3rd at 3,408 and only 9 players have even 1,000 innings at first… out of seventy-five who has at least 1 inning there.
Second base is a bit more diverse, but also more stable. 62 players have time at 2nd over the same 3 decades and 12 of them saw 1,000+ innings for Atlanta. However, I have a couple of acknowledgements to mention:
#1 on the list is Mark Lemke at 7,147. In his entire career, ‘The Lemmer’ actually played 7,674, but he started prior to my 30-year cut-off.
The list does exclude Glenn Hubbard entirely. His 10,077 innings is the most among all Braves for second base since the team moved to Atlanta.
Aside from that, you’ll probably recognize most of these names in the 1,000+ innings club:
Lemke, Marcus Giles, Dan Uggla, Kelly Johnson, Keith Lockhart, Jace Peterson, Jeff Treadway, Ozzie Albies, Martin Prado, Quilvio Veras, Tony Graffanino.
Just missing? Omar Infante, Brandon Phillips, and Tommy La Stella.
But yes… already 8th on the list is current 2B Ozzie Albies (1859 innings). Let’s see how he compares to his counterparts in the NL East.
Oh, if you’d like to catch up on a position you’ve missed: