The Atlanta Braves and what might have been this season
No, there’s no way to pick up a player and drop him onto another team to see how he’d do while guessing that he’d perform exactly the same… but we’re gonna try anyway.
There was a lot of angst, disappointment, and even anger from fans – and it’s still there quite a bit – as the Atlanta Braves made their initial off-season splash at the end of November and then seemed to ‘mail in’ the rest of the off-season.
That was the appearance; it wasn’t the reality.
In point of fact, I caught wind of a report on MLB Network Radio yesterday about Hunter Pence that might be of some interest.
Pence – now 36 years old – became a free agent after 2018 after a miserable campaign that saw him post career worsts across the board. He hit .226 and OPS’d .590 while posting nearly a full -1 WAR. Not the best timing on his part.
However, he went to the Dominican Republic to play Winter ball and to revamp his swing. Then the Rangers liked the attitude and picked him up on a flier deal.
Guess what? He’s hitting .333, OPSing 1.006 and has 0.7 WAR in just 21 games… and he’s about to get a bigger role.
But it turns out that the Rangers weren’t the only team with interest… 29 of the 30 MLB teams contacted his agent while he was in the Caribbean.
Obviously, that almost certainly would have included the Atlanta Braves. Like that or not, it does give an indication about how far Alex Anthopoulos was going to check for players last Winter.
Casting a Wide Net
So yes: Atlanta did make efforts to find outfielders, catchers, pitchers, and others. But the question now is this: how are their choices working out right now?
In doing this, there will be a choice here that I’m sure will be challenged: it’s about ignoring pitching at this time.
With relievers in particular, there’s just too many of them (for one point), the ‘results’ will be a bit too subjective (for another point), and … there’s the wild cards still out there (Kimbrel, Keuchel) that makes such an effort less meaningful.
Overall: yeah – there were relievers and starters out there that could have helped: Paxton, Gray, Ottavino, Britton, et al.
At the same time, you could also take a quick glance around the league – or even within the division – and see that this grass isn’t terribly greener on their side of the fence, either.
Face it: relief pitching around MLB is in a bad state in many quarters: Reliever ERA is higher than that of starters. That’s unusual… and relievers are over a quarter-run worse than 2018.
In other words: with pitching, your mileage may vary… wildly. You probably had to get lucky if you expected improvements while shopping for relief pitching last Winter.
Instead, I’ll base what follows on the position player free agents that were available (3rd base, outfield and catching options specifically) and not necessarily those that the Braves specifically were known to have checked in on.
As it happens, it’s pretty likely that the Braves were “in” on just about everybody regardless, so it isn’t a complete academic exercise to do this… there are real implications, whether good or bad.
Here goes…