Atlanta Braves Right Field Position Preview: Ronald Acuna vs. NL East
By Seth Carter
This is our next installment in the 2020 edition of our annual series evaluating the Atlanta Braves’ position players against the rest of the National League East.
Today we preview how the Atlanta Braves stack up against the rest of the NL East in right field. I’m going to utilize Fangraphs’ WAR projections to organize this list.
The unsettling thing about this particular list is seeing two teams in the NL East (Phillies and Mets) ranked ahead of the Braves.
- Philadelphia Phillies
- New York Mets
- Atlanta Braves
- Washington Nationals
- Miami Marlins
We start at the bottom.
Miami Marlins
If you are on the Fangraphs’ page linked above then you have to scroll all the way to the very bottom of the entire league to reach the Marlins’ projected depth chart.
They project Lewis Brinson to take the bulk of the playing time in right for the fish with a mixture of several other players, led by former Brave Matt Joyce.
Brinson should get the first crack as he brings the pedigree and the Marlins haven’t yet given up on him. Brinson was rated as a top-20 prospect by Baseball Prospectus for three consecutive seasons between 2016-2018.
To this point, the minor league success has not translated to the major leagues. Brinson has a career slash of .183/.238/.293 and has been worth -3.3 rWAR over parts of three seasons.
Should Brinson falter again, the Marlins have Garrett Cooper and Harold Ramirez as right-handed options in right field. Matt Joyce will serve as the left-handed bat and is slated to take over about three days a week.
Fangraphs projects the Marlins to finish with a 0.0 WAR with Brinson contributing a -0.5 and Matt Joyce providing 0.4 WAR.
If things don’t click for Brinson this year, it may be time to move on. For what it’s worth, Brinson was having a wonderful spring before the suspension of baseball activities. He currently has a .345/.355/.793 slash line with three homers, two doubles, a triple, while driving in five runs in 13 games.