When the Braves won the World Series in 2021, Ronald Acuña Jr. was a bystander, as a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee knocked him out for the second half of the season and the entire postseason. He returned to action near the end of April last year, but while he was the Braves’ second-most valuable outfielder — which wasn’t saying much due to the slumps and calamities that befell the team’s other fly chasers — his performance was far short of the high standard he’d set since debuting in 2018. With a strong start to his 2023 season, Acuña is showing signs of recovering his pre-injury form, though his performance in a couple of areas does raise concerns.

After hitting a sizzling .283/.394/.596 (157 wRC+) in 82 games before tearing his ACL in 2021, Acuna dipped to .266/.351/.413 (114 wRC+) in 119 games last year. It wasn’t a bad performance; his wRC+ ranked among the top 30 of all outfielders, and his 2.1 WAR prorates to about 2.6 per 650 PA. On a team where all of the other outfielders besides rookie Michael Harris II — namely Travis Demeritte, Adam Duvall, Robbie Grossman, Guillermo Heredia, and Eddie Rosario — netted -1.1 WAR, Acuña’s contribution wasn’t an unwelcome one, helping the team win 101 games. Yet his season was well shy of the elite level that he set for himself pre-injury, with a 140 career wRC+ and 6.0 WAR per 650 PA. After all, this is a player whom Dan Szymborski had once projected as the most likely to supplant Mike Trout as the game’s best in terms of WAR.

Acuña missed his chance for that, but he’s still just 25 years old, and through the first two weeks of the season, he’s hitting .370/.452/.537 through 62 plate appearances. Already he has three three-hit games and four two-hit games under his belt, and he’s helped the Braves jump out to a 9-4 record even while dealing with numerous injuries to their rotation and lineup. Read the rest of this entry »

On Opening Day, when the Braves took the field after batting in the top of the first inning, everyone you’d expect ran out to their usual positions. Well, almost everyone. Taking his position as the starting shortstop was Orlando Arcia, the recipient of a three-year contract extension announced earlier that day. The deal is worth $7.3 million with a club option for a fourth year that includes a $1 million buyout and replaces the previous two-year contract extension he had signed after the 2021 season.

If you hadn’t followed the Braves’ shortstop saga over the offseason, seeing Arcia in the Opening Day lineup might have been a surprise. So let’s recap: Dansby Swanson, the everyday shortstop since his debut in August 2016, played out his final year under team control last year and entered free agency. Atlanta didn’t show much interest in re-signing him once he hit the open market, and he wound up inking a massive seven-year deal with the Cubs.

The heir apparent to Swanson was Vaughn Grissom, who had been called up midseason to fill in for an injured Ozzie Albies even though he hadn’t played above Double-A yet. He impressed with a 165 wRC+ through his first 100 plate appearances in the big leagues, but that mark slid to just 35 over his final 50 trips to the plate. His late swoon was so bad that the Braves ended up benching him in three of their four postseason games. Still, entering spring training, the expectation was that Grissom would get every opportunity to win the job for good.

For his part, Arcia had appeared in just 104 games for the Braves after they acquired him from the Brewers in April 2021. He played four different positions in the infield and outfield, essentially acting as a utility man for Atlanta — a pretty significant step backwards after beginning his career as Milwaukee’s starting shortstop. Through his first five seasons, he put up a .244/.295/.366 slash line (a 71 wRC+) and accumulated 1.9 WAR, and after joining the Braves, he spent a lot of time riding the shuttle between Triple-A and the majors. Still, he did show some improvement at the plate in Gwinnett, posting a 129 wRC+ in 322 PA with his best-ever ISO at .233.

Those improvements at the plate carried over to the next year, where Arcia spent nearly all of his time in the big leagues as the Braves’ utility man. In limited action, he posted a 104 wRC+, a career-high for him. The biggest difference for him was a jump in batted ball quality:

His hard-hit rate improved by more than four points, up to 42.5%, and his barrel rate reached 7.5%, both career highs. He also cut his popup rate to 5.6% and simultaneously increased his fly ball rate. By elevating his higher quality contact but avoiding mis-hits, he was able to generate much more productive results on his balls in play, with average exit velocities on his fly ball and line drive contact that were particularly notable. Instead of a light-hitting, defense-first shortstop, Arcia’s batted ball contact started looking a lot more dangerous.

His plate discipline also took a big step forward. With the Brewers, Arcia had developed a very aggressive approach at the plate which didn’t go well with his middling bat-to-ball skills. Last year, he reduced his swing rate to 44.7%, a drop of nearly eight points over the year prior, and easily a career low. His contact rate didn’t budge, but simply taking more pitches allowed him to run a 9.0% walk rate and maintain his decent strikeout rate.

Despite those improvements at the plate, it still came as a surprise to see Arcia win the Opening Day gig. Grissom had an excellent spring, and a surprise contender emerged in Braden Shewmake.

There’s only so much stock you can put into spring numbers, though there is some evidence that exit velocity improvements can be a little sticky into the regular season. Unfortunately, based on the limited number of Statcast tracked batted balls, Grissom struggled with the same issues that undercut his seemingly impressive debut last year. In 15 tracked batted balls, his average exit velocity was just 86.5 mph — slightly better than the 84.6 mph he put up in the big leagues last year, but still well below league average. (Arcia only had eight tracked batted balls this spring, but their average exit velocity was 94.2 mph.) The lack of high quality hard contact last year was a major red flag for Grissom, who only managed a 34.3% hard-hit rate and put nearly half of his batted balls on the ground. A lot of his success was BABIP-driven, which is why he crashed so hard in September when balls stopped finding gaps in the defense.

Then there’s the problem of Grissom’s defense. He wasn’t great at second base while filling in for Arcia, costing the Braves five outs and three runs per OAA and RAA. At the more challenging defensive position, it’s likely those numbers would only get worse. Grissom worked out with Ron Washingon, who helped turn Marcus Semien’s defense into a strength, for three separate weeks during the offseason. But while there was some improvement, it wasn’t enough to warrant handing him the job out of the gate.

Shewmake’s emergence may have complicated the picture a little, but he wound up getting sent back to Triple-A for more development time. A decent defender already, the thing holding him back has been his lack of production at the plate. He has a good feel for putting the bat on the ball but no power whatsoever and limited on-base skills. His improvements this spring had coaches buzzing, but ultimately, he needs to prove it in the minors before getting a shot in the big leagues, and his ceiling may be that of a utility infielder anyway. After both Grissom and Shewmake were sent down to the minors, it’s telling that the former lined up at shortstop for Gwinnett, with the latter shifting over to second base.

Despite all this drama surrounding the position this offseason, Grissom could end up being the Braves’ shortstop of the future anyway. The extension Arcia signed doesn’t preclude the Braves from calling up him or Shewmake if they break out in the minors this year. But Arcia is only 28 years old, and it’s possible he’s in the middle of a mid-career breakout after his change of scenery. The improvements he’s made at the plate are a move in the right direction, and his defense is another positive at a premium position. If Grissom does get called up at some point to take the starting role, having Arcia as a utility man isn’t the worst outcome for the Braves.

The ribbon has been cut on the 2023 season and I wanted to push a few prospect updates live to The Board, including a few tweaks to the Top 100 list. This update also includes publication of scouting reports such that every rookie currently on an active roster now has a current record on The Board, and a few additions the farm systems I’ve already audited during this cycle based on things I saw during spring training.

Let’s start with injury-related updates to the Top 100. Phillies top prospect Andrew Painter has a partially torn UCL and is approaching the end of his four-week shutdown period. Rule of thumb: Among a similarly talented group of players, you’d most want to have the healthy guys. Painter slides from fifth overall to 12th, right behind newly minted big leaguers Anthony Volpe and Jordan Walker, who are comparably talented, healthy, and making a big league impact right now. This is just a cosmetic change to the list; Painter’s evaluation hasn’t changed. If it turns out he needs Tommy John, whether or not I slide him any further will depend on its timing. If rest doesn’t work and his surgery is timed such that he also misses all of 2024, that’s the worst case scenario for Painter and the Phillies. We know for sure that Nationals pitching prospect Cade Cavalli needs Tommy John, so in a similar fashion he falls within the 50 FV player tier, sliding from 63rd overall to 99th, right next to Mason Miller of the A’s, with whom he now shares injury-related relief risk.

Tigers prospect Jackson Jobe, the third overall pick in 2021, is going to miss three to six months due to lumbar spine inflammation. This injury is more novel than a TJ, and Jobe isn’t exactly coming off a great 2022. Unfortunately, this situation merits a more meaningful shift, but I still want to reflect the upside of a healthy Jobe, so he downshifts to the 45+ FV tier, where the most talented of the young high-variance prospects reside. Assuming he comes back late this season, he’ll be one of the higher-priority evaluations in the minors. Read the rest of this entry »

Justin Verlander wasn’t scheduled to start on Thursday, but he couldn’t even make it to the first pitch of his first Opening Day as a Met unscathed. The 40-year-old righty officially opened the season on the injured list due to a low-grade strain of his teres major, and while his absence isn’t expected to be a lengthy one, it comes at the tail end of a spring in which the Mets already lost starter José Quintana for about half the season and closer Edwin Diaz for most if not all of it.

Unfortunately, Verlander isn’t the only frontline starter to be sidelined by a teres major strain this week, as the Guardians’ Triston McKenzie recently suffered a more serious strain of the same muscle. Likewise, Verlander isn’t the only big-name hurler for a New York team who was sidelined this week (the Yankees’ Luis Severino is out again), nor is he the only NL East starter to turn up lame on Thursday (the Braves’ Max Fried took an early exit), or the only over-40 star whose plans took a turn (the Cardinals’ Adam Wainwright missed his Opening Day assignment). If it’s not a party until something gets broken, it’s not a new baseball season until a star pitcher goes down. Perhaps the only consolation to be had in this round-up is that all of these injuries are muscle strains of some sort rather than ligaments or tendons. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about prospects who have (Jordan Walker, Anthony Volpe) and haven’t (Grayson Rodriguez, Brett Baty) made Opening Day rosters and MLB’s player-centric PSAs about the new rules, then complete their 2023 season preview series by discussing the Atlanta Braves (15:07) with Grant McAuley of 92.9 The Game, and the Colorado Rockies (53:50) with Danielle Allentuck of The Denver Gazette, plus a Past Blast from 1986 (1:26:07), trivia answers (1:30:00), a Stat Blast (1:31:34) about the biggest WAR gaps between Opening Day starters, the worst pitchers ever to start on Opening Day, and the best pitchers and hitters never to start on Opening Day, and a postscript (1:41:09).

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Link to MLBTR on Volpe
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Ian Anderson played a major part in the Braves’ success when they came within one win of a trip to the World Series in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season and then won it all the following year. But after struggling for the first four months of the 2022 season, he was optioned to Triple-A Gwinnett and made just one appearance for Atlanta as it won the NL East but was upset by the Phillies in the Division Series. While Anderson had a shot to reclaim a rotation spot this spring, on Tuesday he was optioned once again, both due to his control problems and to other pitchers making stronger cases for the fifth starter role.

I wrote about Anderson’s demotion last August, but a recap is in order. The third pick of the 2016 draft burst upon the major league scene in late 2020, pitching to a 3.28 ERA and 3.80 FIP in 30 starts totaling 160.2 innings during the ’20 and ’21 regular seasons. He added some stellar postseason work in that span, going 4–0 with a 1.26 ERA in eight starts totaling 35.2 innings; he was kept on a short leash, most notably departing Game 3 of the 2021 World Series after throwing five no-hit innings.

Last year was a different story, as Anderson was lit up for a 5.00 ERA and 4.25 FIP in 111.2 innings across 22 starts. His FIP barely budged relative to 2021 (4.12), but his 1.42 runs per nine rise in ERA from that his previous mark of 3.58 ranked fifth in the majors among pitchers with at least 100 innings in both seasons. Meanwhile, his strikeout and walk rates continued a two-year trend of creeping in the wrong directions, with the former down to 19.7% and the latter up to 11.0%.

Exacerbating Anderson’s problems was a 54-point rise in BABIP, from .259 to .313, the majors’ fifth largest among the aforementioned qualifiers. He decreased his barrel rate from 9.5% to 6.2%, but that was offset by slight increases in his average exit velocity and hard-hit rate, not to mention his pull rate; his xERA went from from 4.27 to 4.37. Read the rest of this entry »

The Braves are the team of stability. At six of nine offensive positions, they have locked an above-average-to-star-level player down to a contract that will keep him under club control for at least the next five seasons. We could probably get away with literally not writing any Braves roster construction thinkpieces until 2026 or so. Nevertheless, I want to pick at the one imperfection in Atlanta’s cavalcade of cost-controlled stars: the whole left field/DH situation. Specifically, I want to propose an idea that isn’t a joke, or a bit, or a troll… but it’s also not not a joke, or a bit, or a troll: Make Sam Hilliard the starting left fielder. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 18th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Atlanta Braves.

Batters

If you’re wondering why Steve Cohen was willing to spend the GDP of a Pacific island nation on the 2023 Mets, you’re looking at the most compelling reason. The Phillies made the splash by bringing in Trea Turner, but that roster simply doesn’t cause terror in the eyes of their opponents. This one does.

What makes the Braves especially scary? A lot of times when you see a lineup this good, it’s a team full of guys nearing free agency, sure to depart due to the cost of keeping the band together. But these aren’t The Beatles of Abbey Road or Let It Be; Atlanta is still in the Revolver phase. Dansby Swanson was the one guy who departed, and though Vaughn Grissom is a projected downgrade, he still looks like a league-average player, which the Braves will be perfectly content with. In any case, Kyle Wright got Shelby Miller as his top comp, so maybe they can trade him for a new Swanson at some point!

Like the Mariners, the Braves do have that one unfortunate spot in left field. The combination of Eddie Rosario and assorted others feels out of place with the rest of the lineup, as if the Braves suddenly forgot the DH position existed and had to scramble internally once the local press noted that Joey Jo-Jo Junior Shabadoo didn’t sound like the name of a real player. As such, it would be nice if they added another outfielder, simply for depth, though it’s not strictly necessary unless an emergency situation happens, such as the loss of Ronald Acuña Jr. or Michael Harris II to injury. Yes, the Braves are an elite team with a lineup hole, but with players in the top tier at catcher, first, third, center field, and right field, and certainly a chance of that at second, this is a filthy batting order regardless.

Pitchers

The rotation isn’t as exciting as the lineup, especially after Max Fried and Spencer Strider, but the Braves get some very solid projections here. There are questions about the three pitchers in the back end of the rotation: can Wright repeat? Does Charlie Morton have a bounceback left? Can Mike Soroka stay healthy?

ZiPS is cautiously optimistic about all three of them, but the projections do like quite a few of the pitchers the Braves have in reserve. It sees Ian Anderson and Bryce Elder as legitimate major league starters and has a lot of positive math-generated feelings about Jared Shuster and Kolby Allard. Huascar Ynoa would have been included in that final group of reinforcements if not for Tommy John surgery already all but ending his 2023.

Even with the loss of Tyler Matzek to Tommy John surgery, the bullpen remains incredibly deep. Here’s a game to play: go down our depth chart for the Braves and find the names that ZiPS sees with an ERA+ under 100.

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(eats a taco)
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You don’t get a reliever ZiPS doesn’t like — or even one with a projected ERA+ under 110 — until you get down to the eighth man on the depth chart, Dennis Santana. Go farther down and there’s still Nick Anderson (projected ERA+ of 111), Jesse Chavez (102), Jackson Stephens (106), Seth Elledge (100), Victor Vodnik (104), and Michael Tonkin (107) to go. The Gwinnett Stripers might have the 20th-best bullpen in the majors in 2023.

It’s not just ZiPS liking Atlanta because Alex Anthopoulos secretly deposits gold into my accounts in the Caymans; Steamer also ranks the Braves as having the top bullpen in baseball. The WAR projection on the depth chart would have been even better but for the fact that ZiPS uses leverage index and automatically had to reduce the projected leverage index of some of the pitchers, as there just weren’t enough high-leverage appearances to go around for everyone.

The Braves ought to be one of the teams competing to lead the majors in wins in 2023. And ZiPS believes they have the highest floor of all the reasonable contenders — the Mets, Cardinals, Dodgers, Padres, Yankees, Blue Jays, and Astros. This is an excellent team.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2023 due to injury, and players who were released in 2022. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Norwegian Death Dixieland Bubblegum Ska-Funk band, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.22, above 2022’s level of offense but lower than other years. Pitchers who appear to have a fairly definite change in the majors from start-to-relief or vice-versa from these projections will receive reconfigured updates in the spring.

Hitters are ranked by zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those that appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR.

As always, incorrect projections are either caused by flaws in the physical reality of the universe or by skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter.

The Oakland Athletics are in search of a new ballpark, either within Oakland or elsewhere — most likely Las Vegas. If and when that comes to pass, the aging Coliseum will probably be torn down. And here’s where the A’s lose me: They seem to be under the impression that their active players must all be evacuated in the form of being traded to other organizations before the ballpark is destroyed.

The Atlanta Braves were in no hurry to disabuse Oakland of this notion, as they pried catcher Sean Murphy from Oakland’s clutches Monday afternoon as part of a three-team deal with the Milwaukee Brewers. Four weeks ago I wrote about the trade market for Murphy, made expendable in Oakland by the emergence of Shea Langeliers, who came over from the Braves in the Matt Olson trade. Therein, I specifically noted the Braves as a team that should not trade for Murphy, owing to Atlanta’s surfeit of catchers: Travis d’Arnaud and William Contreras.

Sure enough, with Murphy coming in, not one but two catchers are heading out. Contreras is headed north, while third-stringer — and longtime Brewers backup — Manny Piña will go to Oakland. Speedster Esteury Ruiz is also headed down the John Jaha Highway from Milwaukee to Oakland, and no fewer than five pitchers fill out this salad bar of a trade: Freddy Tarnok, Kyle Muller and Royber Salinas from Atlanta to Oakland, Joel Payamps from Oakland to Milwaukee, and Justin Yeager from Atlanta to Milwaukee.

Here’s the entire three-team, nine-player deal in table form, for clarity’s sake.

Nine players makes for a big trade, but nevertheless, let’s go through each name in at least some detail before drawing conclusions. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2023 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2015 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Wherever Gary Sheffield went, he made noise, both with his bat and his voice. For the better part of two decades, he ranked among the game’s most dangerous hitters, a slugger with a keen batting eye and a penchant for contact that belied his quick, violent swing. For even longer than that, he was one of the game’s most outspoken players, unafraid to speak up when he felt he was being wronged and unwilling to endure a situation that wasn’t to his liking. He was a polarizing player, and hardly one for the faint of heart.

At the plate, Sheffield was viscerally impressive like few others. With his bat twitching back and forth like the tail of a tiger waiting to pounce, he was pure menace in the batter’s box. He won a batting title, launched over 500 home runs — he had 14 seasons with at least 20 and eight with at least 30 — and put many a third base coach in peril with some of the most terrifying foul balls anyone has ever seen. For as violent as his swing may have been, it was hardly wild; not until his late 30s did he strike out more than 80 times in a season, and in his prime, he walked far more often than he struck out. Read the rest of this entry »