It’s often said that there are no bad one-year deals, and the Braves have made a particular habit of using them to augment their young rotations — a habit that predates Alex Anthopoulos’ arrival as their general manager. After a season in which they fell one win short of their first trip to the World Series since 1999 despite a rotation thinned out by major injuries, the Braves have been been aggressive in pursuing that short-term approach. After signing Drew Smyly to a one-year contract last week, they’ve inked Charlie Morton to a one-year, $15 million deal, the same amount of money he would have been paid in 2021 had the Rays not declined his option in late October. Though a quirk of timing caused him to miss inclusion in our Top 50 Free Agents list, he’s the first major free agent to come off the board.

Morton, who turned 37 on November 12, is coming off a regular season in which he was limited to nine starts and 38 innings due to a bout of shoulder inflammation that sidelined him for three weeks in August. The Rays kept him on a short leash, but as the postseason reminded the baseball world, that’s how they roll. Morton pitched more than five innings just once (5.2 on August 4 against the Red Sox), and he topped 90 pitches just three times, maxing out at 94. He was used similarly in the postseason, and looked quite good, particularly in a pair of scoreless starts against the Astros in the ALCS; he threw five innings and 96 pitches in Game 2, then an ultra-efficient 5.2 innings while allowing just two hits on 66 pitches in Game 7. His removal while cruising along in that latter game foreshadowed manager Kevin Cash’s ill-fated decision to pull Blake Snell in Game 6 of the World Series, though in Morton’s case things turned out in the Rays’ favor. His lone postseason dud came in Game 3, when the Dodgers roughed him up for five runs in 4.1 innings.

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After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for nine years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Atlanta Braves.

Batters

How do you get to the playoffs easily with only one dependable starter? Pummeling the league into submission with your offense is a good place to start. The Dodgers led the National League in runs scored, but the Braves finished only a single run behind them. Marcell Ozuna’s one-year contract turned out to be one of the best moves of the winter. Unable to maintain the level of his 2017 breakout the last couple of years, he went out and topped even that season, hitting .338/.431/.636 and earning two-thirds of a Triple Crown by finishing third in batting average while leading the league in homers and RBIs. Sure, it wouldn’t have been quite the same in a 60-game season, though one could argue that batting average is harder to lead in over a short year due to being a volatile qualitative measure.

Atlanta now faces the challenge of replacing Ozuna’s production. That won’t happen in full, but newly minted NL MVP Freddie Freeman returns, as does the Ronald Acuña Jr./Ozzie Albies tandem, a pair of young stars that can quite literally match up with any such coupling in MLB history. Freeman did as much to push his Hall of Fame case forward as you can in 60 games and passed the halfway mark to 3,000 hits; he’ll likely finish in the 2,500-hit range, something he’ll likely need with around 400 home runs as a first baseman. By the time he retires, ZiPS projects him to have the fourth-most WAR for a 21st-century first baseman with around 60, but that’s not slam-dunk territory.

Acuña’s a superstar, and one has to remember that the top comp in his cohort is the young, dynamic Jose Canseco, not the plodding slugger the latter was late in his career. In a way, it feels almost fitting to have him comped to the first 40/40 hitter. Technically, Acuña has the talent to be the first 50/50 hitter someday, but there’s always that issue that the better a player hits, the more resistant managers become to letting them run the bases aggressively. Even Rickey Henderson’s attempts dropped over time! Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2021 Hall of Fame ballot. 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.

At the turn of the millennium, on the heels of six straight sub-.500 seasons, the Oakland A’s enjoyed a competitive renaissance. From 2000 to 2003, they averaged 98 wins per year, good for a .606 winning percentage that ranked second in the majors, an eyelash behind the Mariners (also .606 but with one more win in that span). They made the playoffs in all four of those seasons, three by winning the AL West, and they did it all despite shoestring budgets that regularly placed their payrolls among the majors’ bottom half-dozen. The ability of general manager Billy Beane to exploit market inefficiencies in crafting a low-cost roster gained fame via Michael Lewis’ 2003 book Moneyball, but underplayed in a tale that emphasized on-base percentage, defense, and quirky, misfit players was a homegrown trio of starting pitchers — Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder, and Barry Zito — who were central to the A’s success. Drafted out of college, the “Big Three” asserted their spots among the AL’s top pitchers despite a lack of overpowering stuff.

The oldest of trio was Hudson, a skinny, undersized righty (generally listed at 6-foot-1 and 160 pounds) who relied on his low-90 sinkerball to generate a ton of groundballs, as well as a diving split-fingered fastball, slider, and change-up to miss bats and keep hitters off balance. An Alabama native who was drafted out of Auburn University in the sixth round in 1997, Hudson reached the majors just two years later, and quickly emerged as a frontline starter able to shoulder annual workloads of 200-plus innings, belying his modest frame. In a 17-year career with the A’s (1999-2004) and later the Braves (2004-13) and Giants (2014-15), Hudson helped his teams reach the postseason nine times, but both the pitcher and those teams experienced more than their share of hard luck in October. Only at his final stop, in San Francisco, did Hudson’s teams even make it to the League Championship Series, but in 2014, he was a key component of the Giants’ World Series-winning squad.

Though he made four All-Star teams, received Cy Young consideration in four seasons, and won well over 200 games while cracking his league’s ERA and WAR leaderboards seven times apiece, Hudson does not have an especially strong case for Cooperstown, particularly once one looks beyond the superficial numbers. While he’s expected to receive a smattering of support from BBWAA voters in a year where the ballot traffic is comparatively minimal relative to recent cycles, he might not even draw the 5% needed to remain on the ballot. Even so, his outstanding career is worthy of review. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday morning, the Atlanta Braves made their first major move of the offseason, signing left-handed pitcher Drew Smyly to a one-year contract worth $11 million. It’s a nice little payday for Smyly, who has a long and ugly injury history and posted an ERA and FIP over six as recently as 2019. Ranked 25th among Craig Edwards’s Top 50 Free Agents, Smyly was estimated to command an AAV of $8.5 million by Edwards and just $5.0 million by the crowd. Those low salary estimates are likely directly tied to Smyly’s spotty history. But the reason why he was able to command such a surprisingly high salary boils down to one chart:

In 2020, Smyly was able to add 2.6 mph to each of his pitches in his arsenal, pushing his average fastball up to 93.8 mph. That added velocity helped him post the highest strikeout rate of his career paired with the lowest FIP of his career, though it came in just 26.1 innings. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s impossible for a single play in the fourth inning to decide the outcome of a baseball game. There are simply too many at-bats left, too much time for something else to happen that invalidates whatever occurred so early in the action. Consider a bases loaded, two out situation, down two runs in the top of the fourth, for a random example: hit a grand slam, and our WPA Inquirer will tell you that the away team wins 70.3% of the time. Strike out, and it’s 21.1%. In neither case is the game over.

Don’t tell Atlanta that, though. In the top of the fourth inning, the Braves were ready to hit the turbo button. With a one-run lead already in their pocket, they had an enviable situation: runners on second and third with no one out. A single could make it a three-run game; heck, a grounder to the right side and then a sac fly would suffice. Nick Markakis, the batter, almost never strikes out; he’s the exact kind of player the Braves wanted at the plate in this moment.

Markakis put the ball in play. Dansby Swanson broke on contact, and well, yeah, he probably wishes he could take that decision back:

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Everett Scott holds the Red Sox franchise record for games played at shortstop. A part of three World Series-winning clubs in Boston, he manned the position in 1,093 regular-season games from 1914-1921. Right behind Scott are Rick Burleson (1,004), Nomar Garciaparra (956), Freddy Parent (909), and Xander Bogaerts (908).

The last of those names stands out, and not just because he’s current. It also stands out because myriad prospect prognosticators didn’t expect him to stick at the position. To some it was barely even a question. I was once told by a name-you’d-recognize prospect guru — in a condescending manner, no less — that “Xander Bogaerts will never play shortstop in the major leagues.”

He was wrong. Moreover, had this been a normal 162-game season — and assuming Bogaerts had stayed healthy — the 28-year-old native of Aruba would already be within 100 games of Scott’s total. As it is, he’s in line to eclipse the century-old record by the midway point of the 2022 season.

Called up in August 2013, Bogaerts did play nine of his first 17 big-league games as a third baseman — the position he was earmarked for by his doubters. But that was circumstance as opposed to choreography. With Stephen Drew etched in at short, and Will Middlebrooks scuffling at the hot corner, the Red Sox were looking for a way to slot their top-rated prospect into the lineup.

According to Bogaerts, a permanent switch was never in the plans. Read the rest of this entry »

The first game of this NLCS was a tense thriller, carrying a score of 1-1 into the top of the ninth thanks to the performances of starters Walker Buehler and Max Fried. With a burst of offense in the ninth, the Braves took that game, 5-1. Five days later — doesn’t it feel like it’s been longer? — Atlanta entered Game 6, a repeat of that starting pitching matchup, with a chance to walk away with the pennant. And while the two games had many features in common — low scores, great starting pitching, and missed opportunities on the offensive side — it was the Dodgers, this time, who came out on top. After a 3-1 Los Angeles victory, the series is now tied at 3-3, with a decisive seventh game coming tomorrow.

Buehler set the tone by retiring Ronald Acuña Jr., Freddie Freeman, and Marcell Ozuna on only seven pitches in the top of the first. Fried, who outpitched Buehler in Game 1, did not have the same success. He retired Mookie Betts without incident, but Corey Seager turned on a curveball on the inner half, sending it into the seats in right field. Two batters into the game, the Dodgers already had the lead — and one batter later, they added to it, as Justin Turner shot a sinker just over the outstretched arm of Cristian Pache in center. Read the rest of this entry »

In a matchup that spawned 1,000 memes, Will Smith — the Braves left-handed reliever — finally faced off against Will Smith — the Dodgers catcher — in Game 5 of the NLCS. With two men on, two outs, and down by a run, the only thing out of place in this Hollywood script was the inning — it was the bottom of the sixth inning rather than the ninth. But destiny would not be denied. Smith the Pitcher had been brought in to face Max Muncy in the previous at-bat. In a fantastic display of discipline, Muncy worked a walk, ensuring the showdown between the two Wills Smith. That moment would prove to be the turning point in the game.

Up to that point, Braves pitching had stymied the Dodgers’ hitters. A.J. Minter had been selected as the starter for Brian Snitker’s club in what promised to be a bullpen game. A reliever for his entire professional career, he was the first pitcher to ever make his first career start in the postseason. He wound up going three innings — his longest professional appearance — and struck out seven. The only blemish against him was a two-out double in the first inning. The red hot Corey Seager snuck a solo home run just over the center field wall to lead off the fourth but Tyler Matzek and Shane Greene stood firm and got the team through the fifth inning with a 2-1 lead.

Greene was sent back out to start the sixth and allowed Mookie Betts to reach on a leadoff infield single. A harmless fly out from Seager followed, forcing Betts to get aggressive on the basepaths to try to get a rally started. He stole second but was erased on a fielder’s choice off Justin Turner’s bat. Some heads up baserunning got Turner to second during Betts’ rundown, leaving first base open for Muncy. Smith the Pitcher started Muncy off with five straight sliders. The first three were off the plate away; the next two were called strikes over the plate. Muncy spat on all five. The sixth pitch of the at-bat was a fastball just off the outer edge of the plate; Muncy refused to move his bat. It was a bold take to cap off a fantastic exercise in discipline. Read the rest of this entry »

On a Braves team that’s now one win away from its first trip to the World Series since 1999, Freddie Freeman has gotten the lion’s share of the attention, at least on the offensive side. This is quite understandable given his MVP-caliber season as well as the big hits he’s come up with thus far in the playoffs, including his homers in Games 1 and 2 of the NLCS against the Dodgers. While Marcell Ozuna’s bat spoke nearly as loudly during the regular season, the 29-year-old slugger had scuffled in the postseason prior to Thursday night’s Game 4, when he snapped out of an 0-for-9 skid with a four-hit, four-RBI night that included a trio of timely extra-base hits, two of them homers.

Ozuna’s first home run came in the fourth inning at a time when the Braves trailed 1-0. Dodgers starter Clayton Kershaw had given up some loud contact to that point, but the four hard-hit balls he’d surrendered (exit velocities of 95 mph or higher) all had launch angles of 11 degrees or lower, including the 104.4-mph grounder that Ozuna hit for an inning-ending double play and a 101.1-mph Freeman liner that preceded Ozuna’s second turn at the plate. This time, Ozuna elevated a slider for a towering blast that left the bat at 108.6 mph and traveled an estimated 422 feet:

Whew. The down-and-in slider wasn’t a horrible pitch from Kershaw; in just about every Statcast zone-based breakdown for this season, Ozuna’s actual and expected stats for that area (zone 7) were his lowest. For example: Read the rest of this entry »

If you watch a lot of scary movies, you learn to anticipate when the big jump-scare is about to happen. The music, after ominously trickling along throughout the scene, suddenly stops. The camera does a painfully slow pan around a corner or abruptly whips across the room. You learn to brace yourself when a woman is quietly observing her reflection in a mirror, or when a child peeks through around the door of his clearly-haunted wardrobe. There is a rhythm to these movies, and it mirrors that of Dodgers postseason baseball.

Game 4 of their National League Championship Series against the Atlanta Braves had all the familiar cues. There was Clayton Kershaw, heading out for the sixth inning of what had been a perfectly solid postseason start. There was manager Dave Roberts, leaving Kershaw in to face the toughest lefty in the opponents’ lineup. There was Roberts — gulp — leaving him in to face another hitter, even after he failed to get the first two out. And there was the Dodgers’ bullpen, searching for water to douse the flames but finding only gasoline, until yet another incredible season was just a game away from turning to ash.

The Braves defeated the Dodgers, 10-2, at Globe Life Field on Thursday to take a 3-1 lead in the NLCS. Atlanta is one win away from clinching its first World Series appearance since 1999, and a shot at winning its first title since 1995. Los Angeles, meanwhile, is on the verge of failing to reach the World Series despite owning the NL’s best regular-season record for a second-straight year and continuing a championship drought that has persisted since 1988.

Braves right-hander Bryse Wilson turned in the best game of his young career, tossing six innings of one-run ball while allowing just one walk and striking out five. The one hit he yielded came on a solo home run by Dodgers designated hitter Edwin Ríos in the third. Despite being a rookie who started just twice during the regular season, Wilson made it difficult for the future Hall of Famer in the other dugout to keep up. For five innings, though, Kershaw did just that. He allowed just one run on a solo homer by Marcell Ozuna, who was DHing, and otherwise scattered three hits and a walk while striking out four. He’d thrown just 71 pitches, making Roberts’ decision to send him back to the mound for the sixth inning a seemingly easy one, even if the Braves were turning the order over for a third time. Read the rest of this entry »