Condolences are the only proper greeting for a Braves fan today. And anger is an acceptable response to the team’s play in September, as well. But as the emotion subsides, two truths should stick out. The Braves had a good season, and they have a roster that is poised to get better without an overhaul.

89 wins is not an impetus to cry into your coffee. There are reasons for Braves fans to keep their heads held high, too. They played in one of the toughest divisions in baseball — the only one to produce a 100-game winner, for one — and they came up a buck short. No matter how you slice it (FIP, xFIP, SIERA or good old-fashioned ERA), they had a top-three pitching staff in the National League this year. That’s a good foundation for success, and the rest of their problems are fixable.

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In 2011, the Atlanta Braves found themselves the envy of professional baseball behind a quartet of impressive young arms in Julio Teheran, Randall Delgado, Mike Minor and Arodys Vizcaino. The chatter about these young pitchers remained loud throughout the season to the point where other arms in the system were overshadowed. A handful of those names made headlines only after being dealt to the Houston Astros for Michael Bourn. That trade created a pitching void at the middle levels of the Braves organization. Cue Ronan Pacheco.

In the history of Fangraphs, I wonder how many positive pieces have ever been written about a 23-year year old pitcher in the lower minors who strikes out less than six-per-nine innings while walking a shade under four-per-nine? Knowing full well this piece will draw the ire of a great many Fangraphs readers based on the numbers alone, Pacheco is simply too perfect an example of a pitcher who bucks just about every prospect stereotype on both the statistical and scouting sides to not discuss.

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The Phillies entered the season with the makings of an historical rotation. With Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Cole Hamels and Roy Oswalt, their starting pitching was covered. The Braves entered the season with ridiculous pitching depth. They had a rotation filled with good major leaguers, another solid starter recovering from surgery, and some of the most renowned pitching prospects in the game waiting to make a dent.

It’s funny, then, that the performances this season from Vance Worley and Brandon Beachy — two prospects without much minor league fanfare — have helped elevate each rotation to another level.

Worley and Beachy weren’t exactly afterthoughts, but neither was expected to be a key contributor this season. In fact, Worley started the season in the minors and spent even more time on the farm when both Oswalt and Joe Blanton returned to the rotation. Fast-forward to early September and both pitchers have tallied 2.2 WAR in under 130 innings. Both pitchers are also making a big case for their inclusion in the playoff rotation.

Despite these similarities, the major difference in their production makes a comparison interesting. Worley relies on the called strike while Beachy has become a master of the whiff. Though each is fairly inexperienced as the final month of the season pushes on, their different approaches invites a discussion on the sustainability and predictive value of called and swinging strikeouts.

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In his final start of August, Cliff Lee went 8 and 2/3 innings without allowing a run. Lee plunked Miguel Cairo with pitch number 117, cuing Ryan Madson to get the game’s final out. Last night against the Atlanta Braves, Lee finished where he started, using only 100 pitches en route to his 200th strikeout and 6th complete game and 6th shutout of the season.

Lee is now at 106 batters faced without allowing a run — 29 and 2/3 straight scoreless innings across 4 starts. Wow.

Despite striking out an uncharacteristically low number of batters (6), Lee instead trolled the Braves hitters by inducing 14 ground balls (second only to his present season high of 17 in his complete game against the Cardinals) and allowing nary a walk.

Last night’s shutout makes complete game number 6 for ol’ Cliff Lee, pushing his statistics down to: 2.47 ERA, 2.64 FIP, 2.76 xFIP, and a 2.67 SIERA.

Lee ranks 3rd in ERA, 3rd in FIP, 2nd in xFIP, and 3rd in SIERA. And he now leads the majors in shutouts with 6, ahead of James Shields (4) and Derek Holland (4). In the NL, it’s not even close:

When it comes to the 2011 NL Cy Young race, it presently comes down to just three fellas: Cliff Lee, Roy Halladay, and Clayton Kershaw. Yes, one could make the case for the likes of Madison Bumgarner, Matt Cain, Cole Hamels, and even Daniel Hudson and Matt Garza, but the Big Three are presently sporting Cy Young statistics, residing on a plateau of their own Manly Awesomeness.
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Craig Kimbrel continues to build on his ridiculous rookie season. While he’s been mentioned as a popular Rookie of the Year Award candidate, Kimbrel notched his 41st save last night — a rookie record — which should only increase his candidacy in the voters’ eyes. The save stat may be criticized in the advanced stats community, but the BBWAA voters still seem to hold the save in high regard. Last season, for example, Neftali Feliz won the award based on his high saves total despite finishing behind Brian Matusz in WAR. It wasn’t an egregious error, but it goes to show that the save still matters to the voters. With Kimbrel reaching heights no other rookie closer has reached before; has he all but locked up the National League Rookie of the Year Award?
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Earlier this season, I re-introduced the two statistics Shutdowns and Meltdowns. In short, these two stats are an alternative way of evaluating relief pitchers, providing an alternative from the age-old standbys Saves and Blown Saves. If a pitcher enters a game and makes their team more likely to win, they get credit for a Shutdown; if they make their team more likely to lose, they get a Meltdown. It’s a simple enough concept, no?

Shutdowns and Meltdowns are a great way to look at which relievers are under- or overvalued based on their Saves total, and it can also be a useful tool for evaluating middle relievers. So which relievers have are being sneakily good or bad this year? Let’s take a look.

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Jim Hendry has been relieved of his duties as general manager of the Chicago Cubs. We’ll have plenty of time to look back on his place in GM history, but for now, let’s look forward. Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts gave us the checklist today, when he said that he was looking for a candidate who had analytical experience in a winning front office and who would focus on player development. Time to rank the potential replacements using those requirements.

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Jason Heyward has been having a bad year. He had back pain in spring training and missed a month this year with a shoulder injury, and was criticized by teammate Chipper Jones when he announced that he didn’t want to return to the starting lineup until he was fully healthy. Heyward claims to be unaffected by injury at the moment, but it’s hard to tell just how healthy he has been: pretty much all of his offensive numbers are substantially down, even including his walk rate. It’s hard for any team to go through something like this with a phenom; after his five-win rookie year, the Braves know he’s a huge part of their future, but this year he hasn’t been good at much except grounding weakly to second base. So the Braves did the unthinkable: they benched him.

Since August 1, after the Braves acquired Michael Bourn for center field, the team has played 14 games, and Heyward has made just six starts. The other eight starts in right field have been made by Jose “George” Constanza, a 27-year old career minor leaguer called up just before the trade deadline who has hit like Jeff Francoeur in July 2005, with a .425 wOBA over the first 17 games of his career. Constanza defines the phrase “hot hand” — he had an ISO of .066 in the minors, and he’s currently riding a 5.6 percent walk rate — but the Braves seem to have decided that they might as well ride him until the league catches up to him.
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A five home-run game has never happened for a hitter, but it has happened for pitchers plenty of times. It’s certainly less of a positive achievement there, but just as notable. Or more notable because it’s actually happened and I can note the times that it has. It happened another two times already tonight, as noted by Jeff Sullivan.

CC Sabathia surrendered five home runs to the Rays, all from different hitters, and Carlos Zambrano gave up five to the Braves, two coming from Dan Uggla and his now 32-game hitting streak. On their own, they are worth noting and then moving on. A pitching giving up five home runs is certainly unusual but it’s not incredibly rare. James Shields, Tim Wakefield and R.A. Dickey have allowed six in a game once and that’s only looking at the past decade. All in all, there have now been 34 instances of a five-homer game since 2000. For reference, over the same time period there have been a total of 39 triple plays turned. What I did notice however, is that Sabathia’s five home runs were all solo shots and that’s a much rarer event.

In the entire Retrosheet era, there are only 22 other cases of a pitcher giving up at least five solo home runs in a game. James Shields ruins a bit of the fun by having done it so recently as 7 August 2010 when five of the ultimately six home runs hit off him were solo dingers. More fascinating is that Tim Wakefield has actually done it twice. In the aforementioned six home run game in 2004, five of the home runs were solo shots in Detroit. The other was a two-run shot and Wakefield only allowed 2 non-HR hits over his five innings that game. Prior to that, in 1996 pitching at Fenway to the White Sox, Wakefield served up solo home runs to Frank Thomas (three times), Danny Tartabull and Robin Ventura. Similar to the other game, Wakefield only allowed a single hit that wasn’t a home run and completed six innings. Amazingly, the Red Sox won both those games.

Turning from the opposite of solo home runs, in case you needed another daily fun fact, the most amount of runs allowed by a pitcher via the long ball in one game is 11. Gio Gonzalez was responsible in July of 2009 by the Twins in Oakland of all places (and Oakland won despite being down 12-2 at one point) and Shawn Chacon was brutalized by the Angels in Colorado in 2001, which makes way more sense.

Dan Uggla was starting to look like a candidate for worst-acquisition-of-the-offseason. Hitting just .170/.234/.306 on June 10th, the Altanta Braves second baseman had hardly lived up to expectations. Right as it looked as if things could get no worse, Uggla began to turn things around. While he started to come around slowly toward the end of June, Uggla completely exploded in July. Though it’s early, Uggla seems to have carried that momentum into August, and currently carries a 29 game hit streak. Even though luck is often a major factor in these types of surges, Uggla has been pretty damn good the last month and a half.
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