At nearly 1/3 of the way through the season, I'm gonna look at a handful of players who's numbers intrigue me.
First I'll start with the founder of the team, the irreplaceable Nick Markakis. There's a few things that are obvious. He's not the fielder he was when he was great years ago, The one compliment for him, he makes the plays he's supposed to make though. He's not Dan Ugglaing anything. Offensively it's a mixed bag. Overall the results are about where you'd expect them. A little high in reality but within Sample size variation. It's the how that's more interesting. Sporting a BABIP 40 points higher than his career average and an iso of 90 points lower you'd expect to hear me say he's due for a massive failure but I won't. He is hitting a lot of linedrives and that will keep his BABIP up. I think it will fall a bit but not down to his career average. Probably only about 10-20 points if he keeps his current batted ball rates. I think his BABIP will drop a touch with some bad luck and also he's gotten an insnaely high 12% IF hit percentage, His previous career high was 7.6 but spent most of that time around 5. In other words. He's getting too many ground ball hits, That will normalize. He'll eventyually get a homer or 2 to bring his power up a big but he's also clearly changed his style of hitting as he's hitting less flyballs than ever before and that is gonn alead to much less power. So where does he go from here. I'd guess he drops, but he'll still be a decent hitter. Just closer to a 100 wRC+ than 115.
I'll leave Simmons out as I went into him in another thread.
Freeman has actually not quite been Freddie this year. Stil lgood but not Freddie good. His power is right on point, His linedrive and BABIP skills are still on point, But his K rate is at a career high and BB rate at a near career low. I expect both of these to turn around though. I think eventually he'll get his K rate around 20 again and his BB rate over 10. I have faith in Freddie. He's a hitting machine.
Jace Peterson has been an interesting case. He's been quite alright offensively. NOt good but not terrible. Striking out at an OK rate, showing no power but that's expected, Walking decently enough. He's been alright. Defensively he's made his biggest impact though. With some weirdness. Looking at Inside Edge and RZR he seemingly has missed a chunk of balls he should have made plays on. From a value standpoint he makes up for that by making spectacular plays as well. But aside from that which could just be big league jitters, he's been smooth overall showing no major issues defensively. Got to like that.
Cameron Maybin has certainly been a revelation for the Braves. He's been hurt a lot in his career or under performing. He's only had 2 seasons in the majors at this point in his career that can be considered full, he's 28 and came up at 20. That's alarming. But he's done everything well in Atlanta. He's walking more than normal. Striking out less than normal, He had his expected power boost leaving Petco. Only concern though sampling could be an issue is defense. Even with a full sample I'd take it with a grain of salt as he's not getting much help from LF or RF. Though if Cunningham proves to be acceptable with the bat, he should be amazing with the Glove.
I'll leave out the other position players as they're all under 30 games or really tterrible (looking at you Callaspo)
Onto pitching.
Miller has been great. He's outperforming his peripherals with ERA and it will rise, but not dramatically. He's pitching very well. He has a long way to go before he lives up to the hype some on here are bestowing upon him, But he's been great. You cannot take that away. One area I'd like to see him improve is either a slight uptick in Ks or a slight downtick in BBs. While solid where he's at. I think some teams will be able to exploit him.
Wood has been peripherally every bit as good as Miller. But where Miller is getting good luck, Wood is getting kinda bad luck. Some weirdness with him though. Where have the strikeouts gone? And when did he become a ground ball pitcher? Wood is not as dominant as he was his first 2 years with us where his xFIP was below 3.2 basically meaning not only was he good but he was statistically sound as well. This year his FIP is really low, but it's carried by a low HR/FB.
Folty has looked good overall statistically. Using xFIP he's basically been what we've expected him to be. Statistically speaking he's been a bit unlucky with BABIP and stranding runners, but has been lucky with the long ball. That's gonna be the thing to watch with him. His K numbers though are to drool over. Striking out 38 in 36 and a third. That's amazing.
Perez has been OK. I know the stats tell me I should be more excited about him, he's got a good FIP, good xFIP, best SIERA on team, everything should be there, I'm just not excited about him as a pitcher and it's primarily cause of his BB rate. Hopefully he proves me wrong but I think we're seeing a sample size monster who may just vanish.
Julio needs to get his **** in order. His K rate is fine, but his BB rate is too high and he's been giving away homers like they're helping him. Not what I want to see. I have faith in him turning it around though.
Not much good to talk about in the pen. Grilli, Martin and Johnson were all solid. Avilan has been good, but so much of th erest of the pen has been a giant dumpster fire. Either you have guys like McKirahan who can't strike guys our or the rest of the pen who gives out walks like candy to trick-or-treaters. I think Cahill will be fine as a mop up man now that we seemingly have the rotation set. I don't think he'll be good, but unlike other guys in the pen he shouldn't let guys get free passes, but that still leaves 2 spots in the pen that someone has to perform at least acceptably well.
And lastly though it's SSS. Gonna compare last year to this year in rate stats.
Offensively, we have an 86 wRC+ as a team, last year we had an 86. So overall thanks primarily to Maybin, we've done alright offensively. While I'm skeptical that our offense will keep performing this well, relative to the league we should be around last year.'s mark though many of the issues we were concerned about are still issues. Catcher being the biggest, and left field being the second biggest. Hopefully KJ can come back from his injury fine. As I don't think Cunningham will hit enough for LF.
Pitching we have (league adjusted lower is better) for our starters an ERA- of 101 a FIP- of 108 and an xFIP- of 107 non-adjusted we have a SIERA of 4.16 our pen is at 122 118 and 109 with a SIERA of 3.89. Last year our starters finished at 94 98 and and 100 with a SIERA of 3.77 and pen at 91 87 and 95 with a SIERA of 3.27
So overall you can conclude so far in the small though not tiny sample of this season, we're a bit behind where we wound up last year. It is worth noting mind you last year we finished horribly If we finish horribly this year things will look really ugly. WIll be interesting to see how the rest of the season shakes out.
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Originally Posted by Heywood
