Well into the dog days of summer I'm gonna start painting with broad strokes first.
We've compiled as a team an 85 wRC+, 21.3 defensive RAR, 110 ERA- 112 FIP- and 109 xFIP-
Overall pretty damned cruddy.
I'm gonna highlight a few good and bad. Starting with position players.
Freddie I"d call good and bad, His production has been very good on the field, though he's currently having a very good season, it's his worst offensive season since 2012. Of course that could all change before the end of the year, Freddie is capable of that. The very good is so far he's having his best power season ever. That's great to see him coming into his power. The bad though is he's up in K rate striking out the most since his rookie year and down in BB rate walking the lowest of his career. The good news is though, he can easily turn it around. The bad news is it doesn't matter. We suck. So I'm all for being cautious with Freddie and make sure he's healthy for the coming seasons.
Tron has been our best player. He's been his usual self. The bad news is he's not as good as he was in 2013. Again, a hot streak can put him up there. But he's doing what he does best. Being the best in the game with the glove, and not hitting well enough. Now the good newsis he's walking more than ever and striking out less than ever, the bad news is he's got his worst power numbers of his career. The good news if you will on that though is he's smacking more liners than ever before and has his best BABIP of his career, the bad news is his HR/FB is lower than ever before and his BABIP still isn't great. I'll stay slightly optimistic on him though. Not many guys who have 22% LD and 24% FB have that low of a BABIP. I'll chalk this up to bad luck.
Sadly out early season risers have lost some of their sheen. Maybin has come crashign back to earth, 105 wRC+ with poor to terrible (depending on what metric you look at) defense. Markakis is who I thought he would be. Still not hitting very much, and very much a shell of his former self defensively. 107 wRC+ is decent, it's about average to maybe slightly below average for RF, but couple that with below average baserunning and defense, and you're looking at a guy who may struggle to be worth 11M, which isn't something 5 years ago you'd thought you'd say about Markakis at 31. Even without the inflation. Jace Peterson has been a mixed bag for me. Decent power production makes me slightly optimistic, but you'd almost assume that it's coming with his 20% K rate. Now often rookies strike out more then because of getting used to major league zones, so that hopefully will come down. But he's walking less than anticipated. I was expecting him around 11% and he's around 9. Not terrible at all, but with his power and K rate, you'd need something else to boost yourself offensively. And defensively, the numbers aren't great for the season. DRS has him below average and UZR slightly above average. I have read mainly positive reports on him so hopefully it's just jitters that's the issue. Where he'll need to improve is as a hitter first and foremost. But it's looking very much like he could just be a very meh player. Someone who hold value while they're really cheap.
Broad stroke on position players. A mere 6 position players with an fWAR over 1.0. One of them is Juan Uribe who only played 46 games for the Braves.
And last but not least Johnny Gomes has been a massive turd who keeps getting trot out there for some reason.
Onto pitching. I'm gonna break this into starting and bullpen and try to avoid the really small samples.
Shelby Miller ahs been amazing, he's made losing Jason suck less. Hopefully he keeps this up. Only "concern" is there's a massive difference between ERA and FIP, and then FIP and xFIP. Hopefully his nubmers aren't a mirage, but I'm really just hoping that his peripherals follow his ERA.
After that, the starters ahve largely been **** or traded (Wood) Julio bounced back decently enough, he's sitting at a 4.32 ERA with a better FIP and xFIP, He seems to have gotten over what ailed him to start the season, Since June he's only had 3 turdball starts. 6/16 vs Boston 7/3 vs Philly, and 7/28 vs Baltimore. He's had a few eh starts in there, but he had 5 turdball starts before June so I'd say much improved. Thank god too or we'd have a **** contract on our hands.
Wisler, Folty and Perez wrap up the double digit starters. After an amazing start for Perez, he's more than came back to earth, and he wasn't smoke and mirrors, he had good numbers when he first came up. He just has been gettign smacked around. Folty has been crap for the most part, gleam of hope is that he can pitch to his xFIP in the future as his K rate is good, walk rate isn't terrible, his HR rate is terrible though. Wisler has been a mixed bag, decent numbers but nto good enough.
Now the positive is they're all young .Wilser and Folty have great pedigree as well, Folty has been just under 95 MPH on his fastball, Wisler just over 93. Got to love young power arms like that.
Bullpen, I don't know where to go? Grilli wasreally good, then went down with injury, in his 18 games Arodys has been great aside from xFIP, Johnson was good, overall, we have arguably the worst bullpen in baseball, up there with the Red Sox, Mariners and Rangers.
Let's compare to last season, obviouly not totally fair given there is still about 40 games or so left in the season (too lazy for math) and I'm just gonna deal in braodstrokes here.
Last year our hitters had an 87 wRC+ vs this years 85. Overall offense has been a push. Most of that has to do with good production from CF instead of horrifying, and no Uggla. But still, not a terrible overall net loss.
Defensive RAR we were at 61.7 vs this years 21.3. No way we sniff that number. Areas with the biggest drops include RF (from +15.5 to -7.2) and CF (from +2.5 to -7.7) and LF (from -9.3 to -21.8, Johnny Gomes is really ****ing bad)
In the pitching last years starts averaged 6.43 IP per start to the tune of a 94 ERA- 100 FIP- and 100 xFIP-, this year starts have averaged 5.87 with a 109 ERA- 113 FIP- and 112 xFIP-. In the pen things are worse, last year we had (same 3 stats, gonna use slashes) 95/89/95 this year it's 113/111/105
So overall vs last year (so far) offensively we've been about equal, this primarily has to do with massive improvements in CF and 2B. Even though Peterson hasn't been amazing our 2B this year have an 85 wRC+, big improvement over last year's 73, though you could make a very strong case that if all we did was bench Uggla those numbers could be much higher as La Stella and Gosselin were both around 80 wRC+. And Uggla's pathetic 36 in 145 PA was a massive anchor. And CF we saw a massive rise from a pathetic 67 carried by one Melvin Upton Jr. and not helped by Emilio Bonerfacio, to a very good 94. Now our overall production in CF hasn't been massively different because Maybin has been shaky with the glove and EYJ in his few games there was stanky, and last year Bonerfacio provided a very nice late season defensive boost, But those were wiped out by huge loss in LF from 107 to 76 (seriously, Johnny Gomes sucks, but so does everyone in LF not named Kelly Johnson this year) and Freddie being hurt/slightly worse has made a big drop from 140 to 107.
Been a weird year. Can't help but wonder what if too. What if we kept Jason and Justin and went for it? We'd be worse in CF for sure, because we wouldn't have Maybin, that's 100% for sure. RF offense wouldn't be much better, but defense and baserunning would be so much better, LF would be lightyears better. Our rotation would almost certainly be worse, even if we did the smart thing and kept the Harangutan we still would be missing out on Miller, and still would have a struggling Julio.
It's a hard one to think about, Justin and Jason have done quite well for themselves, Justin posting good offensive numbers at Petco on a miserable team, Jason doing what he normally does, hit's better than average for his position and is great i nthe bases and amazing in the field. Where could their 6 or so fWAR advantage over Markakis and the Medusa in LF have us? You have to assume that we would have better production at 2B vs last year. and if we were in the mix we'd have kept Uribe, I think we could have been solid offensively, but the question comes to pitching. How miserable would our rotation have been? It's already not great, how low would it have gone? But how much of that is countered by having Walden and Kimbrel? Obviously Walden has been hurt, I know that, but injuries aren't predictable in reality.
Anyway, just interesting to think about where we may have been? And if we still weren't in the mix at the deadline, how much would we have lost by not making the trades to start the year? Just musings.
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Originally Posted by The Don
