GDT: 4/7/'15 - Atlanta Braves (Wood) @ Miami Marlins (Latos) 7:35PM EST

thethe said:
Yes, they relied on contact hitters without big power guys. Its worked before and it can work again. I'm not looking to construct a lineup of all single/walk hitters. I just don't think we need multiple guys hitting 15-20+ homers.
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Can you give some examples?
 
Russ2dollas said:
I guess you could...but it would be really hard. You can't count on stringing together 3+ Hits/walks vs a good pitcher.

You could win a lot of games. IF you have good pitching and Defense you can win with less offense. And you face some bad pitchers during the year. But the problem for Braves fans has not been getting to the playoffs, it's winning series. And vs playoff pitchers, where you are now facing teams' top 1-3, you aren't stringing together 3+ hits/walks in an inning consistently.

You need at least 3,4,5 to be guys capable of doubles and 15+ HR IMO.
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As long as those hitters aren't all or nothing. Give me a team full of Freddie Freemans and I'm happy.

I believe the type of hitters that we've had the last few years do worse against better pitchers than contact/slap hitters. I don't want a lineup littered with either of those.
 
thethe said:
As long as those hitters aren't all or nothing. Give me a team full of Freddie Freemans and I'm happy.

I believe the type of hitters that we've had the last few years do worse against better pitchers than contact/slap hitters. I don't want a lineup littered with either of those.
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Well of course, Freddie is a fantastic hitter that has power.
 
thethe said:
Royals/Cards had some solid teams in the 80s without having a lot of homerun power.
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Did the Royals score a lot of runs without power? I know the year they won it all, their offense was pathetic.

Knew the Cards would be brought up. They had some pretty bad offenses yet 1 year they scored runs without having power.
 
thethe said:
As long as those hitters aren't all or nothing. Give me a team full of Freddie Freemans and I'm happy.

I believe the type of hitters that we've had the last few years do worse against better pitchers than contact/slap hitters. I don't want a lineup littered with either of those.
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Totally agree. There is some continuum between OBP and power. And most people would sacrifice some OBP for power. Where you draw the line prob differs from person to person.

But for me....if you can have an OBP north of .333, then I want the 15+ HR per game and hopefully a bunch of doubles. You also need that guy to field his position.

If you could get a team full of OBP north of 0.350, then you probably could get by with maybe 75-80 HRs from the entire team. But that ain't easy.

But if you have guys with a OBP hanging around 0.300, then you probably need them to slug 0.500, and you probably want the max at 2.
 
50PoundHead said:
Braves scored less than 700 runs in both 2013 and 2014. That happened only one other time (2011) during Wren's tenure. Now, granted, the decline in offense across baseball is a trend, but I don't think anyone could contend that replacing Chipper Jones with Chris Johnson and Brian McCann (even though he was in decline) with Evan Gattis didn't have a marked effect on the Braves' offense. You think of some of the other position flips (Escobar for Alex Gonzalez, Bourn for M. Upton) that have happened over the years and you can see how things have fallen off.

There are a lot of ways to score runs. Power has been the most reliable way to do that and will continue to be, but I don't see how anyone can deny that the team became more one-dimensional in 2013 and 2014 and the inability to put strikes in play is a gaping weakness. You can't put runners in motion if the guy at the plate can't put the bat on the ball. It was just a bad mix of players.
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To lump 2013 and 2014 together as two teams that "scored less than 700 runs" is completely illogical. In 2013 we scored 688 runs and were fourth in the NL in runs scored. But in 2014 we scored 573 runs ONE HUNDRED FIFTEEN runs fewer than in 2013 and were 14th in the NL in runs scored. In fact in both seasons only 2 of 15 NL teams scored 700 runs. The average runs per NL team was 648 in 2013 and 640 in 2014. So, the Braves scored 40 more runs than the league average in 2013 and 67 fewer runs than the league average in 2014.

Those two seasons were far more dissimilar than similar any way you cut it.
 
The '91 Braves didn't have a ton of power outside of Gant and Justice. Bream was past his prime and TP had a career year. Being honest about Gant was really the only true power hitter.
 
The other thing about line up construction is that now a days you have to factor in the defense more and more.

And you need guys that have flexibility. I'm really excited about Peterson because I'm hoping he can be a Prado type guy. If Peterson could be a 0.333 OBP guy with an OPS over 0.700, and play LF, 3B, SS, and 2B at an avg level or better........that is a valuable guy. ESPECIALLY in his first 6 years.

With teams carrying a stupid number of pitchers you need guys like that. Personally I'd like us to have more Martin type guys that go 2-3 innings in the pen.
 
thethe said:
Royals/Cards had some solid teams in the 80s without having a lot of homerun power.
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In 1985 when the Cards won the pennant, they led the NL in OPS (First in OBP, 5th in SP), and thus led the league in runs scored. The following year they dropped to dead last in both OBP and SP and thus were dead last (by a mile) in runs scored. They dropped from 100 wins in 1985 to 79 in 1986.

But you are correct in they didn't hit a lot of homers either season.
 
thethe said:
Plenty of good offenses prior to the 90's relied on contact players. Did the rules of baseball change? I understand we got smarter about the game but its still a ball thrown at a batter trying to hit it.
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Can you create a good offense without power? Yes it's certainly possible. The 1987 Cards were 8th in runs scored which put them in the top 3rd in baseball despite being last in homers and isolated slugging. They were among the league leaders as a team in BB% and blew the league away in base running ability which isn't much of a surpise when you have guys like Ozzie and coleman at the top of your lineup.

That said that type of team is extremely rare and not something I think you should try and and build towards. Unless you think the Braves can find a Vince Coleman or Rickey Henderson that is going to steal 100 bases a year.

Do you need 30 and 40 homer a year guys? No becuase there aren't those types of hitters anymore. But you need to have enough power relative to what the league is doing. Players before 1990 did have power believe it or not.
 
The rise in strikeout rates is possibly the most important development in the game in recent years. It seems to me a couple implications follow. One is defense becomes less important. That seems rather obvious. Another is power becomes more important because with more strikeouts it is harder to string together hits. Maybe I am oversimplifying. Thoughts?
 
VirginiaBrave said:
The '91 Braves didn't have a ton of power outside of Gant and Justice. Bream was past his prime and TP had a career year. Being honest about Gant was really the only true power hitter.
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They had the 3rd most homers in the NL.
 
nsacpi said:
The rise in strikeout rates is possibly the most important development in the game in recent years. It seems to me a couple implications follow. One is defense becomes less important. That seems rather obvious. Another is power becomes more important because with more strikeouts it is harder to string together hits. Maybe I am oversimplifying. Thoughts?
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Most of the time, the guys who hit for big power strike out a lot, too.
We can sit and weep about JUp being gone, but he was an incredibly frustrating hitter for this reason. I loved his power and when he was hot, he was RED hot. But when he went cold, every AB was completely unproductive. Sometimes a ball just needs to be put in play, or contact made in some way, and a lot of times, he couldn't do it - here comes another strikeout. He wasn't great with RISP during his time here. I get that a lot of that is based on luck, but it's also the kind of hitter he was. 171 Ks in 154 games is detrimental. Those Ks can come at crucial times. You're not even giving yourself a chance.

Homers are more good than Ks are bad. But, balance is best. I don't know that power is anymore important than before. Look at the two teams in the WS last year.
 
nsacpi said:
The rise in strikeout rates is possibly the most important development in the game in recent years. It seems to me a couple implications follow. One is defense becomes less important. That seems rather obvious. Another is power becomes more important because with more strikeouts it is harder to string together hits. Maybe I am oversimplifying. Thoughts?
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There is some coorelation I think. It's a combiation of a bunch of things though. Steroids are a factor which obviosuly increased power. Pitcher specialization is a big factor too. Starters only going 6 innings with fresh high power arms out of the bullpen will lead to more strikeouts as well. Hitters compensating for that with trying to hit for more power to offset not being able to string as many hits togethor which increase the strikeouts even more. Take the steroids and other PED's out of the game then the striekouts remain but the loss of power takes run scoring to an all-time low. The league will adjust to a more contact orientated offense like the pre 90's but with pitching the way it is then striekouts will remain high.
 
If our future looks like:
CF: ?
LF: ?
RF: Markakus in year 3 and 4
1B: FF
2b: Paraza
SS: Simmons
3B: Peterson
C: CB

Then we need a some power out in LF. I doubt we get it in CF. That line up would project to be very good defensively (at least in the infield) and have OBP but FF is prob the only person hitting over 15 HR. Maybe Cb but his OBP is prob going to be 0.300 or worse. In that case you are probably hoping last year's first round pick is a hitting prodigy and he can play LF regardless of how bad it would probably be.
 
yeezus said:
Homers are more good than Ks are bad. But, balance is best. I don't know that power is anymore important than before. Look at the two teams in the WS last year.
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That's two different things though. You don't need a good offense to be a good team and thus make the WS. Having power is very important to having a good offense. And also the two teams were WC teams which means that's more of an indication of the current playoff format then it is about a team being good. Baseball is a marathon sport which sucks becauase being a world champion means winning a sprint. It's great for the fans and popularity of the game but the best teams rarely are world champiosn anymore.
 
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