Spring Training Thread

Solidly average? I keep posting this stat. Over his last 4 years, that's over 1,000 PAs, Arcia has a combined WAR of 0.1. He's almost exactly replacement level. Replacement level is not solidly average, it's a AAAA player that should be on the fringes of your roster and making the minimum.

he was solidly average last year and is projected to be this year. he was really bad at 24 in 2019 and was bad for 36 games in 2020. is it not possible he’s improved? projection systems have the info you posted as well, and while they’re far from perfect, i trust them more than someone just adding up WAR.
 
he was solidly average last year and is projected to be this year. he was really bad at 24 in 2019 and was bad for 36 games in 2020. is it not possible he’s improved? projection systems have the info you posted as well, and while they’re far from perfect, i trust them more than someone just adding up WAR.

Yeah kind of a weird hill to die on… argue just to argue I guess.
 
No one seems to be happy with any of the contracts given to any of the free agents this winter. I don’t recall any short stops traded this winter that moved the needle. What move would you prefer the Braves made than giving Arcia/Grissom the job? Btw… Grissom could easily be up in mid April and get 550 at bats. Arcia is a perfectly fine stop gap until Grissom is ready.

i think some people would have been fine with the Turner contract, not that i would have been.
the cost for shortstops was crazy this off-season. some have also said they would have preferred to use the Murphy package for a SS…but there wasn’t a good SS traded…
 
i think some people would have been fine with the Turner contract, not that i would have been.
the cost for shortstops was crazy this off-season. some have also said they would have preferred to use the Murphy package for a SS…but there wasn’t a good SS traded…

I would have been okay with the Turner contract. Don’t think there’s any chance we could have swung it though. But hey it’s not my money. I also wish we were more aggressive on the Correa front after the Mets deal fell through. Maybe we were… who knows
 
Maybe if Adames doesn’t get extended there’s a chance to get him in the season (if no one is running away with the job). Pipe dream but who knows what can happen in the season. Unexpected people become available all the time.
 
I'm still thinking Rosario of Cleveland. He's in his last year of contract, and they have some good, young MIF
 
He has a walk and rbi single to go with the HR. Robbed of another hit. The hate Arcia gets is weird. He's a decent player that's helped the braves while he's been here

It would be understandable if he was blocking a good player, but he's blocking....Grissom and Shewmake for crying out loud.

Arcia is not great, but he's a low end regular. Shewmake and Grissom may not even be that, and they can prove it either way in AAA. This narrative that they are somehow going to be impact players who would make a difference over Arcia is foolish homerism.
 
Arcia is probably fine and wont hurt the team that much honestly. If he's honestly that bad, i'm sure AA will find someone by the trade deadline.

The team is loaded top to bottom, it shouldnt really be a big deal in the grand scheme of things. Lineup is loaded, rotation has more depth than it's had in years, and the bullpen is deep even with some questions. No roster is perfect, and has elite players at every spot.
 
if Grissom could play SS he’d be the starter. i have little doubt about that. if he hits to start the year i view him as trade bait or the LF/DH solution.
 
Who starting tomorrow?

Shuster. Should be a fun game to watch with him starting, but you’d also think it would be pretty close to the opening day lineup after the off day Tuesday and none of the regulars traveling to Lakeland today.
 
he was solidly average last year and is projected to be this year. he was really bad at 24 in 2019 and was bad for 36 games in 2020. is it not possible he’s improved? projection systems have the info you posted as well, and while they’re far from perfect, i trust them more than someone just adding up WAR.

I'm not high on the projection systems for him in terms of WAR. They all rate him as a good defender and that's not the case anymore. His defense has steadily eroded to the point that it's now below average. All of the projections project a wRC+ under 100 (some well under). If his defense doesn't miraculously improve, he's not going to sniff the WAR projections.

As for last year, his offensive numbers were aided by the way he was used. As a backup he was used situationally and, believe it or not, Snit seemed to do pretty well picking his matchups. But we got a glimpse of Arcia as a starter last year. When Ozzie went down in mid-June, Arcia stepped in. Arcia had appeared in one game in June before Ozzie got hurt so the vast majority of his June stats were as a starter and he started the vast majority of July. After that he went back to the bench with Grissom getting most of the playing time. So Arcia's June and July stats should show what he can do as a starter.

Over June and July, Arcia had 120 PAs. In June he posted a wOBA of .289 and a wRC+ of 82. In July his wOBA was .260 with a red hot wRC+ of 62.

We have a 120 PA snapshot of Arcia as a starter last year and the results are UGLY. People want to assume Arcia's WAR would increase at the same rate you increase his playing time but that's not a guarantee. You can't shield a player's weaknesses from being exposed when they're a starter. Sometimes the additional playing time drops a player's value like a rock.

I don't see anything in his stats to make me believe he's a 1.5 to 2 WAR player or that he's even average. We have 1,000 PAs over the last 4 years with a combined WAR of 0.1. In 2019 his WAR -0.9, in 2020 it was 0.7, in 2021 it was -0.4, last year it was 0.7. He's consistently within 1 WAR of 0. I see no reason to believe his 0.7 WAR last year is an indication he's improved as a player. It's well within what he's established as his standard range.
 
Arcia also has solid statcast data. again i’ll trust projection systems that have all of this info over someone just adding up WAR from 4 years ago on. so we will see.
 
At this point I don't think anyone should be surprised if Arcia has a all-star year.

AA has the midas touch. Trust the process....
 
This is one of the reasons it's not generally a good idea to sign on to pay an early-to-mid-30's reliever $16 million a year through the first year of the next presidential administration, no matter how awesome the reliever seems to be.
 
I fully accept that this is karma for some of us laughing at the Mets for Diaz going down. Hopefully it's just a slap on the wrist and we can get back to dominating.
 
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