April

Dalyn said:
It makes sense to discuss it in this thread, and if I had just posted in Nsacpi's, I would've mentioned him. His numbers have rebounded nicely late this month, but his attitude stinks. He's going to be a problem if it keeps up, but I think Chipper will probably stop by and jerk a knot in his tail and put an end to it.
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I was hoping this was a transition from the laid-back hugger of teammates to more of a leadership role, but his "it shut them (the fans) up" comment* about Uggla's HR made me revisit this.

* He has a point, of course, but there were plenty of other ways to say it IMO and still get his meaning across. The statement struck me as the kind of snot-nosery that one would expect of a National.
 
One thing is clear to me. Bethancourt is not our future. And AJ is too old to be a permanent option. I hope Briceno is the next big thing at catcher. He has a great skillset. Is he not playing minor league ball right now? Haven't heard anything about him this year.
 
zbhargrove said:
One thing is clear to me. Bethancourt is not our future. And AJ is too old to be a permanent option. I hope Briceno is the next big thing at catcher. He has a great skillset. Is he not playing minor league ball right now? Haven't heard anything about him this year.
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Briceno's playing, just not all that well. .146/.226/.208 at Carolina.
 
MadduxFanII said:
Briceno's playing, just not all that well. .146/.226/.208 at Carolina.
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He's as badly in A ball as Bethancourt is doing in the majors. And only a year younger. I'll put my chips on Bethancourt. But I do think Bethancourt should spend the rest of this year in AAA. He will benefit from another year there and there are service time considerations as well.
 
Pitching is a little dicier than I thought it would be. Offense a little better. Defense is what it is. I thought the team was playing fairly sharply until the last week or so. Lots of mistakes, both physical and mental. I'm not thinking about W/L because I predicted 71-91 and my hopes are no higher than that. We could see 25 different pitchers get a major league appearance for the Braves this year. I think the bullpen is going to be a revolving door.
 
There is a tendency to give too much weight to what happened in the prior year and not enough to the longer track record. There was good reason to think certain offensive players (especially guys like Freeman, Simmons and CJ who had strong 2013 seasons) would rebound.
 
nsacpi said:
There is a tendency to give too much weight to what happened in the prior year and not enough to the longer track record. There was good reason to think certain offensive players (especially guys like Freeman, Simmons and CJ who had strong 2013 seasons) would rebound.
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And with Freeman it's not like a line of 288/386/461 - 140 wrc+ is to say he had subpar year in 2014. In fact I would consider that about right since he had a 371 BABIP in 2013 to boost a few stats.

Feeman had been great through the first month of the season and the only thing I'm even slightly worried about is his walk rate but it's been a month and and that can improve relatively fast. I expect another 4-5 WAR season from him again.
 
Freeman and Simmons both look very good. Those two are really the key players on this team, both for this year and the foreseeable future. Imo their continued good health and improvement is the most positive development so far this season. They provide such a strong foundation that we will likely be close to a .500 team even with a weak supporting cast.
 
nsacpi said:
He's as badly in A ball as Bethancourt is doing in the majors. And only a year younger. I'll put my chips on Bethancourt. But I do think Bethancourt should spend the rest of this year in AAA. He will benefit from another year there and there are service time considerations as well.
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I'd note it's still a very SSS for Briceno in High-A so it's too early to say IMO. Plus he's only struck out 7 times while walking 5 times and he's also still throwing out runners at over a 40% clip which I like (44% last year and 41% so far this year).
 
Freddie's going to hit. Maybe it'll be to an .840 OPS, maybe it'll be to a .900ish OPS, and that's not an insignificant difference. But we all know we're going to get plenty of line drives and doubles out of Freeman. He'll probably be OPSing around .800 when he retires at the age of 41. Guy's just built for it.
 
nsacpi said:
To summarize the state of play among position players: Regression is likely reduce the production we get in right and at catcher, but should increase our production out of center.
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Markakis April OPS .822 May .709 (BABIP and walk rate down, strikeout rate up)

Pierzynski April OPS 1.131 May .370 (ouch)

Maybin April OPS .683 May .815 (strikeout rate down over 10%)

Funny how this regression thing works.
 
thethe said:
Guy is going to hit a lot of homeruns in his career as long as he stays in the AL. I predict that GF will still say that he sucks.
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You are probably the worst at putting words in peoples mouths to try to prove a point. Gattis does not suck, my any means. He's just not an everyday catcher and isn't an all around hitter. But, has tremendous power.
 
nsacpi said:
Markakis April OPS .822 May .709 (BABIP and walk rate down, strikeout rate up)

Pierzynski April OPS 1.131 May .370 (ouch)

Maybin April OPS .683 May .815 (strikeout rate down over 10%)

Funny how this regression thing works.
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STOP BEING SO NEGATIVE!!! THEY'RE BETTER
 
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