The Uggla Solution

So, if in Bizarro World, the Braves were to Designate Uggla for Assignment, any team could claim, but would have to take on the full salary, yes? If that happens, uh, yay. If not, Kawakami his butt to Mississippi and hope he retires. He truly seems like a great dude, but honestly, I am to that point. Bring on Rev or La Stella.
 
Uggla cannot be justified any longer. With Janish at second, you have better defense and at least someone who can bunt; with Pastor at second, you have OK defense with decent room to grow as a hitter; less so with Elliott J. With La Stella, you have a dropoff in defense in exchange for a bat with all-star potential. The Brooks Conrad lesson remains in the Braves' consciousness, so it is far from a given that he gets a legit shot at the job.

I think Uggla is a DFA and let the chips fall where they may.
 
Runnin said:
Oh how a couple of years changes everything. We could really use an Infante type now.
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Amazing how that deal was unanimously looked at as a big win for the Braves. Funny how perception can change over time.
 
JohnAdcox said:
So, if in Bizarro World, the Braves were to Designate Uggla for Assignment, any team could claim, but would have to take on the full salary, yes? If that happens, uh, yay. If not, Kawakami his butt to Mississippi and hope he retires. He truly seems like a great dude, but honestly, I am to that point. Bring on Rev or La Stella.
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I still hold out a candle, but it's flickering. I was really hoping it was his eyes.
 
I certainly was happy about it. We really needed a RH power bat. We thought the last couple of years of the deal might be painful. This, though . . .
 
For next year, the club needs to make it clear that it will be a competitive situation for playing time at second.

For this year, the injuries to Pena and Pastornicky have reduced our options. We really have only Elliot Johnson, with his career .587 OPS.

The alarming thing is that Uggla has put up an OPS of .530 in the second half (136 plate appearances). This means that Johnson might in fact be the superior option, especially when you take account defense and baserunning..

I think we need to give Johnson a couple starts a week to keep him sharp in case Uggla does not improve over the next couple weeks. The Uggla from the first half of this year while disappointing was acceptable. He had an .738 OPS in the first half. I'd be thrilled with that for the rest of the season and post-season from him. But we have to be prepared for the possibility that he doesn't pull out of this latest funk and might have to go with Johnson in the playoffs.

Fredi has to do what is best for the team. In 2011, he sat Heyward in favor of Constanza. He played Ross over McCann in the wild card game last year. I hope he will be similarly clear-eyed in looking at whether Uggla is the best guy for us at second come the playoffs.
 
thethe said:
Amazing how that deal was unanimously looked at as a big win for the Braves. Funny how perception can change over time.
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Fortunately, aside from money lost and the excessive lack of production at 2B for the past three years, we aren't exactly looking at any real loss in terms of the players/prospects given up to acquire Ugh. I think many of us would've given more (Minor?) to bag Uggla at the time -- his '10 numbers are kinda mouth-watering, and we were getting him in his 'prime.'

To me, Dan is kind of like Nate McLouth - a guy with a lot of potential, a gamer, that you want to give every chance possible. He'll probably have a brief career renaissance in a year or two outside of ATL, then head off into the sunset with $75MM.
 
thethe said:
Amazing how that deal was unanimously looked at as a big win for the Braves. Funny how perception can change over time.
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Perception really doesn't change it too much. Sure it didn't wind up being a complete and total W for the Braves. We knew Infante would do well there, but this is the first year that Omar has for sure outplayed Uggla, and Mike Dunn is a reliever, him being on the team would only have meant longer wait for guys like Avilan and Wood to get their shots.

We traded 1 year of Infante and a reliever for Uggla, it was a smart trade, wound up that we were on the losing end of the trade in the end, but heck that can happen. Same deal as the McLouth trade. Pittsburgh seems like they now have the better end since Locke is doing well, but at the time it was a no brainer. Sometimes you get shocking wins, sometimes you get no brainer wins (Horacio for Soriano) sometimes you get risky wins or losses, sometimes you get no brainers that turn to losses. If you can go back in time, you still would make the McLouth and Uggla trades because the odds of them collapsing as hard as they did (and in reality until this year Uggla didn't collapse) is slimmer than the odds they'll maintain.

Some trades you can look back on and wonder if they're worth it, JD Drew being one (I think JS foolishly assumed that Drew would take a discount to stay in Atlanta as a Georgia native), LaRoche leaving Atlanta being arguably the biggest (leading to the infamous Teixeira trade, but if we had LaRoche we don't make that trade anyway) then of course seperate from the LaRoche trade, why make that move when we had other holes as well. And then of course the shipping off Teixeira the following season.

I mean to be honest if we weren't a not very good team the Tex trade could be viewed in a different light. He rocked for us in the second half of 2007 and basically in his year with Atlanta hit basically .300/.400/.550 cannot complain about that at all, but as a not great team it was a bad move.
 
zitothebrave said:
Perception really doesn't change it too much. Sure it didn't wind up being a complete and total W for the Braves. We knew Infante would do well there, but this is the first year that Omar has for sure outplayed Uggla, and Mike Dunn is a reliever, him being on the team would only have meant longer wait for guys like Avilan and Wood to get their shots.

We traded 1 year of Infante and a reliever for Uggla, it was a smart trade, wound up that we were on the losing end of the trade in the end, but heck that can happen. Same deal as the McLouth trade. Pittsburgh seems like they now have the better end since Locke is doing well, but at the time it was a no brainer. Sometimes you get shocking wins, sometimes you get no brainer wins (Horacio for Soriano) sometimes you get risky wins or losses, sometimes you get no brainers that turn to losses. If you can go back in time, you still would make the McLouth and Uggla trades because the odds of them collapsing as hard as they did (and in reality until this year Uggla didn't collapse) is slimmer than the odds they'll maintain.

Some trades you can look back on and wonder if they're worth it, JD Drew being one (I think JS foolishly assumed that Drew would take a discount to stay in Atlanta as a Georgia native), LaRoche leaving Atlanta being arguably the biggest (leading to the infamous Teixeira trade, but if we had LaRoche we don't make that trade anyway) then of course seperate from the LaRoche trade, why make that move when we had other holes as well. And then of course the shipping off Teixeira the following season.

I mean to be honest if we weren't a not very good team the Tex trade could be viewed in a different light. He rocked for us in the second half of 2007 and basically in his year with Atlanta hit basically .300/.400/.550 cannot complain about that at all, but as a not great team it was a bad move.
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Whenever you trade prospects for established players there is the risk that the prospect will turn out better than expected. I'm sure the Angels didn't expect Segura to turn out to be so good when they gave him as part of the package for 2 months of Greinke. You need to be careful about making those deals because some of them will come back to bite you. The fact there is uncertainty as to which prospects will pan out and which won't doesn't mean the GM doesn't have to make an accounting of probabilities and expected value. In the case of the Uggla trade though we gave up major leaguers. There is uncertainty about major leaguers too, as Mr. Uggla has reminded us.
 
rico43 said:
Uggla cannot be justified any longer. With Janish at second, you have better defense and at least someone who can bunt; with Pastor at second, you have OK defense with decent room to grow as a hitter; less so with Elliott J. With La Stella, you have a dropoff in defense in exchange for a bat with all-star potential. The Brooks Conrad lesson remains in the Braves' consciousness, so it is far from a given that he gets a legit shot at the job.

I think Uggla is a DFA and let the chips fall where they may.
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Rico, have you seen La Stella play defense? I know the consensus is that he's not that great defensively but is it on par with Uggla or is it so bad that Uggla looks like a GG next to him? I mean the guy is young and scouts have said the same for many players and yet they improved if they work at it. I don't know much about La Stella other than the kid can flat out rake. La Stella's fielding percentage isn't bad at all though I know it doesn't tell the whole story but it's a lot better than Pastornicky's and I love Pastornicky as well. I think Pastor could end up being a Mark Derosa type player for us and hopefully the organization feels the same and I was extremely disappointed when he went down like he did because I think he would've shined at 2B.

I know La Stella will be a work in progress but he's still very young and too me he seems like the logical guy to play 2B for us. His numbers are just incredible and he has a career OPS of .900 in the 3 years he's been drafted. I'm sure FW and Co. know what they have in La Stella and if he impresses in the AFL I do believe he will be given every chance to win the 2B job in 2014.
 
This is a post inspired by striker's

So, I looked on fangraphs and ranked the second basemen in all of baseball. There are 16 qualifying (plate appearances) second basemen.

Uggla's rankings

wOBA 14th
wRC+ 14th
ISO 3rd (LOL)
BB % 1st
K % 1st (very very bad) Uggla's K percentage is 30.9, the next highest is 21.8
fWAR 14th
 
Gary82 said:
This is a post inspired by striker's

So, I looked on fangraphs and ranked the second basemen in all of baseball. There are 16 qualifying (plate appearances) second basemen.

Uggla's rankings

wOBA 14th
wRC+ 14th
ISO 3rd (LOL)
BB % 1st
K % 1st (very very bad) Uggla's K percentage is 30.9, the next highest is 21.8
fWAR 14th
Click to expand...

Really highlights how rarely he puts the ball in play.
 
13.9 percent of the time he walks, and 30.9 precent of the time he strikes out. So, 44.8 percent of the time he doesn't put the ball in play at all. Nearly HALF of his at bats require no defense.
 
I tried to find somebody who didn't put the ball in play that much.

Barry Bonds in 2004 had a BB percentage of 37.6 and a K percentage of 6.6 resulting in 44.2 percent of his at bats where he didn't put the ball in play.

So there ya go. I just compared Dan Uggla to Barry Bonds. Good day.
 
We just need to find a way to slip some drugs into him so he gets suspended. Hopefully Bud ARods him and we get off the hook for his salary.
 
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