Should The Braves Demote Jason Heyward?

1. It is certain. Have you seen the other OF’s the Braves have? Please.

2. Actually, there were two doubles in the first game of that streak. On July 20th, he was 3-4 with 2 doubles. So please, check your facts. If you want to be taken seriously, failing to correctly state easily verifiable facts is not the way to do it.

3. It is a lot more likely than maybe. Yes, he probably shouldn’t have been playing. However, it wasn’t like he pulled a Jordan Schafer and hid the injury. Of course, he wanted to play through the injury, but he didn’t keep Braves management in the dark. The problem was that for much of the time that he was playing hurt (and poorly) the Braves just didn’t have enough healthy OFs to DL him—-once Diaz came back, Heyward went on the DL. Heyward basically took one for the team playing hurt.

4. If I understand you correctly, you are suggesting that the Braves, in a pennant race, demote their best outfielder and possibly second best hitter for the rest of the season to save one season of arbitration. If the Braves were out of the race, that could make sense. But they aren’t. They are trying to win now. Demoting your best players to save money five years from now is not the brightest idea when you are trying to win now. Let’s say the Braves save a full $20 million between 2013 and 2016 (the price of one full free agent season at the end less the price of one major league minium season) if they demoted Heyward now. Now, by demoting him, and not playing for this year, the Braves fail to make the playoffs and attendance falters as a result of this fan-unfriendly move. That’s probably gonna cost $10 million right there. Add in the time value of money, and we are probably looking at a few million dollars saved by demoting him. Add in the cost of the inevitable MLBPA grievance, which Heyward should rightfully win, since this would be a shameless example of demotion to prevent service time accumulation, and that further lowers the money saved. (And if they lost the grievance, like they should, they’d end up losing money because Heyward’s service time would be restored and the Braves would have gotten no benefit at all from their stunt.)

In sum, the cost benefit analysis does not support your position. If it did, no team would ever want to call up a minor league before they had to do so or lose him in the Rule 5 draft. If your cost-benefit analysis were correct and saving money in the future was all that mattered, not only should Heyward be demoted now, the Braves shouldn’t recall him until 2012, thereby saving another season of service time. Fortunately, for baseball, your analysis is horribly incorrect.

Your comparison to Strasburg proves the point. It made sense with Strasburg because the Nationals are not competing this year. The Braves are.

Finally, the second epic fail of your article is that you expect Heyward to perform the rest of the year like his has since May 12th, even though that time included about a month where he was playing hurt and hit poorly, and after spending two weeks on the DL has returned hitting better. Perhaps you should severely bruise your thumb so you can’t type these factually questionable articles with absolutely ridiculous suggestions.

But he has been flying around right field at the Ted.

…as I noted above, he played hurt mostly because the Braves didn’t have anyone else who was healthy enough to play at all. Once Diaz came back, Heyward went on the DL. That being said, given the difference in production, Heyward should have been put on the DL earlier and some scrub called up. But given that Heyward didn’t hide the injury from the Braves, that’s the fault of management, not Heyward.

…saying that Heyward may not be any good in the second half of 2010 based on a small sample size heavily skewed with numbers from when he was playing hurt is highly questionable in and of itself. Heyward’s splits tell the story:

April (healthy): .240/.360/.520 .880 OPS
May (mostly healthy): .337/.453/.628 1.081 OPS
June (thumb injury): .181/.287/..245 .532 OPS
July (after returning from DL, but small sample size): .436/.522/.487 1.009 OPS

To me, at least, that tells the story—-he’s been good or great when healthy, he obviously couldn’t hit at all during the worst of the thumb injury. I think doing the full splits tells more than cherry-picking a sample from a random date without acknowledging the injury during the time period, don’t you?

Even if you think Heyward sticks to his current rates, he’d end with:

.276/.387/.459/.846, 27 2B, 5 3B, 20 HR, 86 RBI, 86 BB, 134 SO

Minus the SO (which were a product of his bad thumb), I wouldn’t be disappointed in those numbers.

And that is assuming he doesn’t go on a ridiculous tear at any point in the next 2+ months.

Sure looks like it’s healing up too me.

Then I’ll put it much simpler:

He was crushing from May 1 to May 22 and from May 16 to May 22, he was still crushing.

Even simpler: Your statement was completely wrong.

Also Mauer. I mean he lost all the power he had from last year as well. May as well send him down to.

Greinke seems to be having an off year on the mound, lets send him down while we are at it.

Your reasoning lacks any type of intelligible knowledge whatsoever.

It’s not even controversial. It’s just dumb.

Well, you haven’t really supported anything you claim. You claim that his struggles weren’t only due to his thumb injury, but offer nothing to support it in any way. You don’t think he can keep up the good numbers and continually harp on the month he struggled when he was clearly injured. When you offer some actual analysis, then maybe you’d be taken somewhat seriously.

I can’t remember the last time a team promoted a hot young prospect, got in a pennant race, then demoted him to save money.

And don’t have to worry about service time issues.

Matt Diaz’s career splits: .709 OPS vs. RHP, .921 OPS vs. LHP
Eric Hinske’s career splits: .806 vs. RHP, .672 vs. LHP

Would they both be .750 OPS hitters if they weren’t platooned? It’s debatable.

You can’t split that platoon up without thinking about the defensive ramifications. Neither Hinske, nor Diaz are capable of playing right field on a regular basis. Which is yet another valid reason that demoting Heyward would be a far worse decision than keeping him up the rest of the year.

We’re in 1st place, so obviously the smartest thing to do is demote Heyward, easily our best OF both offensively and defensively, move Diaz to RF and go forward with an OF of Hinske, McLouth/Cabrera, and Diaz. Can you say CHAMPIONSHIP?

Maybe I should sign her up to be a writer here. It’s disgraceful that somebody as effing stupid as you are is allowed to write. Anywhere.

Hope you didn’t quit your day job to become a “blogger”.