There's a lot of unhappy people around here, but I'm not one of them. So, the Braves didn't overpay up front for the possibility of a Smoltzie return - likely as a ghost of his former self. I love, respect and venerate the guy, but I'd much, much rather the Braves used their resources wisely and fielded a competetive team next year.

So I come with an message of hope (only a bit too late for Xmas, but I can't let go). I'm excited that the Braves seem to be pairing a couple of things that go really well together. Like beer and a baseball game. Or chips and salsa. Or me and your mom. Or, my second favorite item on this list (and certainly the cleanest) -     ground-ball pitchers and stellar infield defense.

So...how good is the Braves infield defense? Well, aside from Kelly Johnson (who is below average to terrible, depending on who you ask), it's all good in 2008:

Chipper: +9 plays according to +/-, +4.9 runs according to UZR

Escobar:+21 plays according to +/-, +5.9 runs according to UZR

Kotchman:+13 plays according to +/-, +5.3 runs according to UZR

It looks like, with a good 2B, we'd have the best infield in baseball (that would be sweeeet!). Now, I've made my case for moving Kelly to LF. Now, I'd like to make my case for trading for:

Adam Kennedy: +19 plays according to +/-, +10.9 runs according to UZR

He's not too hot with the bat, but the awesome defense makes up for it. He's only due about $3.5 mil for 2009, won't cost anything much in a trade, and wants out of St. Louis. He could give us an infield that would destroy worlds, and eat the souls of opposing hitters, etc. With an infield like that, all of our pitchers would get a huge boost, and we'd be looking at the pitching-and-defense (read-successful) Braves of the 90s.

And the groundballing pitchers I mentioned (all Ground Ball to Fly Ball Ratios are for 208, and provided by Fangraphs):

Derek Lowe: 2.63 GB/FB (career 3.32 - how good would he have been with better inflied defense!)

Kenshin Kawakami: "ground-ball specialist" (no data here, but looking good)

Jair Jurrjens: 1.94 GB/FB

Charlie Morton: 1.60 GB/FB

Jo-Jo Reyes: 1.53 GB/FB

Tom Glavine: 1.51 GB/FB (Just in case)

These guys are made a lot better by good groundball defense. I've also read somewhere that Hanson (my boy!) has become a 1.2-1.3 FB/GB type guy since he added his slider back to his arsenal (but I can't find the link), which would be good news.

There always has to be an outlier, alas:

Javier Vazquez - 0.95 GB/FB

Oh well, at least he's a good pitcher. At least an outfield of Kelly, Schafer and Francouer would be good defensively too, assuming Frenchy can at least hold his defense together next year.

Anyway, if we could get a Kennedy type defensively, add Lowe and Kawakami (and it actually looks like this might happen), then we have a serious recipe to salvage an offseason that has been bad so far and be a legitimate contender next year. We'd have a rotation that can keep the ball in the park, double plays galore, and a quartet of vacuum cleaners around the horn.

Who's with me?

Hi Guys!

I've been reading TalkingChop for over a year now, but never participating, though I've enjoyed reading what the community has to say! I think you guys are spot on about just about everything, and funny about it too.

But I think the folks here overwhelmingly want to leave Kelly Johnson as the starting second baseman, and sign an Adam Dunn/Bobby Abreu/Pat Burrell type to play left and bat cleanup for us. I can see why, we do need offense in the coming year...but I'm out to convince you guys that we'd be better off with KJ in LF, and getting that offense from somewhere else (maybe by trading for a good Right Fielder? Please?)

A quick note on the stats I'll be using...they're all from Fangraphs, which has a great system of valuing players, based on the runs they create above average, both on offense and defense (considering position as well - a good SS is worth a lot more than a good 1B - 17.3 runs more valuable over the course of a season, in fact). The defensive metric they use is the pretty sweet - UZR/150 - click the link for a quick rundown on what it is, but it's the best metric for defense I've seen, and a bunch of good blogs I read recomend it as the best out there. Fangraphs then converts the runs over an average MLB player to runs over a Replacement Player (a random minor leaguer brought up from AAA - like what playing Josh Anderson or Brent Lillibridge for all of last year would have been - ugly) and then calculates WAR - how many more games the team won because, say, Chipper Jones was playing rather than Wes Timmons (answer: a lot - look at Chipper's page). It turns out a win is roughly equal to 10 more runs created. Then, even better, they give you the awesome value in dollars of the player - how much that player should be worth on the open market. So if Chipper had been a free agent before last year, he would have been worth $34.1 million to retain (though maybe not to us, as we weren't even nearly a playoff team). But cheers for the discount, Chipper, and I hope he's worth as much in the future!

Anyway, I hope that sort of explain the numbers I'm using here, and will probably be using in all my fanposts from now on. I'd like to think Fangraphs' numbers are somewhat similar to the numbers a GM would use in evaluating players (I hope the Braves use even better numbers to complement their scouting!). I'll probably Anyway, on to Kelly Johnson...

Kelly is a very good player, and one of my favorite Braves. He's also been fairly valuable to the Braves for the last two years...$13.3m in 2007, and $10.3m in 2008, much, much more than he was paid ($0.4m then $1.1m). The problem is that Kelly is a great player despite his defense at second. Everyone talks about how Kelly is improving, and transitioned to the position really well, but the numbers say he's awful. The last two seasons he's posted identical UZR/150 scores of -8.4, or 8.4runs worse than average at 2B. That was third-worst in MLB last season, before only Alexei Ramierez and Orlando Hudson (weird, as Hudson's supposed to be a good defender. I guess he was injured). But, as Kelly played more innings at 2B than the other two, he lost us the most runs of any 2B through bad defense. That's awful.

But, Kelly the LF (back in 2005 - remember?) was very good. His UZR/150 was +7.2 that year, so he would have been 5th best in MLB, if he had enough innings to qualify) better than speedsters like Scott Posednik (though Scooter is fast himself). So Kelly is an above average LF, and a terrible 2B. Assuming Kelly would have played a similar LF in 2008 as he did in 2005 (so worth +7.2 runs in the field),adjusting for positional value (LF offense is worth 12.3 runs less than 2B offense in 2008), and adjusting for the slightly better replacement players available for LF (like Joe Borchard!) if Kelly had played LF last year, he would have been worth around 2.9 wins, rather than 2.3 wins as a 2B - Kelly Johnson would have been worth around $2.7m more to the Braves in LF than as a Second Baseman last season.

What's more, Kelly Johnson the Left Fielder, at a value of about $13m, would have been worth more than Adam Dunn, Pat Burrell, and Bobby Abreu...and in the cases of Dunn and Abreu, it's not close. He only would have been slighly worse than Jason Bay(!) (LF value rankings for 2008). We have a very valuable Left Fielder within our organization, so why would we pay as much as $10m to bring in another one? And all this with KJ having a bad offensive year - he was down to 8.4 runs above average in 2008, from 18.8 in 2007. If he can get back to 2007 offensive form, we could be looking at about an $18m player (and you don't trade a player with that kind of potential!). The Braves front office should do what it should have done last year, and move Kelly to LF where he belongs.

The biggest problem with all this is that we'd then need a second baseman. That's why Fookie would have been perfect - he would have been an above average 2nd baseman, offensively and defensively. Damn him for not signing! Martin Prado was - get this - worse than KJ at 2B (though he is a very good 3B/1B backup). We would need to find a decent 2B from somewhere, though it wouldn't be too difficult to find a 2B better than KJ last year...he was worse than Jose Lopez and Akinori Iwamura, who are decent, but hardly studs.

I'll look into 2nd base alternatives in my next post, if you guys enjoyed this one. In the meantime I'd love feedback - any flaws in my reasoning? Are you guys convinced? Cheers!