Lots of worrying in Braves nation lately.  Prado is off to a hot start with the bat, but everyone else not so much.  Cause for concern?  Lets take a look at the guys who are struggling a bit and see what we can uncover.  I'll frame the discussion as follows:

 50 PA: Swing %
100 PA: Contact Rate
150 PA: Strikeout Rate, Line Drive Rate, Pitches/PA
200 PA: Walk Rate, Groundball Rate, GB/FB
250 PA: Flyball Rate
300 PA: Home Run Rate, HR/FB
500 PA: OBP, SLG, OPS, 1B Rate, Popup Rate
550 PA: ISO

The above is the minimum PA's needed to have a reasonable shot at concluding anything about the particular value.  Worried about Player X's OPS?  If he hasn't had 500 PA's, then you are officially in the "small sample size" territory.  Below, I compare several players 2008 or 2009 season with 2010 and their career.  As you'll see, we can only extract meaningful information about their swinging habits, and we are getting close on contact.  The results of the PA's will need more time, but I'll compare them to the last healthy season and career to see if anything looks worrying.

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After watching Jason Heyward's spring, many (including myself) have been thinking it would be a good idea to have him start on opening day.  This of course starts the debate about how the financial implications compare vs. how the team will perform with / without Heyward on it.  I've put some numbers down to help myself decide what I think about the situation and I thought I'd share.

For those who don't know, baseball salary rules for young players work as follows.  Players with less than 3 years of service time basically make the league minimum, which for my calculations I will assume is $400k.  Players with more than 3 years of service time but less than 6 years of service time are "arbitration eligible".  The arbitration process allows a player to earn a salary that is a fraction of his "market value".  Players with more than 6 years of service can become free agents, and agree to any contract.  In the three years of arbitration, the process is supposed to produce salaries that are 40%, 60%, and 80% of the "market value" in arb years 1, 2, and 3.

A wrinkle in the arbitration rules is that a "year" is defined as a certain number of days (172 to be exact), and a player must have at least that many days to get credit for 1 year.  Thus, if a player accrues 171 days of service time in a season that does not count as "1 year".  A typical baseball season has ~180 days, so getting to 1 year of service is possible without starting opening day.  To prevent abuse of this system, MLB rules allow the top 17% of players with at least 2 but less than 3 years of service time to become arbitration eligible.  These players are called "Super 2's", and go through arbitration 4 times instead of 3.  In the past, the cutoff for super 2 status is typically in the range of 128 - 140 days of service time.  Counting forward from the start of the season, this means that players called up after June 1 are typically "safe" from Super 2 status.

That's a lot of words, so lets use a specific example; Jason Heyward.  In the example that follows, I've made some assumptions in the calculations: 

First, I've assumed that Jason Heyward will go to salary arbitration every year he can, and receive exactly the "proper" amount - i.e. 40% / 60% / 80% of his "market value" in the arbitration process.  The splits for super 2's are harder to find, so I've used 30% / 50% / 70% / 90% as a basis.  It is straightforward to redo the calcs with any basis you like, so feel free to change it and comment below.

Second, I need to establish what Jason's "market value" is to project his salary for each of the possibilities.  The actual process does not use WAR, but that's what I use here.  I have assumed that Jason Heyward will play at a 5 WAR pace every single year.  Now, all we need is $ / WAR, which was about $4.5M / WAR last year.  You are free to use whatever WAR projection / cost you like, as you'll see I don't think it changes the conclusions at all.

Here's the year by year breakdown for three cases, with service time and salary listed:  starting Opening Day, calling Jason up June 1, or calling Jason up ~April 20, so he just becomes a Super 2.

            League Min     0.4                                          

            WAR               5                                             

            $ / WAR          4.5M                           

Year    Opening Day               Non-Super 2                Super 2           

2010    1yr       $0.4                 < 1yr    $0.4                 < 1yr    $0.4

2011    2yr       $0.4                 1+ yr    $0.4                 1+ yr    $0.4

2012    3yr       $0.4                 2+ yr    $0.4                 2+ yr    $0.4

2013    Arb 1   $9.0                 3+ yr    $0.4                 Arb 1   $6.8

2014    Arb 2   $13.5               Arb 1   $9.0                 Arb 2   $11.3

2015    Arb 3   $18.0               Arb 2   $13.5               Arb 3   $15.8

2016    FA       $22.5               Arb 3   $18.0               Arb 4   $20.3

2017    FA                               FA                               FA      

TOTAL           $64.2                           $42.1                           $55.2

Looking at the table above, one thing is clear:  having Jason accrue a full year of service time in 2010 is a bad financial decision.  The penalty for this is the difference in cost between his market value salary and the league minimum (or Arb 1 year salary for Super 2).  For a player of Jason's potential, this is a lot of money.

Secondly, the "penalty" for letting a player hit Super 2 splits the difference between the opening day and June 1 time frames in this example.  I'd say the "minimum penalty" would be a scenario where the arbitration targets are 20/40/60/80%, in which case the total difference is about $4M.  Again, I'd love to see some "real" numbers here rather than the 4 fractions I've arbitrarily chosen.

So, now that we understand the financial impact, what about the impact to the team that Jason brings when he's playing?  In my opinion, there is a trap that many people fall into here, and it starts along the lines of "If the Braves finish X games out of first / wild card at the end of the year, then you'll regret not having Heyward up the entire time".  People then assume that the difference in games is certainly made up by having Heyward in the lineup.  The fact of the matter is that there is no way to evaluate game-by-game how a player will contribute - i.e whether Heyward could make up those 2 games that the Braves lost in April - May when someone else was playing RF.  The best method that I'm aware of is to calculate the player WAR, and pro-rate that contribution over the time period of interest.  Then, take the difference in what Heyward would contribute and what his replacement (Cabrera / Hinske / Diaz / other) would contribute and see how many "wins" are at stake.

For example, lets now assume Heyward will produce 6 WAR if he plays every single game this year.  If we assume the season is 6 months long, then that is 1 WAR / month.  Let's now assume that whoever plays RF if not Heyward will produce 1.5 WAR (0.25 WAR / month) if they played every single game this year.  Again, pick whatever numbers you like.  Thus:

Heyward plays every day:  6 WAR from RF for the year

Heyward plays starting June 1:  4.5 WAR total from RF for the year

Heyward plays starting mid-April:  5.6 WAR from RF for the year

If we take the differences in each scenario, we find that Heyward as a Super 2 only costs the Braves 0.5 game.  Heyward called up June 1 costs the Braves 1.5 games.  Thus, if the Braves finish 2 or more games out of a playoff spot, having Heyward around vs. not does not swing the stakes in the Braves favor in this example.  If Heyward plays at less than 6 WAR and / or if the replacement RF plays at better than 1.5 WAR, then Heyward's presence / absence makes even less of an impact on the Braves postseason chances.

Obviously, players don't contribute in a linear fashion as indicated in the argument above - a really bad April / May for the replacement vs. an unbelievably hot Heyward in the same time frame, for example, might make the total win difference higher. 

As a Braves fan, I simply cannot justify letting Heyward start opening day.  To me, the decision is Super 2 vs. non-Super 2, and based on Jason's spring, I think the Super 2 route is probably the right way to go.  You give up some $ later on, but not nearly as much as opening day, and you minimize your chance that not having Heyward all year long costs you a playoff spot. 

If you've made it this far, I'll end with this:  another possibility that I haven't included is that Jason can be signed to a long term contract sometime just before arbitration eligibility (think Brian McCann, Ryan Braun, Evan Longoria).  Players usually give up money by doing this, but they gain the security of having a guaranteed contract.  The team also gains cost certainty.  In some cases, the total figure could be less than the middle column listed above!  This possibility is the best case scenario in my opinion, as the team retains control of Heyward for as long as possible, gets the most playing time from him, and gets him at the minimum amount.

I'm wondering if it is time to start re-thinking the Braves current approach with Ryan Howard.  In his last 4 games against the Braves, he has been able to accomplish the following:

3-3, 2HR's, 3RBI's (i.e. he won the game offesnively by himself)

3-3, 2HR's, 4RBI's (accounted for all of Philly's runs)

0-4, 1RBI (yes!  we got him!)

1-3, GWHR

Another important point to consider is Howard's platoon splits this year, which are the following:

vs. RHP:  .311/.389/.686

vs. LHP:  .195/.279/.341

Seeing as all of our starters are RH, I really can't see any reason to continue to pitch to this guy.  After Howard, Werth has been dangerous, but has an .806 OPS vs. RH compared to a 1.119 OPS against LH -- I'd much rather take my chances with him at this point.  Finally, Ibanez has a .586 OPS over the last month.  How many games does Howard have to win all by himself before we give someone else a chance?

From what I can tell, the Braves will have a few spots to fill in their lineup for next year:  1B, corner outfield, closer.  This post concerns some options for 1B, with some assumptions I'll outline below.  Appreciate everyone's thoughts and comments.

The main assumption I'm going to make is that Freddie Freeman is the Braves 1B of the future, and by future I mean 2012 at the earliest.  Freddie turns 20 this September, and while it appears that he's been shut down for the year with an injury, he is still showing a lot of promise.  Prospects flame out and appear out of nowhere, but he seems to have a good shot at success.  If he arrives to stay on the ML roster in 2012, he'll be 21 going on 22 -- that's pretty young.

So now the question I've been pondering is this -- what can the Braves do to best bridge the gap to Freddie, that both keeps the team competitive in the short term and yet doesn't block Freddie when he's ready (hopefully) just a few years from now.  The ideal solution would be a player who is signed for the next 2 years maybe with an option for a third.  I've taken a look at the starting 1B all across MLB and organized them into groups as detailed below.

1.  Untouchables:  These are players, in my opinion, who will not under any conceivable circumstance appear in a Braves uniform.  Reasons for this include:  already locked up in a long term contracts, very expensive (think $12M / yr or more), have no-trade clauses, or are young superstars pre-arbitration (i.e. their current owners would be foolish to trade them).  Players on this list are:

Ryan Howard, Albert Pujols, Derrick Lee, Lance Berkman, Joey Votto, Todd Helton, Mark Texiera, Miguel Cabrera, Justin Morneau, Kendry Morales

2.  Players not better than what we have now:  Currently, the Braves have two viable options (as I see it) for 1B, Martin Prado and Adam LaRoche.  I took a look at player WAR over the last few years, and the following players are in my judgment inferior to just playing Prado everyday, or resigning LaRoche to a market-value deal.

James Loney, the SF duo (Garko / Ishikawa), Lyle Overbay, Hank Blalock

3.  Players currently under contract who hit FA in 2011:  This group would basically be a 1yr rental, at which point the Braves would have to either re-sign (and potentially block Freeman) or repeat the process after the 2010 season.  In my opinion, Freeman probably will not be ready by 2011, so I don't think acquiring one of these players helps the Braves as much in the interim.  They are:

Jorge Cantu, Carlos Pena, Adam Dunn, Paul Konerko, Victor Martinez (who should probably be "untouchable")

With the players above eliminated from contention, we have two groups left of players I think could be a good fit for the near future.

4.  Free Agents after 2009:  The following is not an exhaustive list of FA, but rather the folks I felt are / were at some point good enough to be a ML starter. 

Adam LaRoche, Nick Johnson, Carlos Delgado, Russell Branyan, Aubrey Huff

5.  Players who might make sense to acquire:  These players are currently under contract, but for a long enough period of time to acquire without blocking Freeman.  Ideally they'd hit FA when he's ready, at which point we could let them walk and maybe nab some draft picks in the process:

Prince Fielder, Adrian Gonzalez, Conor Jackson

Now that I've binned all the players, who should we sign already?  Here's my take, player-by-player from lists 4 and 5.

Adam LaRoche - Best season is about 2.5 WAR, which means he's an average to slightly above 1B.  Has a history of starting slow and then pouring it on in the 2nd half, which has held true for us so far.  Good with the glove, which is a plus, and no injury history to speak of.  Probably would stay with the Braves if we don't low ball him.

Nick Johnson - He is the offensive yin to LaRoche's yang; whereas LaRoche has nice power and decent OBP, Nick gets on base at a tremendous clip -- .400+ lifetime average, but has limited power.  He is a prototypical 2 hitter, a spot the Braves don't particularly need.  Has a very checkered injuy past, has had about the same or slightly higher WAR as LaRoche.  All things equal I'd probably rather have LaRoche for durability.

Carlos Delgado - I think the main question with this guy is does he still del-got-it?  He'll turn 38 next year, and that's getting old for a Braves team that has gotten decidedly younger in the last two years.  That said, he did hit 38 HR's last year for folks who like counting stats.  All those bombs equated to 2.9 WAR, however, and his output was almost entirely in the second half, when he went nuts.  He's missed basically the entire year with the newly vogue hip impingement, so he's an injury risk as well.

Russell Branyan - a career journeyman who's never started until this year, where he has taken full advantage and been a winning lottery ticket for the Mariners.  He's 34 with basically this year as evidence of his potential.  Which Branyan is the real one?  Not sure I want to gamble for two years to find out.

Aubrey Huff - Huff seems to alternate between pretty darn good (4+ WAR) and pretty lousy (< 1 WAR seasons), and is awful this year.  I think he could play a little 3B in a pinch, which would give the Braves some flexibility, but we probably don't need that with Infante and Prado.  Another guy that's hard to call. 

Prince Fielder - Is this guy untouchable?  I don't necessarily think so.  Main reason is because the Brewers don't have the biggest budget in the world and they need pitching, something we have an excess of.  Prince is signed through 2010, and then has his 3rd year of arbitration in 2011.  If we could line up a deal for him, we'd be bringing in a premier slugger to fill out the middle of the lineup.  He would likely cost us big, however --  the Brewers would probably want Jurrjens as a start.  Finally, in the event Freeman doesn't work out, we could always just try and open the pocketbook and make Prince the franchise player, as Lowe and Chipper's salaries will be coming off the books when he hits FA or the year after.

Adrian Gonzalez - Personally, I think he's untouchable, but people love to dream about getting this guy.  I leave him here simply because the Padres are re-building and no one on that roster now may really be untouchable.  A king's ransom would be required to pry him loose, and I doubt if the Braves could come out ahead in such a deal.

Conor Jackson - Not sure what to make of Jackson -- he's missed almost the entire year with some kind of pneumonia, and he probably isn't that much better than LaRoche even when he's healthy.  Only reason to consider him is he has 2 years of arbritration left, so he'd be cheaper in dollars than the FA but would cost other prospects in return. 

So at the end of the day, what do I think we should do?  If I were Frank Wren, I'd inquire about what it might take to relieve the Brewer's of Fielder's salary, and see if a blockbuster deal could happen.  Otherwise, I think LaRoche is probably our best option.  He's not as good as he's been this summer, but he's at least league average with potential for more.  The other FA are either old, injury-prone, hit-or-miss, or really not that much of an upgrade, and could cost draft picks to sign for the same money.  Adam is not exactly elite talent -- a 2 year deal with a 3rd option + buyout could probably get him to stay.  If he wants huge money, we could start Prado at first, but that hurts the infield flexibility that has been so valuable to the Braves this year. 

Everything that I've been able to find regarding Braves starters for the crucial series this weekend with the Phils has us starting, in order, Jurrjens, Kawakami, Vazquez.  The Phillies, from what I can tell, plan to use Blanton, Hamels, and Happ, in that order. 

Because the Braves have had 2 off days this week, we have the perfect opportunity to line up our rotation to maximum advantage, which I don't think we've done at the moment (JJ / Blanton, KK / Hamels, JV / Happ).  What I would like to see is the following:

JJ vs. Blanton (JJ on 6 days rest)

JV vs. Hamels (JV on 6 days rest)

Hanson vs. Happ (Hanson on 5 days rest)

Obviously, this punts KK to the makeup game against Arizona on Monday, but setting up the rotation this way does not force anyone into less than 5 days rest, gives JJ and JV 6 days, nets a much improved matchup against Hamels, and puts Hanson in the series, who at this point I'd much rather see than KK.  I'm not saying that KK has been bad of late -- I just like my chances with Hanson that much more.  To be fair to KK, he does seem to up his game against premier opposition.

The Braves have 9 shots remaining left against the Phils and I think this is one of the times in the season where you take whatever advantage you can with rotation flexibility available to you.  KK has been servicable for us this year, but Hamels owns the Braves, and I'd feel better about that game with the best starter we've got toeing the mound.

There's been a lot of noise here and on other boards about whether statistical analysis is the be-all end-all of baseball analysis or whether what you see with your eye trumps what some guy can produce on his excel spreadsheet.  My personal take on the matter follows below.  Hopefully we can have a productive discussion.

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There's been quite a bit of speculation recently about what the Braves could / should / might do with the roster for this year and 2010.  I'm in the camp that not much will happen this year, and if anything, we might sell.  The Braves are a .500 team to this point, and have played the easiest schedule in all of ML baseball to get there.  Not the markings of a playoff team.  So to help guide future couch GM's with actual numbers, here we go:

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I'm home sick today, so I thought I would spend a little bit of time digging through Braves stats as a team for the season to date.  This is probably an exercise in stating the obvious, but given the quality of recent fanposts, I'm certainly not lowering the average here.  Everything below is on a team average basis.  Maybe that's a good thing to look at and maybe its not, but I thought it was interesting.

Batting:

OBP = .342, 6th in the NL ; SLG = .395, 13th in the NL ; BB / K = 3rd in the NL ; "SPD" rating = LAST in the NL, LAST in MLB, and LAST by a large margin.

Believe it or not, the Braves actually have more home runs than the Mets at this point, even though I think we would agree that the Mets have a better offense.  To me, power is an issue, but I think the most glaring problem is team speed.  We have the fewest stolen bases and the 4th most GIDP, and as we saw last night, that really takes us out of innings.  GIDP can be a tricky stat though, b/c the leaders in the NL are the Dodgers and Mets -- having lots of guys on base apparently leads to more GIDP opportunities -- no shocker there.

Perhaps instead of (or at least in addition to) pondering how we can add a "power bat", maybe we should think about getting some guys who can improve our team speed. 

Pitching:

FIP = best in NL ; K / BB = tied for best in NL ; HR / 9 = best in NL

Pitching is not the Braves problem.  We (myself included) like to complain about relievers sucking, bullpens blowing leads, JoJo in the 5th spot, but the truth is all teams deal with pitching problems, and on the whole, we are better than everyone else in the NL. 

Fielding:

I'm not a huge fan of UZR stats and the like, b/c you need too much data before the noise drops down enough to make some conclusions, if you can conclude anything at all.  All I'll say here is that it seems like (author's totally subjective, un-statistical observation) the errors / lapses / whatever that the Braves are making here seem to occur in game-changing situations (late, runners on, etc.) more often than usual.  Maybe this isn't true at all, but I can only hope that the law of averages here will even things out, so that the team doesn't have to play "perfect" to avoid defense costing them games.

All said and done, things don't seem quite as bad as they feel after the last few days, which is almost always the case if you take a deep breath and try to view things objectively.  All the other teams in the NL east have issues at this point.  Personally, I'd like to see the team stand fast for now, and if anything try and better position ourselves for future years.  If that means sell this summer, then so be it -- I think we are more than 1 player away from fixing what ails the offense.  The good news is our pitching is great, and looking great for years to come, which is exactly where I want to be. 

Over the first month of the season, I think Jordan has been pretty good, considering he's never had a AAA at bat.  But it's time for the kid to take a break.  Over the last week:

2 for 23, 15K; including 0 for the last 14 with an astonishing 11K

The good news is that Jordan's eye is looking great.  He leads the team with 20 BB's, although some of those have been IBB to get the pitcher up.  Reports say his wrist is an issue.  If this is true, then he needs to rest it and get back to full strength.  It doesn't matter if he is Willie Mays in CF -- 11K in 14AB is not helping the team.

I know Blanco hasn't been tearing it up at Gwinett, but he's got MLB experience, and I doubt he would be worse than the last week of Schafer.  Time to give the kid a two-week breather and straighten out?