Andrelton Simmons standing on a baseball field with a glove on his hand is a web gem waiting to happen, and this winter Braves Journal is going to determine which of his gems is the best of his best—his Jadeite. To see the previous posts in the series, click here.
Your votes have chosen the top two plays, but we have all had to mourn favorite plays falling by the wayside in the process. Several plays received such adulation from Braves Journal voters that it seemed a pity to not give them their proper due before we anoint the grand champion. Some of your most beloved plays (as indicated in past votes) are back, to help us determine the ranking of Simmons’s top ten plays.
Consolation Bracket: Glove: Optional vs. The Jeter
Glove: Optional
Editor’s Pitch: In Minnesota this year, that will be a hit against Ervin Santana. Last year in Atlanta it was top of the 5th, one down. The catch itself is insane enough, with Simmons making the call to barehand it to give himself a chance to throw the runner out. Then, when the ball bounced slightly differently than he seemed to be anticipating, he stayed with it and nailed the runner with a perfect throw. Perfection on a diamond.
Previous Appearance: Glove: Optional lost to Taggin’ Fool, 26-12.
The Jeter
Editor’s Pitch: With the Braves clinging to a 3-2 lead with 2 outs and a runner on 3rd in the bottom of the 8th, Jordan Walden got Travis d’Arnaud to hit a ground ball. Unfortunately for the Braves, it was headed toward the hole and looked destined to tie the game for the Mets. Fortunately for the Braves, they have Andrelton Simmons playing shortstop, and he ranged to his right, snagged the ball, leaped, and threw the runner out with nanoseconds to spare. ESPN will tell you this type of play was patented by Derek Jeter, but there are some notable differences between Jeter making the play and Simmons making the play. Jeter would leap because, unlike Simmons, he did not have a strong enough arm to take the time to plant himself and get the throw off in time. Simmons leaped because he had ranged so far to his right that he was able to get to a ball Jeter never would have even thought to try to get to, and, with as far as he had to run, had he tried to stop his momentum to plant himself and fire across the diamond, he probably would have fallen over. Although he made this look easy, it was anything but.
Previous Appearance: The Jeter just barely lost to Shortstop…Or Left Fielder? 26-25.
Mudge, Regression and Markakis (nickname TBT) will combine to collect 115 MM over the next 4 seasons. That’s 115 MM over 10 player seasons. In their last 10 players seasons (I used Kakis’s last 4 and 3 apiece from MUJ and CJ). they were worth 8.7 BWAR or 13.2 FWAR. So let’s just say 11 WAR. The average player age over those 10 seasons was 28.2, over the next 10 it will be 31.6. According to a crude glance at some aging curves, it’s fair to expect that 1.1 WAR per average to drop somewhere between .5 and .8 WAR/season, Such a bummer.
Any WAR that those three (MRM) combine to produce will be due to Markakis. While Markakis will likely be an albatross by 2017, I’m expecting decent value on the front end of his deal, so combining him with Mudge and Reggie obscures that. Those two, along with Uggla, are also part of the “terrible triumvirate” that Wren brought to Atlanta.
What Wren did, in assembling the triumvirate, was to commit a large fraction of the payroll (and as a result playing time) to arguably the 3 worst players in baseball last year, which would almost seem to require a particular intentionality. Nobody could produce such an expensive, feckless assemblage with pure chance.
Nobody could produce such an expensive, feckless assemblage with pure chance.
Compare Teixeira, Rodriguez, and Sabathia’s salaries with those of Johnson, Upton, and Uggla, and then compare their performance.
Either Wren and Cashman were equally determined to sabotage their teams, or it’s possible that some gambles miss badly.
Yeah, the Chris Johnson move seems particularly questionable in my mind, there was no reason to do it, it’s as if he had known he was on his way out and made that deal as a FU to the organization. Markakis hasn’t been much more than a 2 win player over the last 5 years, and he even had a -0.3 in 2013. Considering these will be his age 31-34 seasons, i don’t think it’s fair to expect more than a win per season out of him. I hope his leadership and intangibles are through the roof.
He grows a good goatee. I’m optimistic that there will be no net facial hair above replacement loss from 2014 RF to 2015 RF.
@3, I’m being facetious–very obviously. Of course Wren didn’t want to sabotage the Braves, but he did about as good a job as a person who was trying to could have done.
@4, I hated the Chris Johnson deal the second we signed it, and I think most readers did on Braves boards. The actual dollars were reasonable, and we didn’t know just how bad he would be in 2014 yet (though he was off to a miserable start), but he wasn’t actually that great in his career year (for which we paid him)–he was a bargain stop-gap. He wasn’t part of the “young core” we needed to lock up, and to commit more guarantees to him than we had to (he was controllable through the end of 2015) didn’t make sense given that he was entering his decline phase after an underwhelming “prime”.
Re: Markakis–I think there’s a non-zero chance he has a 2-3 WAR season in 2015. This would be based on successful neck surgery and progress with the hamate issue. But it’s just as likely to me that he is a 0.5 WAR player…
You know, of course, that the current troubles of the Braves can be traced back to the failure to give Michael Bourn All The Money.
If Bourn gets it All, then no MUJ, and the dominoes unfall from there.
So Wren’s capital sin is plain to see for those of us who were here four years ago.
@1, the problem with this, of course, is survivor bias.
Agreed that Wren’s biggest failing was signing MUJ, but even though it was controversial, it could be defended at the time. As noted above, the angst against signing Regression was almost unanimous, on Braves Journal and among most people who knew anything about baseball. (There was a reason we nicknamed him Regression. )
I have to think that Wren stuck his neck out for CJ. I’m confident that while MUJ was Wren’s undoing, CJ was the last straw.
A major rationale for signing Johnson seemed to be that there were no advanced 3B options in the system, which is an indictment of the system. And the system has been bad at developing 3B in general. We’ve traded a few away — Kubitza, Jon Gilmore — but we haven’t developed anyone since Chipper who has turned into a real 3B. (The biggest success would be Mark DeRosa, but despite his being handed the starting 3B role while Chipper was in LF, he spat out the bit and only succeeded after he left Atlanta.) Eric Campbell was a famous flameout. We’re not good at filling that position.
In addition outside candidates for 3b were either locked up, too expensive, too old or all 3.
Or Andy Marte.
Johnson still had a few years of service left, if I recall correctly. He is exactly the kind of player you go year-to-year with, organizational weakness or no. He wouldn’t have been that expensive even if we’d had to go to arbitration, and if he does what he ended up doing, you can non-tender him.
The Johnson extension is the Ryan Howard extension in miniature — too much money for too long to a limited player, while being under no pressure to do it. I’ll spot Wren Upton — there was no way to predict complete collapse like that. But Johnson was an obviously boneheaded signing the day it was made.
#3
I often remind my Yankee friends, “You’re going to be paying for that 2009 World Series for a long time.”
Well…there was Brandon Drury…
Fredi says Wandy has won the #4 spot.
I think the FO thought Johnson would build on his previous season and wanted to lock him in at a lower rate. I’m not sure why they thought this, but they did.
Prado was a fine replacement honestly
I hear a lot of criticism of signing guys in their late-20s/early-30s into their age-33/34/35 seasons (Uggla, BUpton, Markakis). Has there been a study that suggests that that is a bad idea? Believe me, I completely understand that contracts for guys like Joey Votto, A-Rod, Ryan Howard, etc. where they’re being paid top-tier money as they go into their late 30s is a bad idea, but are we ready to say that a 33 year old is not worth the money they’re worth at 29? What do the statistics say on that? I’m tempted to say that signing guys until they’re 34 is not a fundamentally bad idea, and we just got completely screwed on the Uggla and BUpton contracts, and we’re throwing the baby out with the bath water.
I’m going to assume for a moment that there isn’t any consistent evidence that players immediately break down at 33. For the Chris Johnson situation, you had a guy who had these OPS+ the four seasons previous: 121, 85, 108 (with a second half of 117 w/ Arizona), 124. You have those stats for a 3B with a line drive swing and a good body (not a Pablo Sandoval). He plays mediocre defense at a position you can put up with mediocre defense. He also was going into his age-29 season. I’m just not seeing the problem with buying out some arb years and, in today’s offensively deflated market, giving him $6M, $7.5M, $9M, and $10M per year (especially based on the thought that revenue will be trending upward). The problem is not with the rationale at the time. It’s the fact that he regressed to his worst offensive season at the age of 29 at a time where just about everyone offensively regressed. That doesn’t fall on the GM. That falls on the player, the coaching staff, the hitting coach, but not the GM. All the data suggested that Chris Johnson was the type of player that would continue to build on his previous success. The fact that he turned into a pumpkin was not easily seen by anyone.
Same thing with Upton. He was going into his age-28, and unless you believe as strong as I do about attitude, character, and mental make-up, then there was no data to suggest that he was due to also turn into a pumpkin.
One could argue that Uggla was a strong candidate to immediately regress. He had a very late peak, was fairly one-dimensional, and had a body that would suggest that when the biceps went, so would his game.
But to throw this all on Wren and say that signing players from their age-28/29 to age-33/34 seasons is fundamentally bad policy because Johnson (so far), Upton, and Uggla haven’t worked out is arm-chair GMing and second-guessing at its finest.
I’m going to rebut without really rebutting your main point, because I don’t think the age thing is the big factor with any of these signings. In fact, I think the Markakis signing is a good one in a vacuum, just not a good signing for the rebuilding Braves. I think he’ll be a pretty good player for at least the first three years. Not Heyward or Justin Upton good, but solid contributor good. That’s worth $11 million/year through the early ’30s on a team that’s ready to compete. And I guess if the Braves medical staff is confident in his new neck–well, who are we to second-guess the Braves medical staff?
(Oh, but quick inserted rebuttal: arm-chair GMing and second-guessing is the best, not the worst.)
So on the other three guys:
They simply weren’t good enough at enough things to justify what Atlanta paid them.
-Chris Johnson is now and was at the time of the extension a player who could hit line drives BUT didn’t play defense very well, ran slowly, struck out in ~25% of his plate appearances, rarely walked, and didn’t have much power. And he was already under team control. And he has obnoxious anger issues. That is not the kind of player you guarantee more years to when you don’t have to. But that one’s shooting fish in a barrel.
-BJ Upton was never the walking red flag of failure that Johnson was because BJ could always play an average center field and he’ll take a walk, but his strikeout rates (in %) for the five years before his free agency were 20.9, 24.3, 26.9, 25.2, and 26.7. That’s not the worst thing that ever happened, but it ought to raise an eyebrow. He posted a sub-.300 on-base percentage the year before we signed him and we wanted him to bat leadoff. That’s terrible! His wRC+ was 108 that year AND WE GAVE HIM THE LARGEST PER ANNUM IN TEAM HISTORY, KNOWING THAT WE HAD SOME MUCH BETTER, MUCH YOUNGER PLAYERS THAT IT WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE TO HOLD ONTO! Meanwhile the Nats traded for a guy who plays a better center field, hits better, and doesn’t cost as much.
-As for Uggla…well, I think his is the most forgivable. He was largely brought in on Fredi’s coattails, and he was a pretty good player (overall) his first two years with the team. The extension was probably a year too long (e.g. it should have ended after 2014), but not having him in 2012 perhaps would have been a year too short, and we’ve got to throw in some kind of bone if we want the guy to sign. He had power and a good eye, even if he struck out too much. And I don’t think it’s wise to lock up a liability at 2nd base longer than you have to. Defense matters if you’re not hitting like Miguel Cabrera.
I suppose my big point is that I (personally) don’t fault Wren for signing players in their lower-thirties, but that I think he deserves blame for signing these particular players.
The primary failure of the Wren front office was not seeing the change in the game coming; in not being ahead of the flip of offensive profiles. They assembled an offense for 2008, in 2012. They assembled a HR and K based offense when the league was lurching into the opposite of that.
I used a couple of different calculations to rank the (six) plays for the consolation bracket, and by my count these two plays were neck-and-neck. The current results of this poll are confirming that my method worked. This poll will be open until tomorrow morning—someone needs to break the tie!
Wren’s biggest issue was letting the farm system fall apart. You can cover bad moves with a solid farm
@22. And the terrible farm which he is accountable for.
I agree with what you guys have said about Wren and the farm system, but in Wren’s defense, a few things should be considered. Last year’s team was ranked as the 1st to 2nd youngest team in baseball. You don’t call up as many players as the Braves did from relatively the same generation of prospects without your farm system taking a hit. I still don’t know what value Wren’s brother brought, but Simmons, Heyward, Freeman,Gattis and others graduating at the same time depleted the farm significantly.
New thread.
@10:
“too much money for too long to a limited player, while being under no pressure to do it”
Very concisely put. I might add that for the Braves the 7-9 million dollars that Johnson counts against the budget matters more than it would for most other competetive teams. And we might’ve asked under which scenario Johnson would’ve ended up costing us significantly more. Was he really going to hit free agency coming into 31 yo season demanding 15 million per?
@21,
Yes, the moment we signed BJ, I thought it was reasonable value, but I just HATED the .299 OBP. I’ve been phobic of low OBP’s for a long time. I have some gut feeling that a single hacker has a ripple effect on a lineup. They tend to get themselves out too easily too frequently and make things harder on everyone else. A pesky walker like Walt Weiss, on the other hand, makes things easier for everyone else, if for no other reason than he frustrates the crap out of the pitcher.
The basis for my “gut feeling” is watching what Alex Gonzalez did to our lineup when he started for us. Lot of 7 pitch innings when you have hackers like that.