Ring Ceremonies
Seeing Joc Pederson get his ring on Monday, knowing Freddie will get his tomorrow, and seeing the number of people dismayed that in return we are stuck at first base with the guy leading the world in doubles, made me want to do a little historical comparison to see how the Braves post-Championship losses look in MLB history.
This turned out to be more difficult than I had thought, mostly because you have to make a lot of decisions that are` kind of arbitrary, and the data aren’t well structured to manipulate. But I made them. So here are my rules:
A Lost Player is a player who played on a team that won a World Series, did not play for that team the next year but did play for someone else. This is not an ideal definition, since it includes players traded in the Championship year, like Bryse Wilson as well as players who were with the team in the playoffs. It also doesn’t include guys like Jesse Chavez who was cut loose at the end of the season but returned the next season.
Lost WAR is the WAR earned by the player with the Championship team, and excludes any WAR they may have earned with other teams in the championship season. I don’t think there’s a good solution here for players acquired midseason, so I went with this one.
In any case, if you don’t like my definitions, then ignore these calculations and do your own.
Most Lost Players
1992 Toronto Blue Jays: 17, including Dave Winfield (4.1 WAR) and Jimmy Key (3.9 WAR).
1997 Florida Marlins: 16, including Kevin Brown (6.8), Moises Alou (3.5)
2009 New York Yankees: 16, including Johnny Damon (4.2) and Hideki Matsui (2.7)
2004 Boston Red Sox: 14, including Pedro Martinez (5.4)
2016 Chicago Cubs: 13, including Dexter Fowler (4.0)
2000 New York Yankees: 13, including Jeff Nelson (2.1)
2021 Atlanta Braves: 13, including Freddie Freeman (4.7)
1972 Oakland A’s: 13, including Mike Epstein (5.2) and Dave Duncan (2.8)
1996 New York Yankees: 12, including Jimmy Key (2.9) and John Wetteland (2.4). They also lost Jim Leyritz and, no, I’m still not over it.
Most Lost WAR
1997 Marlins 16.4
1992 Blue Jays: 15.7
2003 Marlins: 9.5
2013 Red Sox: 8.6
2009 Yankees: 8.4
1972 A’s: 8.4
And so forth down to the 21st place 2021 Braves at 4.5.
A few observations:
First, until the reserve clause was thrown out, teams didn’t lose many players. The 1927 Yankees did not lose a single player. The 1965 Dodgers lost only 1 (though the 1964 Cardinals lost 10.) But 15 of the top 16 are from 1988 and later. The exception is the always eccentric and perpetually penny-pinching Charlie Finley’s A’s of 1972. On the other hand, the 2002 Angels lost only two players (Al Levine and Orlando Palmeiro, if anyone cares.)
Second, while the famous Marlins housecleanings are here (though only the 1997 team makes this list in volume) the Yankees dumped a lot of players, if only a few really good ones. Three of the top 9 were Yankees teams.
Third, when you lose a lot of players, you lose a lot of minor contributors – even the teams who lost a lot of WAR. Even a lot of well-known players were dumped after subpar years, like Dave Stieb (-0.2 for the 1992 Jays) and Derek Lowe (-0.7 for the 2004 Red Sox).
Fourth, while the Braves lost 13 players (Alex Jackson, Bryse Wilson, Carl Edwards Jr, Chris Martin, Cristian Pache, Drew Smyly, Ehire Adrianza, Freddie Freeman, Joc Pederson, Johan Camargo, Jorge Soler, Shane Greene and Stephen Vogt) seven of them had negative WAR in their stint in Atlanta in 2021, The Braves in particular, despite the loss of Freddie, lost far less WAR than similar teams. In AA we trust.
Hey! We Won!
OK, as I said this morning, I didn’t see the game today. All those who really want to know what happened ought to read what professional journalists are hired to write about the game. But, in short, Dansby hit two homers, the Braves knocked Alex Wood back to Athens after he had given up 6 runs before getting an out in the second inning, and the Braves turned 4 double plays. When you turn 4 double plays and you win by 1 you could have lost very easily. Or, as Snit put it in his inimitable patois: “All four games could’ve went either way for either team.” I could’ve went different on the golf course today, but c’est la vie.
The Braves led 7-1 after Dansby’s second homer in the 4th and then tried to hold on. Wright was OK. Chavez got a critical double play. Hancock was Hancock and Jansen gave up a 9th inning homer to Joc to close the game to one and to make Joc go away with a nice memory or two to go with his ring.
Freddie comes to town tomorrow as the Parade of Ring Ceremonies continues. Beat the Dodgers, OK?
Yeah, that ’97 Marlins club was like a winning rotisserie team in a no-keeper league.
Oh, Jimmy Key…
He was winning pitcher for the Jays in the clinching Game 6 of the ’92 WS, also the winning pitcher for the Yanks in the clinching Game 6 of the ’96 WS.
Yeah, I remember him.
Stay hot like the weather.
So if I’m reading this right, everyone the Braves lost other than Freddie added up to negative WAR? He was 4.7, but we lost a net of 4.5.
Another great win today, and another great recap. But JonathanF, you didn’t tell us how you scored on the golf course.
So now 18-3 in June. If this weekend goes well, the Braves have a shot at the all time franchise best June. The best June in MLB history is still in reach. See JonathanF’s summary of all time great Junes in the last thread.
@3: Yep. Roughly speaking, Greene, Vogt and Carl Edwards Jr. offset Soler. Camargo offsets Smyly. Martin and Adrianza offset Pache. Wilson offsets Pederson. That leaves Alex Jackson negative net of Freddie.
Oh… and I putted pretty well today. In fact, I was pretty good from 120 yards in. The rest of my game more than offset it.
Kind of amazing the Jays are the top of the list, and they won the next year.
The ’92 Blue Jays lost their starting SS (Manny Lee) LF (Candy Maldonado) DH (Winfield) and 3B (Kelly Gruber) along with Key, Stieb, David Cone, Jeff Kent and Tom Henke and an atrocious David Wells (-1.9).
They replaced Lee with Tony Fernandez, Gruber with Ed Sprague, Maldonado with Rickey Henderson, and Winfield with Paul Molitor. Their starting pitching was OK enough but the bullpen was outstanding.
@4 And Carl Edwards has already helped us THIS season…… LOL. In fact, most of the players we lost are on teams we have pretty much beat up this year. Martin did pretty well against us. If we beat up on the Dodgers, we can include Freddie and Greene in that too.
Perhaps not the best weekend (LAD/ATL & NYM/MIA) to expect to pick up a game, but you never know.
Hope Ian maintains his good stuff tonight. Urias can be nasty.
Alcantra going for the Marlins vs. Mets tonight. Trouble is, the Mets’ Walker has been very good this year, too.
Aside from the fact that he’s 7-1 w/ a 1.72 ERA for the year… in Alcantra’s last 7 games, he’s 5-0 w/ a 0.95 in 56.2 IP. That is one helluva roll.
I’m thrilled that Alcantara is starting to kill the other 28 teams as badly as he always kills us. That guy is just about the new Utley for me — he absolutely terrifies me. There’s not a pitcher in the league who I fear more.
Hahaha I had to share that headline with my Giants buddies. Very, very well done, Mr. JonathanF.
I suggest you attempt to watch the games.
Your writing makes it clear you don’t watch many games.
@11 Wow.
JonathanF, I enjoy your writing substantially and hope you do more of it here.
Ed’s worse than Chief.
I’m not sure who EdK is talking about or if he is a bot based on some of his strange writing. Whatever the case, if it was about JonathanF, he is talking about one of the most knowledgeable baseball guys I’ve ever seen on any blog. Thanks for the excellent work JF.
On a different note JonathanF, I understand your struggle with pitcher wins. Given Ububba’s comments @8, how would you re-write his last sentence to better state Alcantra’s effectiveness? I’m seriously curious. I understand the win is a highly flawed stat, but I don’t know how to quickly communicate effectiveness for a SP without ERA and wins to most reasonably knowledgeable, but not genius level fans. Below is the sentence I’m referring to:
“Aside from the fact that he’s 7-1 w/ a 1.72 ERA for the year… in Alcantra’s last 7 games, he’s 5-0 w/ a 0.95 in 56.2 IP.”
@11: If my writing makes it clear I don’t watch many games, then it’s my writing that’s unclear. I apologize for my authorial inadequacies. (I’ll also apologize for my golfing inadequacies, but not to you.)
@12,14: Thanks, but if anyone is misled by my writing, that’s on me. (For years, I used to pronounce “misled” to rhyme with the past tense of Larry Hisle, and that’s something I’m still trying to live down.)
@15 I think a 0.95 ERA in 56.2 innings speaks for itself. When you think about it, 5-0 actually downplays the accomplishment a bit. With an average 7 innings per start, or even 8, he should be a lot better than 5-0. Why not 7-0? The 5-0 actually slightly detracts from the other two pieces of information, as it does, for example, from deGrom’s stats. I don’t mean to say that it’s terribly misleading; it isn’t… no more, say, than my writing leads EdK to think I don’t watch much baseball.
@13–agreed, although comparing them at all is unfair to Chief.
The comment @11 is not something any of us should take seriously.
The last two nights, Cliff and JonathanF have set a high bar for recaps in which the recapper didn’t actually watch the game. Unfortunately, for tonight’s game I will be mostly watching gamecast on my phone rather than the TV broadcast. I tell you that in advance to lower expectations. Come to think of it, though, my assumption that this group has any expectations for my recaps reveals an inflated sense of my importance.
I can assert that, notwithstanding that I won’t see much of tonight’s game, I do watch a lot of baseball. If you don’t believe me, you can ask my wife how many thousands of hours of our 45 year marriage have been spent watching this game. She could probably suggest better uses of that time, but she gave in a good while back. In fact, she now turns the game on even when I’m not there.
Ozuna, Waters, and Davidson for Freeman. Who says no?
Glad the fans are giving Freddie a great hand.
13 — I don’t think that’s fair to Chief. I don’t remember him being disrespectful to anyone on here.
Anderson looks like he’s going to have his usual 1st inning crap.
If he’s not careful he’s going to pull a Folty.
This is worse than his usual first-inning crap.
Even with the WS, I feel inferior to the Dodgers.
Very fortunate to only give up 2.
That certainly could’ve been worse.
It’s a damn shame that Freeman and the Braves couldn’t work things out. Full stop.
I think it’s very obvious that Freeman wishes he’d have ordered his agent to make a deal with the Braves. It’s so obvious that I honestly wonder how I would feel about it if I were a Dodgers fan (perish the thought). That whole thing was pretty tough to watch.
Both Anderson’s fastball and changeup are worse than last year.
@29
Didn’t watch Sunday’s game, apparently.
30 — Oh, I did. I also checked his pitch statistics on Fangraphs. I’m not just pulling something out of my ass like you are insinuating.
I didn’t watch him tonight, but 48 strikes, 40 balls is not a great ratio.
No, he was bad tonight…no argument there.
Marcel doesn’t do much to earn his spot in the lineup. Here’s hoping the eventual return of Rosario makes that a platoon situation.
Bottom of the 9th sounds like a morgue in Truist.
As good as the Dodgers have been, they have some big contracts that are black holes
Muncy .168 ba/ .626 ops – 3 yr 26 mil 31 years old
Belinger .209 ba / .665 ops – 1 yr 17 mil 26 years old
Justin Turner .218 ba/ .640 ops – 2 yr 34 mil 37 years old
I’m not sure if we should be worried that they’ll turn it around or encouraged that possibly 2 of 3 are on the downside of their career.
Recapped