Last week the Braves made some bold moves that may or may not pay off. The organization let go of hitting coach Kevin Seitzer, assistant hitting coach Bobby Magallanes, and catching coach Sal Fasano. While I haven’t heard much about Magallanes, I know that both Seitzer and Fasano were beloved members of the coaching staff and it will be an internal adjustment for the players that have worked with them for so long. The Braves org created the “catching coach” position for Fasano, but with the veteran presence of both Travis D’Arnaud and Sean Murphy, the position was really just overkill and simply not needed. Kevin Seitzer, according to many players on the team, was the key component for the huge numbers that the 2023 team compiled, but 2024 was not so kind and it led to his demise.
Braves Hire Tim Hyers
However, there was another coach right on Seitzer’s coattail in 2023, which was also orchestrating his own masterpiece out in Texas, and the Braves brass said “I want that”, and hired Tim Hyers away from the Texas Rangers. Hyers is a Georgia native and spent 4 years in the majors with lackluster results. However, like Seitzer, there’s no denying his hitting coach track record, and like Seitzer’s hiring, this should be something that Braves fans can be happy about. Hyers has been a part of 2 World Series winning teams, the Red Sox in 2018 and the Rangers in 2022.
A Minor Deal
The Braves also made their first MiLB signing of the year, grabbing RHP Zach Thompson on a MiLB deal. Thompson is 26 and carries high strikeout rates that also coincide with high walk rates. For now, I’m guessing he’s org filler, but still, someone to keep an eye on.
Braves 40 Man Roster
When the World Series ends, the IL will go away and the Braves will have some trimming and adding to do. As of now, the Braves have 6 players on the 60-day IL in Huascar Ynoa, Ronald Acuña Jr., Spencer Strider, Angel Perdomo, A.J. Minter, and Ray Kerr. They also have many players that will likely become free agents in Max Fried, Minter, Gio Urshela, John Brebbia, Jesse Chavez, Charlie Morton, Allan Winans, Chadwick Tromp, Cavan Biggio, Whit Merrifield, Ramon Laureano, Eli White, and Luke Williams. After the adding and subtracting, it looks as though the Braves will have 33 spots taken on the 40-man roster, leaving 7 spots for additions. That’s a pretty nice place to be.
Great hyer. Who’d we get?
Hey, who’s the new hitting coach hire?
-Hyers.
OK, well who are they?
-He prefers he, and it’s Hyers.
You mean the other one’s a she?
-I have no idea who you’re talking about.
Our hires.
-Yeah he’s gonna be a good one.
Then why do we need two?
Golf clap.
I’ll bring you the medal tomorrow.
Where is CHIPPER? That’s who we need.
He’s ok being a part time instructor, but doesn’t want the full time gig.
Is there any good evidence that hitting coaches matter? This question has several parts:
(a) Do hitting coaches help particular players at particular times? I think the answer to this has to be yes. I’m not saying I’ve seen proof of this, but it’s just too unlikely that every time a player comes out of a slump that the advice he got has nothing to do with it.
(b) Do hitting coaches have particular theories that they can successfully apply at the team level? I think the answer to this is absolutely yes for a handful of known examples, the most famous of which are the Charlie Lau-Walt Hriniak school. The problem here is that success is bound to be fleeting as defenses adjust. A secondary problem is that the instruction may well depend on the material at hand, like football coaches whose theories are fine but require the right raw material to be successful.
(c) Are there hitting coaches who can teach effective hitting over a series of offensive eras and with a bunch of different players with different needs and capabilities? That’s what I don’t know. As an analogy, think of Leo Mazzone. He was undoubtedly great at what he did, but he couldn’t extend the magic to any team, as he showed in Baltimore, while he surely, through some combination of material and technique, was a huge success for a decade in Atkanta, helping both Hall of Famers and guys who just showed up. I’m not sure we know why for him, and I’m not sure there are any hitting coaches in which the question even arises.
Good for Freddie. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
I’m not unhappy.
Damn, that ripped open that wound. Probably better for his overall career that he ended up in LA.
Guess that extra week off really helped Freddie. He was looking seriously compromised in the NLCS.
The Braves signed a journeyman pitcher:
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2024/10/braves-sign-zach-thompson-to-minor-league-deal.html
And here’s David Laurila interviewing our new pitching coach, four years ago, when he was with the Red Sox:
I hate the Yankees and I’m not a Dodger’s fan in any way, but I’m very glad they are both in the world series. Through the course of 162 games, they were the two best teams in baseball. That really should be what the World Series is all about. I’ll take it any time Atlanta wins the World Series without being the best in baseball – they’ve been the best several times and didn’t get the the Series. However, if Atlanta doesn’t make it, please give me the two best teams. Great to see they got it right. Maybe in this case it really wasn’t a crap shoot.
Philly did have one more win than NYY, and the NL East was actually a tougher division this year – after all, three teams from our division made the playoffs, while in the AL East, the BoSox finished exactly .500, the Rays were 80-82, and the Jays were 74-88. Their collapse was highly reminiscent of many of ours.
The Dodgers-Yankees WS definitely has some of the biggest stars in baseball, and almost certainly the three best hitters in the game, but it doesn’t feel like a matchup of juggernauts so much as a matchup of two teams with some huge stars both scrambling to cover for some pretty glaring weaknesses in their respective pitching staffs.
As amazing as Freddie’s home run was, this simply does not feel like an all-time classic to me.
Many people like to see NY and LA in championships. It feels like all is right with the world. That’s why there is always excitement around the Knicks even though they might be terrible. As Mookie said “the world kind of wants this”. Mookie is wrong–most of us can’t stand either team. But he’s also right in a way–sports media salivates over these kind of matchups, and the ratings are better than they would be for Guardians-Padres. The impression that the world is hoping for this matchup is definitely the impression you get from watching ESPN.
Big stars and a zillion fans for both teams, that simple. Sure, possible ratings gold, but only if the Yanks win tonight.
Both teams have holes. I’ve seen this Yankee club all year & their biggest problem is that their lineup (outside of the almost-unreal Soto & Judge combo) wasn’t imposing in any way. In mid-summer, they were like the Braves, an uninspiring team playing .500 baseball after a hot start. On the upside, heading into the playoffs, their bullpen improved once they moved Holmes to set-up & Weaver to closer.
The main difference in the post-season for NYY has been that Stanton’s output (and to a lesser degree Gleyber Torres’) has made up for Judge’s October troubles so far. In the regular season, the oft-injured Stanton struck out a ton & carried a sub-.300 OBP; but now he’s doing what he has always seems to do in the post-season – wreck games with one swing.
The Yanks beat the playoff teams (KC & Cle) presented to them, sure, but those were the 2 teams they were dying to play. They were speedy teams with middle-of-the-pack offensive numbers. KC had elite starting pitching, bottom-feeding bullpen; Cle was the exact opposite. Very beatable clubs (although I was surprised at how thoroughly the Yanks terrorized Cleveland’s ‘pen).
Consequently, I promise you that every Yankee fan was thrilled that they didn’t have to see Baltimore (who beat them up all year), Houston (who still gives them nightmares) or the Mets (who won all 4 games against them this year & are a team that the Yanks couldn’t fathom losing to in the WS). I’d guess there was a sizable group of Yankee fans (the ones who weren’t ticket-scalpers) who breathed a sigh of relief when the Dodgers beat the Mets. There’s still one unrealized fear in YankeeLand and that’s losing the WS to the team from Queens.
Ultimately, the main difference btw NYY & LAD is that the Dodgers’ lineup is simply deeper. Yes, the top of both orders is pretty scary, but while the Yanks are sending up Wells, Rizzo, Volpe, Verdugo, etc., the Dodgers have Teoscar/Kike Hernandez, Muncy & Edman (this year’s David Eckstein). Not a fair fight, really.
That said, I don’t care who wins. I just hope the Yanks win at least one game b/c I have tix for Games 4 & 5. I’ve seen them clinch plenty of post-season series over the years, but I’ve seen them get clinched on far more. Wouldn’t be shocked if we see the latter on Wednesday night.
The one thing that would truly shock me is a sweep. This feels like a six-game series.
But the fact that Ohtani is back in the lineup… I never thought that could happen, either.
AJC: New Braves hitting coach Tim Hyers lays out his three core principles and more:
https://www.ajc.com/sports/atlanta-braves/new-braves-hitting-coach-tim-hyers-lays-out-his-three-core-principles-and-much-more/YO325J6KXRCDZA5FV7SQPWNSNQ/
It’s a good article and I think addresses some of the Braves’ core problems – swinging at bad pitches (and not swinging at good ones) and always going for HRs (and launch angle). TdA seemed like the only guy trying to hit line drives last year and everyone else seemed to hit a lot of warning track flies (unless someone was on 3rd and then it was a K). If Hyers tries to get everyone on plane, we should hit a lot more line drives and doubles to the wall (and maybe reduce the K’s some). If the ball really did change, it may have made Seitzer’s methods obsolete. I hope Hyers can change that mentality some. Some guys still have a lot of power and will hit a lot of HRs but maybe the averages can go up too and we can score runs in more than one way.
Just going to say what has been rattling around in my cavernous noggin for months even though I know I’ll get flamed. I think most of us give AA a lot of credit for 4 journeymen outfielders having improbable stretch runs in 2021. It certainly took some gumption to go get as many cheap bats as possible in 2021, but nobody (including he) could’ve predicted that they would all play like stars. If you want proof, just look at the performance of the one he chose to keep (Rosario) and the performance of the ones he reacquired (Duvall and Soler). In other words, I think there was a lot of magic and luck in what those guys did in 2021.
But I will judge AA much more on the much larger unforced errors he made in letting Freeman walk and trading Contreras when he he didn’t have to. Freeman is a first ballot hall of famer who we had in his prime and who loved our city and fans, and AA was just so shrewd that he foresaw that an extra year on the back end was a deal breaker and negated all of the surplus value Freeman could offer in the first 4-6 years of the deal. I think he managed to screw up a dynasty (the majority of which was handed to him) by being the smartest guy in the room. I have no animosity toward Freeman over what happened. He’s an all-time great and an amazing guy. But I guess in 2028, we will be glad we’re saving 7 million dollars or whatever. Then again, we might still be paying Olson then plus his replacement much more than that.
Watching Freeman do this in Dodger blue makes me really bitter.
I had said wayyyy before the BS with his negotiation started that I thought he wanted to be back in LA. And I figured if mama wanted to be back in LA, they’d be back in LA. And now that the dust has settled with everything, he seems to be happy. He was my favorite Brave since Chipper, and now he’s my favorite non-Brave, and if he’s happy, I’m happy.
I’m picking up that ububba thinks like this too, but it’s really fun to follow different teams’ storylines. And I also enjoy that for individual players as well. Once Tampa Bay finally gets its shit together with their stadium, I do see myself spending a whole lot of time at their new stadium the way ububba seems to hang out a lot in NY stadiums.
It sucks for Alex if he still lives near DC, but the Nats’ stadium sucks…. and they suck.
It’s just awfully convenient that we never matched Freeman’s reasonable request, so we assume he wouldn’t have signed even if we had, which means he was basically lying so that he wouldn’t have to be the bad guy and could publicly pretend he didn’t want to leave. That’s quite a thing to assume about Freddie’s character when you have no evidence it’s true. Or I guess it’s more fair to say the only evidence is that he didn’t want to stay is that he didn’t immediately take our low-ball. And then you have to say he came back to Atlanta and had a fake crocodile tears performance just to really strengthen the narrative that it wasn’t his idea. I just don’t buy it. We had a chance to make sure he finished his career in Atlanta for a reasonable amount, and it was a huge blunder by AA to let him go. I think these alternative theories are just cope (no pun intended) for people who like AA and don’t want to believe that he can be incompetent.
Happy for Freddie. It’s Casey Close’s fault he ain’t with us.
I look forward to Drake Baldwin making us forget all about William Contreras.
In the meantime, how awesome is it that Chris Sale, Reynaldo Lopez and Raisel Iglesias are all back in 2025?
That is really awesome. Here’s to hoping they will all pitch in the playoffs. I am bullish on Baldwin by the way. Haven’t seen a lefty hitting catcher with oppo homerun power in some time
When the Dodgers sweep tonight using a bullpen game, what will seem to everyone else like a Yankees collapse will just look like another tough night at the craps table to the cognoscenti. ububba is correct that the Yankees had holes, but it isn’t the holes that are failing in this World Series — it’s the cheese.
I hereby propose that Braves Journal adopt the nickname, “The Cheese,” for the Yankees until the end of time
Seconded.
The Au Gratin Empire? Nah we can just do cheese
I am probably going to keep on calling them “The Holes.”
Freddie wasn’t seen as a surefire Hall of Famer by anybody – even around here! – until very recently. I think I wrote the first major assessment of his candidacy and it entirely hinged on the question of whether his performance after turning 30 would actually retain some of the improvements he displayed during his crazy abbreviated 2020 MVP campaign. We now know the answer is yes.
I had him as a probable hall of famer on track for a 60-70 WAR career at age 30, and I was underestimating him. He’s already at 60.
While I’m happy for Freddie on a personal level, I’m sad because I had the delusional hope he’d go into the Hall of Fame as Brave only. My assumption now is he’ll go in without a team like Maddux.
It’s just a terrible shame he was allowed to walk away. You could squint at numbers and say there are some early signs he might be entering a decline phase — he’s 34 and his exit velocity numbers have declined in recent years — but his walk rate is solid as ever and he’s a smart hitter who will probably adjust and still be productive.
Above all else, he deserved to defend the 21 World Series with Atlanta and end his career here.
For me the bar for HOF 1Bs was lowered when Gil Hodges got in, and after that I assumed Freddie would get in unless he collapsed (which he obviously hasn’t). Yes, it was the Veterans’ Committee, and yes Hodges gets extra points for managing the oh-so-fawned-over ’69 Mets and being part of a famous Dodgers team when New York was relatively much more important than it is now, but if he’s in the HOF, the HOF should be pretty big. Of course I’m a small HOF person who doesn’t think that Tony Perez should be in either. Anyway, Freddie has definitely not collapsed, and having a great WS against the Yankees after his last several years has to make him a lock.
To me the bar was lowered even further when Harold Baines got in back in 2019. Zero reason for him to be there and Not Murph or Andruw.
The Baines admission was such a ridiculous head-scratcher that it almost doesn’t affect the bar for entry. But Veterans Committee admissions really can’t be viewed with the same lens as the writers’ vote.
In 15 seasons, FF’s a lifetime .300 hitter, 899 OPS, 142 OPS+
’20 NL MVP & ’21 WS title w/ ATL
Probable ’24 WS MVP & ’24 WS title w/ LAD
Nice part of the resume there. He’s no Harold Baines or Rick Ferrell.
I assume postseason. performance can make a difference in marginal HOF cases (cough, cough Jack Morris), but I wonder how you would quantify the effect. Seems like you could make a list of all 1Bs with say 50-70 WAR (or whatever gray area range seems plausible) and see which ones are in and which ones are out and ask whether postseason performance seems to make a difference in moving a few that seem below the cutoff line above it. Through last night, Freddie has 263 postseason PA and will almost certainly finish his career with at least half a season’s worth. He’s been roughly as good in the postseason as in the regular season, in games that are much more important and I assume against better pitchers on average. Seems like that should be worth an extra 5 WAR or so in evaluating his career accomplishments. Maybe more, depending on how much weight you give to the added importance of the games, especially if “fame” makes a difference to you.
Enjoy Game 5, Ububba!
Overheard Freddie-hate comment from a tipsy, female Yankee fan on the 4 train last night, headed up to The Bronx:
“I just hate that guy on the Dodgers… you know, the one with the veneers.”
I have it on good authority that Mookie Betts has a $30K smile
I regard this as the revenge for 1996. I realize that I’m projecting when I say that, but I’m just telling you how I feel.
It’s something but it’s not enough. It will never be enough.
You are correct, Val, but baby steps…. like the baby steps of Gerrit Cole failing to cover first base.
It will be interesting to see where Juan Soto lands, since it is obvious he’s going to the highest bidder. Most hated player by Yankees fans is definitely in the cards.
He will go to the Dodgers as the baseball gods intend. What an exciting time to be a baseball fan! Can’t wait for the first world series between $500MM payroll teams (from NY and LA of course). At least we will have Albies on a team-friendly deal.
No reason for them to hate him–just sign him to the richest contract this side of Otani. It’s not like they’re poor.
Freddie’s record-setting WS reminds me a bit of the WS performances from Brooks Robinson in 1970 & Roberto Clemente in 1971: A player with more than 15 years’ experience — a star who still flies a bit under the radar, a 2nd banana on his own team — essentially takes over a World Series & memorably turns it into his own showcase.
Even with Gerrit Cole’s astounding head-up-his-ass moment, this series will always be remembered as the Freddie Freeman World Series.
Soler being traded to the Angels per Passan. That was quick…
did we really manage to give him away?
Seems to be. I didn’t see what our return was, if anything.
Edit- We got Griffin Canning, a RHP that went 6-13 with an ERA of 5.19 and a whip of 1.39
It does look like that. And we got an arm back that filled innings last year. Though not terribly effectively. Maybe we can fix Griffin Canning?
zero cash retained, excellent trade.
I think we all love Jorge Soler and are sad to see him go. But his skillset is redundant with Ozuna still here and we need that money to spend on a shortstop or a starter.
Soler will probably become like Adam Duvall. Stash him away for a while and get him back for a 3rd or 4th time if we need him for a playoff run.
Griffin Canning will win the Cy Young next year. You heard it here first. I don’t think it will happen and he’ll probably be DFA’d, but I can tell people I told you so if he has a good year. I will have to admit that 171 innings last year with a .2 WAR is pretty brutal. It’s kind of like we bought penny stock.
Canning doesn’t need to be fixed necessarily. He’s a below average MLB starter who can eat some innings. Maybe someone sees something in him that says he can be a reliever or a swing guy or whatever. I wouldn’t read too much into his stats for last season. Below average players can be replacement level one season just because of variance. His fastball has always been poor, so he relies on location and change of speeds. His changeup is his bread and butter, and you can be an effective reliever throwing just four seamers and changeups. It’s a good, cheap addition for someone who we just wanted to give away
Also, getting out of the Angels organization can’t hurt.
Not that I think the Braves will tender him a contract.
For 5M there’s no way he’s getting tendered a contract.
I count 2 empty slots on the 40-man (3 after Canning gets non-tendered) and a bunch of pitchers who may be out of chances (Elder, Ynoa, Ian Anderson)
I expect one or more of them to get traded for a shortstop.
Yeah, I have to agree on not being tendered. Canning did have decent strikeout numbers until last year, A total of 4.4 WAR over 5 years and 94 starts will not get him very far. Over the last 3 years Canning has accounted for 2.1 WAR. Over the same period and about 80 less innings, Bryce Elder has produced 2.8 WAR. Unless a scout sees something that no one else has seen, non tender seems to be the obvious choice.
Yeah, but Elder would still be getting opportunities if he were a positive WAR pitcher. Since early July 2023, he has been well below replacement level. You can do a lot worse than a 1 WAR pitcher and post ’23 ASG Elder is living proof.