Daysbel Hernandez has been in the Braves organization for a loooooong time. Signed back in 2018 as a non-drafted free agent at 21 years of age, his journey to the bigs took 5 years, likely due to his inability to locate which resulted in a lot of free passes. In 2023, he got his shot in the bigs, but the question was still the walk rate, as he allowed 3 walks in 3.2 innings.
Fast forward to 2024 and the walk rate is still way too high (5 per 9). However, he’s shown an uncanny ability to get out of trouble and be a valuable 6th-7th inning reliever for a small cost due to his 13K/9 rate. Tanner Scott has been a highly effective reliever while carrying a high walk rate and it would be great if Daysbel can continue his 2024 success, especially factoring in Joe Jimenez‘s absence.
At this point, the Braves have some question marks in the bullpen and I’m guessing that there will be an outside addition. However, I fully expect for Daysbel to be moving toward the back end of the bullpen by mid-year in hopes that he can continue to walk a few (less, I hope) and strike out a ton. And yes, his walk rate leaves a lot to be desired, his statcast page is something to dream on.
You got this, Daysbel.
Reminds me of Mauricio Cabrera, who had a great year for us in 2016 but literally never made it back to the majors. Do the scouts think Daysbel’s control issues are ultimately manageable?
Now that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time.
I think Cabrera’s control was about as bad as it gets. He could throw 100 but had no idea where it would go. The catcher would just set up down the middle and hope for the best.
I think Cabrera’s control was about as bad as it gets for a pitcher who made the majors. Most of these guys with live arms and poor command just never get called up.
To me, the key question is whether our scouts think there’s a chance for him to improve from terrible to below average. I really liked what I saw from him last year and I’d love for him to be another middle relief option, but I don’t think I’ll ever figure it out by scouting the stat line.
holy crap, those statcast numbers, particularly with respect to contact quality. below average control is all he really needs if those numbers are sustainable, and average control would make him elite or close to it
Keith Law released his top 100 prospects for the Athletic, and the only Braves prospect he has listed is Drake Baldwin, but at #27 (!), with what I would describe as pretty high praise: “a 20 homer catcher with plus defense will rank among the best backstops in the majors, and Baldwin looks like he can be at least that, and probably will debut this year.”
Yeah, the Baldwin writeup is really nice, and even more optimistic than BPro, who had him at 37.
On the other hand, I specifically asked about Waldrep, and he was not optimistic that he could stick in the rotation:
Oh, and – Jesse Chavez is a Ranger.
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2025/01/rangers-sign-jesse-chavez-cody-thomas-to-minor-league-deals.html
I am happy with this. Been saying Baldwin was criminally underrated and better than a lot of the top 100 catchers.
In his top 100 chat today, Keith said he’d be more inclined to trade Murphy than Baldwin, assuming Baldwin keeps this up.
Even if he’s healthy, I’m not exactly sure what Murphy’s trade value would be. He’s owed $63 million through four more years but a lot of teams need catching help. I can’t imagine we’d get much prospect value if a team had to take on most of that salary.
Sean’s dropoff was just nightmarish. The projection systems see him as a 3-win player next year, but that’s basically just a straight average of the 5-win guy he had been and the 1-win guy he was a year ago. But I think the only chance the Braves have of trading him as anything other than a costly salary dump is for him to actually retake the field and prove he’s still capable of being a major league starting player. I don’t think we’ve seen a total collapse like that since Dan Uggla, Chris Johnson, and BJ Upton, and those three guys helped to cost Frank Wren his job.
Murphy’s only 30, so I’d like to believe there’s a good chance he can bounce back. For now, I think the Braves have to play him.
My first reaction to your post was comparing Murphy’s collapse to Uggla, Johnson and Upton was a bit of an overreaction. However, taking a closer look at his stats, it’s not that far offf. The thing that surprises me is that Murphy only had 233 at bats compared to 307 by D’Arnoud. Travis fared a lot better offensively (.739 OPS compared to .636) but was still only 1.1 WAR compared to 1.3 for Murphy. This really speaks to D’Arnaud’s defensive decline and it makes sense that we let him walk. My guess is we give Baldwin a strong chance to win the co-catcher job out of spring training. My sense is that Tromp will be adequate as a traditional backup catcher for a short time, but no way he is the co-catcher like D’Arnaud. His -.2 career WAR over 5 years and a small sample size will not turn to being extremely useful overnight and maybe never. It’s either Baldwin or trade Baldwin for a backup catcher and another useful piece.
Back to BJ Upton. He had a -1.7 WAR in 2013. Murphy still has a long way to fall before he gets in Upton territory.
I’m not sure comparing Murphy to Uggla, Upton, or Chris Johnson is entirely fair. They all collapsed, but for different, non-injury-related reasons.
Murphy had been an excellent player until last year, and oblique injuries are especially tough on baseball players. I’m not too worried—it wasn’t as if he was obviously declining before the injury—but I completely understand why some are.
Murphy is always going to be judged against William Contreras. It’s difficult to see Murphy struggle while Contreras becomes an MVP candidate. The Braves made the deal because of defense, and at the time, they were probably right to think Murphy was an upgrade in that area.
But then Contreras’ defense improved: https://blogs.fangraphs.com/william-contreras-defense-has-done-a-complete-180/
If the Braves had thought his defense would improve to this level, they wouldn’t have made the trade. You have to give credit to Milwaukee and question what Atlanta did wrong.
Here’s my unscientific take on Murphy’s collapse. And by that I mean it’s not based on crunching any numbers.
Bet on elite hitters—guys who square up the baseball, hit lots of line drives, and spit on sliders off the plate. Plenty of players will have success for short periods of time but if you see a lot of swing and miss or low walk rate and numbers propped up by pure power (Santander for example), do not bet on that player to have a long successful career.
Signing BJ upton after he’d come off a sub-.300 OBP season was bound to be a disaster. Locking up Contreras when he showed elite hit tool and oppo power as a rookie made sense. Sean Murphy was a .230-something hitter. Sure, he had some decent offensive seasons and some great defensive ones, but that kind of hitter is just too close to the edge of turning into a liability.
One thing I’ve noticed is that AA likes betting on hard-hit rates – it’s almost certainly why he went after Ozuna, Donaldson, Murphy, Olson, and Profar, and why he backed up the money truck for Riley.
But clearly, scouts are super-important. I was thrilled about the Upton deal as were a lot of the other stat-savvy fans around here; nothing seemed inevitable at the time. The dip in his OBP and walk rate during the previous year seemed like an aberration, as he was still in his 20s. On the other hand, the Uggla and Johnson extensions seemed questionable at the time.
But you’d need scouts alongside your data analysts to try to spot whether there seemed to be any erosion in skills that would make a bounceback less likely.
I’m frustrated we didn’t get Ha-Seong Kim. The deal he signed with the Rays is extremely player-friendly, but boy, the Braves sure are more outwardly sanguine about shortstop than I am.
I don’t see how anyone in their right mind thought Chris Johnson’s .321 BA and .358 OBP was sustainable. Usually, like in bringing in BJ, there has been at least some logic. There seemed to be no logic with Johnson.
The only thing I can think of is “make Chipper happy.” Johnson went to Stetson, where Chipper’s dad coached, and then as now, Chipper had huge influence within the organization.
But yeah, it was bewildering at the time. The org depth at third was thin and they may have felt a little desperate.
Frank Wren was not known for his great analytical acumen. He built a team of mashers who struck out a ton and aged poorly. Trading Prado was a huge mistake. He was a fan favorite and the heart of the team, and he was already better than Justin Upton at a position more difficult to fill. Wren probably felt he had to lock down the spoils of that trade.
Johnson had that 46 point batting average jump in that career year in 2013. But he had also had a .821 OPS after Arizona got him at the deadline at the year before. So at age 28, they probably felt like he had turned a corner, and they were pretty desperate for line drive hitters back then. The problem is that he averaged a .637 OPS for the rest of his career. It was a dumb extension, but I’m not sure anyone could have predicted that a guy trending up through his age-28 season would collapse in his age-29 season. If he could have kept the .746 OPS he had with Houston and Arizona before Atlanta, that contract wouldn’t have looked as bad.