If you aren’t happy with today’s election of Andruw Jones into the Baseball Hall of Fame, please turn in your Braves Journal decoder ring.
I don’t think there’s much more to say that hasn’t been said about this already, but anybody who wants to add anything, please do.
Very happy for Andruw. One of the all-time defenders. I remember this brief Greg Maddux interview snippet that used to air on TBS ads for the Braves. Mad Dog said “some weeks he saves you 5 runs and some weeks he saves you 10 runs”. That works out to about 200 runs saved per season, so Andruw was really doing some work in those days (chuckle).
Very funny, JonF.
And well-deserved, Andruw. I really had my doubts on this one — but I guess the timing was right.
Welcome to Cooperstown.
One of my favorite Andruw moments:
Was at this game at the Vet in Philly. It was humid as hell & the ball was flying.
400 HRs, 10 Gold Gloves, 60 WAR. That’s a Hall of Famer.
Who will be the next Braves player to go in with a Braves hat on his head? Well, I assume Andruw won’t go in with a White Sox hat.
Unless I’m missing someone obvious, is it Matt Olson? It would have been Freddie, but that’s not happening now.
Freddie: 12 years, 43 WAR with Braves. 6 years, maybe 30 WAR with Dodgers (unless he has a down year this year or next)
Why wouldn’t he go in as a Brave? Because of the extra ring?
I’m happy that Jones made the HOF and it’s good for Atlanta. However, I’ve been a little on the fence about him deserving it. His drop off was dramatic and it started at 30. In his last 5 years from 31 to 35 he totaled 1.7 WAR for the entire time. I know you guys have looked at it much more closely than me and I’m good with him making it. I just wish he would’ve had 1 or 2 more dominant seasons offensively and defensively. This isn’t meant to flame, my excitement is just a little tempered.
If you pretend Andruw started at 24 and retired at 36 it’s a hell of a run. It’s just he made it to the bigs young and wore out young.
Bla bla bla the brightest stars burn fastest bla bla bla.
He should be in the hall for his defense alone.
I think that like a lot of great athletes, he never had to worry about weight until he did. And by the time he did, it was teaching an old dog new tricks. If he stays lean and hungry, I think he is good through 35. I don’t have any data on this, just the eye test.
Stampton – maybe that is why I have some trepidation about Andruw’s HOF election, which is probably not fair. It just seems if he would have taken decent care of himself as he got older, he could have had at least a few more good years. It is just kind of sad that he dropped off so sharply. He earned $36 million over his two years with Los Angeles for a negative WAR.
To answer both TD and Rob, this presages a new “look at his peak” era, and when it does, Dale is the next. (That is entirely wishful thinking, I should add.)
I would note that Ryan Braun had a fairly similar career to Murphy’s (with a gigantic PED asterisk) and got 15 votes in this, his first year of eligibility, and has fallen off the ballot. I would say his case (once we ignore the asterisk) is only a bit behind Murphy’s and shows the “but look at his peak” attitude has a ways to go…. although the looming asterisk won’t be extirpated until ARod gets in from the voters, at which point the Veterans Committee can put in Bonds and Clemens and we can put all this crap behind us.
I am trying to figure out the Peralta trade, it seems to me the Brewers didnt get much back. How could we not have beaten that offer?
Well, it is just for one year of Peralta. He’d probably make $30M for one year on the open market, so I guess he has around $22M in surplus value.
The Brewers’ top 4 prospects now according to Pipeline are either SS’s or infielders. That’s a problem we wish we had.
Well, they did get back 2 top-100 prospects, which happens to be the same number as we possess. I would not trade both Caminiti and Ritchie for 1 year of Peralta.
I like the Brewers side of things here, although the Mutts get the short-term rotation boost they needed.
Peralta is also a guy who just came off a career year at an age when pitchers tend to peak. You hope he gives you another 5.5 WAR season, but he’s probably a better bet to regress to the 2.5 WAR pitcher he’d been over the prior 4 seasons. At that level you’re better off signing Giolito and keeping your prospects. Brewers did well in the trade.
I’d take either Bassitt or Giolito but either would want more money than the Braves want to spend. Holding out hope for Alcantera.
I would have unloaded one of our SP prospects for Peralta, i think the Mets did great on this one, 5″7 utility infielder and an ok pitching prospect for a guy who has 3 strong SP seasons on a row is a no-brainer, at least to me. I always look at prospcects as trade chips, most of them really dont pan out so leverage them.
BUT, I am also just a fan and can admit I cold very well be wrong, :).
I was listening to a fantasy baseball prospect and learned that Waldrep throws 5 different pitches. I didn’t know that. I’m really not sure why people don’t think he’ll stick in the rotation. I picked him up on waivers last fantasy season and I’m trying to decide if I should make him a keeper since it would only take away my last pick in the draft. 12 team league.
If you are looking for advice, post your roster!
All of a sudden the Mets look a lot better. And our rotation has a lot of question marks…really hoping Ryan C’s Alcantara prediction has some legs
I agree. The Mets got a lot better in a week. I would like one more starter just to avoid having to start some of the dreck we did last year.
Looking over our roster, it seems that we have a lot of middling talent. We need a lot of health luck and we need some players to rebound to win our division. Namely Riley and Harris who are both young need to play more like 2023.
In the rotation, for some perspective, Christopher Sanchez had an 8 WAR season for the Phillies in 2025. All of our starting pitchers combined for about 8 WAR.
As maligned as our offense was, we had 0.6 WAR higher than the Phillies from position players. Their pitching was almost 20 wins better than ours
Bassitt, Valdez, Scherzer, Verlander, Gallen, Giolito all still available. All but Valdez probably available on a one year basis, All but Valdez are lottery tickets of the sort we already have a lot of. But with enough tickets, the probability of a winner rises linearly.
Seranthony Dominguez to the CHISOX for $20MM/2 years.
Interesting case he is. Has some of the best swing-and-miss stuff in the bigs but he hangs out around replacement level because he walks 5 guys per 9. The line between being dominant (Robert Suarez) and mediocre (Dominguez) for relief pitchers is just one walk every 3 outings.
Glad the Chisox got Dominguez and not us. There are loads of relievers with great stuff and poor control that have flamed out. I don’t see that pattern changing anytime soon.
Do we still have a politics side-board? I have a Braves-related thing to note that probably would violate the no-politics edict.
I have avoided activating it, particularly in the current climate. Can you word it less politically? Plus, I can always delete it.
The Battery is a known undercover hangout spot for ICE agents.
Ok, I think I broke the rule…
Jonathan, what’s your email?
The Spencer Strider thing?
For those somehow out of the algorithm’s reach, people can certainly look it up, if nec., and there’s def no shortage of places to post/vent/rant, etc.
Between the Spencer Strider thing and the Chipper Jones thing, I have to just remind myself that when it comes to political commentary, my favorite baseball players are really good baseball players.
Keith Law’s top 100 is out. The only Braves prospect listed is Cam Caminiti but Keith is very high on him:
“He’s also passed the biggest test for high school pitchers, surviving the first year in pro ball without injury, and if that continues he’ll be one of the top lefties in the minors by next spring.”
That’s a damn good deal. I’m a little jealous.
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/47735884/giants-sign-cf-harrison-bader-two-year-205m-dollar-deal
I noticed in the article the phrase “six different (major league) teams since 2017.” That seems like a yellow flag to me, that teams that had him didn’t generally want to keep him around for long. Even if the player’s first or second team kept him for a long time, the fact that a player has entered the bouncing-around portion of his career seems like a sign that he might soon fall below replacement level. (Or, as in the case of post-30 Kenny Lofton, it might just mean that he’s more of a PITA than even his talent can justify keeping.) I guess another way to look at it is that other teams, or maybe the player himself, keep valuing him more than the teams that have him do, which doesn’t seem like a good sign.
It would be difficult to design a study, but it would be interesting if Jonathan or someone could identify a bunch of pairs of similar players with many or few teams on their resumes and see how they did in succeeding years. I suppose you’d need to make sure the players in each pair were from the same era to avoid any changes in structural forces affecting player movement.
I think mostly he just hasn’t been very good. Had a huge season last year. But a lot of tepid seasons preceding it. You could say the same for Profar though and we paid more for longer for a guy who doesn’t have the plus glove Bader does.
Lotsa commentary around here that the Mets retooling was made necessary because the chemistry was all wrong. To me, that just means that the performance was there, but the wins weren’t, so we call everything else “chemistry.” There are certainly guys who moved around a lot despite elite talent. Kenny Lofton is one, and Gary Sheffield was another. But it’s not clear to me that team chemistry is a thing at all, beyond the fact that everyone prefers pleasant workplaces to unpleasant ones. Anyone who wants to make team chemistry a thing has a bunch of teams he has to explain first, like the Bronx Zoo.
You’ve got 26 post-adolescent rich guys forced to work together, indeed essentially live together for six months of the year. They have a shared goal, of course, but I suspect we hear of only a tiny fraction of the times they get on each other’s nerves. And the effect that has on winning and losing is impossible to measure. The effect of the manager is probably important as well. For the younger pups here, google “Harmonica incident”
Yup… when he was playing for the Yanks & Mets, I always thought that Harrison Bader should be 4th OF, not a starter.
BTW, that story mentions his freakish, single-season assault on RHP in ’25… but it doesn’t mention his unimpressive numbers vs. LHP the last 2 seasons: 227/299/390 in ’25 and 204/261/350 in ’24.
He had a couple of tantalizing seasons in St. Louis. When you have a CF that can pick it, has some speed & some pop, there always seems to be someone who wants you. Problem is… 5 teams later, last season was the 1st good one he’s had since he left the Cards.
FWIW, I recall his teammates liking him in The Bronx, but I still wouldn’t want him in our regular 9.
Looks like we claimed Jose Suarez from the Orioles. The Braves-O’s revolving door for fringe pitchers continues to twirl.
More importantly: how is it that in the 125 years of Major League baseball (and even farther if you want to go back) there were only three Suárez players, one of whom got a cup of coffee in the Negro Leagues in 1912, and one of whom got two at-bats with the Twins during WWII, and since Eugenio showed up ten years ago there have been six?
I don’t have a theory on that but clearly we should acquire Eugenio and corner the Suarez market.
All of the recent MLB Suarezes are from Venezuela, and it seems like there have been more Venezuelans in MLB in the last decade or two than in previous decades (Aparicio, Davalillo, Concepcion, Cabrera, and Santana nonwithstanding). The few earlier Suarezes were Cubans or from parts of Florida with significant Cuban-American populations, and MLB hasn’t had all that many Cubans or Cuban-Americans over the years, not compared to Dominicans at least.
Interesting. If economic/political turmoil in Venezuela declines, I wonder if their baseball exports will decline as well. Though I expect these things have a very long arc.
Yep… when I was a kid, I had Ken Suarez’s baseball card. American utility catcher for Cleveland. Wiki says he grew up in Tampa (home of lotsa pre-Castro-era Cubans), playing ball w/ Lou Piniella & Tony LaRussa.
I’ll guess that if there’s another Ronald Acuna, Jr., or Miguel Cabrera out there, they’ll find their way up north from Venezuela, no matter who’s running the show.
I’m digging the hoops & the hockey, but damn it’s cold. C’mon spring training…
On Giolito from mlbtraderumors. Based on this I can’t see him getting more than a 1 year deal and I think $16-18 million is about right.
“Were it not for a late elbow injury, Giolito’s market might have been more aggressive. (Although, had he been fully healthy, Boston may also have given more consideration to extending a qualifying offer.) Giolito’s surgically repaired ulnar collateral ligament received a clean bill of health at the time, but September testing on the right-hander revealed some irritation in his flexor tendon and a bone issue in his elbow that required some downtime. He missed the Red Sox’ postseason run as a result, but by November he was viewed as “fully healthy” and ready for a normal offseason.”