Football Season Already?

I’m the emergency recapper today and I hadn’t expected to talk about Fenway until the Yale-Harvard football game is played there on November 21st. Fenway is charming, but it has a lot of bad baseball seats. I don’t think it has any good football seats. God willing, that will be my my 52nd consecutive edition of THE GAME attended. I will attend, but I probably won’t see much.

Memorial Day Sale

OK. Even if we’d played on Memorial Day, Sale wouldn’t have pitched. But how many chances will I get to use that heading? When Vaughn Grissom goes into the Hall of Fame, the fact that he was traded for Chris Sale will be one of the small set of trades in which one HoFer was traded for another. But until then, and even if his career in Anaheim makes him the good major leaguer I thought he’d be when the Sale trade was made, this will still be a terrible Red Sox trade, who got nothing for him. It’s understandable given how injury-prone Sale was in Boston (though they were weird non-pitching injuries for the most part, sort of like his broken ribs here, excepting recurring regularly.) They decided he couldn’t stay healthy enough to keep around, and thought Grissom was a great prospect. I still think he’s a great prospect: he’s only 25. But that’s the romance of baseball. But I will say that no matter what Grissom would have done in Atlanta, I will cherish every time I got to see Chris Sale pitch.

Positional Analyses

When tfloyd opined earlier this week that Chipper Jones and Darrell Evans were the Atlanta Braves’ best 3rd Basemen, he was incorrect, but barely. I have made a calculation that for every player, allocates his WAR not only to the teams he played for, but also for the positions he played on those teams. I have done this for every player in MLB history that we have WAR data for. And there is a lot in here that I find fascinating. If you don’t, move on to the next section.

A little brush clearing: I do not combine franchises, so Henry Aaron‘s Atlanta figures are for Atlanta only, and Eddie Mathews figures are almost all Milwaukee. Some great players split their time by positions and teams in such a way that they do not register on any of the alltime top 10 by team-position. A-Rod is one of these as an example. One player is a top 10 Left Fielder for two different teams: if I tell you those teams are Pittsburgh and San Francisco you’ll know who I’m talking about. Finally my allocation by position is not completely precise because players often played more than one position in a game, I allocate WAR for a player-team-year-position according to games played at a particular position divided by all games at all positions, which is often greater than the total number of games played, but at least the allocation sums to 100%.

Top Atlanta Players by Position

1B WAR 2B WAR 3B WAR
Freddie Freeman 42.2 Ozzie Albies 26.0 Chipper Jones 70.3
Matt Olson 23.4 Glenn Hubbard 16.9 Austin Riley 23.0
Fred McGriff 11.1 Marcus Giles 16.6 Darrell Evans 22.8
Hank Aaron 8.5 Félix Millán 9.6 Bob Horner 17.5
Chris Chambliss 8.1 Mark Lemke 6.0 Terry Pendleton 12.3
Orlando Cepeda 7.9 Kelly Johnson 5.5 Clete Boyer 8.6
Andrés Galarraga 6.1 Martín Prado 5.1 Josh Donaldson 5.2
Mark Teixeira 6.0 Davey Johnson 5.1 Ken Oberkfell 4.4
Bob Horner 4.1 Quilvio Veras 3.3 Martín Prado 3.9
Adam LaRoche 3.9 Jeff Treadway 3.2 Johan Camargo 3.2
C WAR CF WAR DH WAR
Brian McCann 24.2 Andruw Jones 58.6 Marcell Ozuna 11.0
Javy López 23.1 Dale Murphy 30.5 Drake Baldwin 1.2
Joe Torre 10.6 Michael Harris 16.0 Chipper Jones 1.0
Bruce Benedict 7.3 Dusty Baker 10.5 William Contreras 1.0
Sean Murphy 7.1 Ender Inciarte 9.3 Ronald Acuña 0.8
David Ross 5.2 Felipe Alou 8.8 Dominic Smith 0.7
Ozzie Virgil 5.0 Michael Bourn 6.7 Sean Murphy 0.4
Travis d’Arnaud 4.9 Ron Gant 6.4 Javy López 0.3
Kurt Suzuki 4.6 Otis Nixon 6.0 Travis d’Arnaud 0.3
Drake Baldwin 4.5 Mack Jones 5.9 Brian McCann 0.2
LF WAR P WAR RF WAR
Lonnie Smith 17.1 Phil Niekro 88.4 Hank Aaron 38.5
Rico Carty 15.2 John Smoltz 69.5 David Justice 22.7
Chipper Jones 11.6 Greg Maddux 67.3 Jason Heyward 22.1
Ron Gant 11.0 Tom Glavine 63.6 Ronald Acuña 19.3
Ryan Klesko 9.6 Tim Hudson 25.6 Dale Murphy 13.9
Ralph Garr 9.4 Max Fried 23.9 Gary Sheffield 11.1
Hank Aaron 5.9 Julio Teherán 20.8 Brian Jordan 9.7
Jeff Burroughs 5.7 Rick Mahler 17.6 Gary Matthews 8.1
Martín Prado 4.9 Steve Avery 15.1 J. D. Drew 7.8
Justin Upton 4.8 Carl Morton 15.0 Nick Markakis 7.5
SS WAR
Rafael Furcal 20.9
Jeff Blauser 18.4
Andrelton Simmons 15.6
Dansby Swanson 14.9
Yunel Escobar 10.3
Édgar Rentería 8.3
Rafael Ramírez 7.2
Walt Weiss 3.8
Denis Menke 3.4
Álex González 3.0

Lessons: there are so many here. First, just looking at these 10 tables is an exercise in comparative nostalgia. The names that appear here are sure to bring both smiles and groans.

The second lesson is that, for a team that has been around for 60 years, it doesn’t take great performance to make the top 10 all-time except for pitcher and center field. Guys with one good season and 1/3 (Drake Baldwin) or a few undistinguished years at second (Jeff Treadway) can make this list.

Chipper Jones was an 85 WAR player, but a couple of years in left and a smattering of games at short and DHing make his 3rd base allocation a little over 70. This is still miles ahead of the next player, who turns out to be Austin Riley. He moved past Darrell Evans about a month ago.

Henry Aaron makes the lists at first and left, and he of course leads all right fielders. And the fact that this represents less than half of his career is another good reason to admire Mr. Aaron, as if we need more.

Which brings me to another point. Only Ozzie Albies leads a category, but current players are very high on almost every list: Matt Olson is already second among first basemen (who are in their total careers a very strong group) Austin Riley‘s position in second place among third basemen will I suspect surprise many. Michael Harris II trails Andruw Jones by a lot, but he’s rising rapidly in third place, though he’s still several years from catching Dale Murphy. Chris Sale will probably crack the top 10 pitchers this year. Drake Baldwin and Dom Smith’s (!) presence on the DH list is obviously somewhat artificial, but very promising. A good second half will put Ronald Acuña Jr. behind only Henry Aaron in right field.

Only at shortstop and left field are current Braves not represented… and that won’t be changing this year unless Eli White or Yaz or somebody has a monster second half. But you only need 5 WAR out there to push Justin Upton out.

Finally, Martin Prado‘s presence at three different positions is very telling, and it is what I expect from Mauricio Dubón going forward if he remains healthy.

I’ve got more to say about this when you back out to look across teams. But I’ll leave that for tomorrow.

The Game

Chris Sale was pitching well, but there were still a lot of early baserunners in crimson hose. So Chris Sale had to adope the persona of Wily Veteran™, working out of trouble in each inning. Still he had thrown 64 stressful pitches through three, and you knew the bullpen would get some serious work.

The Red Sox countered with Payton Tolle, who looks a lot more like a defensive end for the Titans than a major league pitcher, but I don’t think any of the Watt brothers can throw 98. He was in less trouble than Sale, but the Braves did threaten with a Jorge Mateo leadoff double in the third, but their first big threat came after a leadoff single by Matt Olson and a double to left by Ozzie Albies. It eventually paid off after a shot back off Tolle — he takes up a lot of space — and a bloop single from Dominic Smith. 2-0 after 4 1/2. But Sales’ luck ran out in the bottom of the inning with the Sox tying it up. Even then, it was clear Sales’ pitches were moving — it’s fairly rare to see a major league hitter strike out on a ball that hits him, like Wilyer Abreu did.

So through four it was a battle of attrition. Both guys were over 80 pitches. Sale is older of course, but he has a lot less weight to move around than Tolle. Tolle exited after 94 pitches, He was replaced by Tyrone Guerrero, who doesn’t look like a tight end — he looks like a small forward for the Pistons, albeit a small forward who could induce an inning-ending groundout from Austin Riley with RAJ on third. Sale made it through five, throwing 95 pitches and still throwing a 99 mph fastball. Amazing.

The sixth saw the shocking entry of Danny Coulombe to pitch. It was a charged decision, not the sort of static decision the Red Sox are known for. But they were hoping to catch lightning in a bottle. (OK physics majors… I’m done. Plus, I mentioned Watt earlier.) He loaded the bases without a ball leaving the infield and Sandy Leon gave way for Eli White, which caused a pitching change, which then caused a Yaz substitution for White. The new Red Sox pitcher, Andrew Weissert, walked Yaz after an 0-2 count to give the Braves the lead. Next came a Ronald Acuña Jr.Grand Slam onto Lansdowne Street. The Red Sox were Sadder with Weissert.

I have made no secret of my disdain for the decision to return Cookie Carrasco to the active roster. But he ate 4 very workmanlike innings last night that enabled Weiss to feel untroubled by a five-inning stint from Sale. Tyler Kinley appears to have returned to form. Michael Harris II hit a solo homer in the 7th to make it 8-0. We no longer employ Chris Reitsma or Dan Kolb, so the two run Ozzie Albies homer in the 9th was probably immaterial to the result, though it did yield a positive run differential for the series.

Reynaldo Lopez threw only 19 pitches in his two innings of work, and Dylan Dodd finished it up.

From here, the Braves fly to Kentucky, cross the Ohio River and find themselves in the culinary center of the most embarassing dish named for a city: Cincinnati Five-Way Chili. That and other things will be covered tomorrow. 40 wins before June would be sweet, Caroline.