The 2010 season was among the strangest in Braves annals. Bobby Cox’s last team occupied last place in the National League East on May 17. By May 31 it led the division. The Braves would stretch their lead to seven games, only to finish six games behind Philadelphia. They secured a wild card only when San Francisco beat San Diego on the regular season’s final day. And this might have been the strangest part: Those Braves led the National League in on-base percentage.
That came as a surprise even to the men involved. Said Chipper Jones, whose loss to ACL surgery in early August accelerated the late-season fade: “I never thought I’d see it here. Bobby Cox’s way is to sit back and wait for the three-run homer. This team is more suited to my liking — .300 hitters, .400 on-base percentages.”
Those Braves became OBP overlords less by design than desperation. As noted, the team started poorly. It only got going when, in Chipper’s words, “we got the best on-base percentage guys at the top of the lineup,” those guys being Martin Prado, the rookie Jason Heyward, Jones himself and Brian McCann.
But enough of history. Today’s exercise is designed to underscore the one time when the Braves, at least OBP-wise, got it right, and to note how badly the 2014 Braves — who, as of Friday morning, ranked next-to-last in the majors in runs and on-base percentage — have gone wrong.
Dan Uggla was a Marlin in 2010. He arrived in trade that winter — outbound was Omar Infante, who had an OBP of .359 in 2010 and made the All-Star team as a utility player — and was handed a $62 million contract extension. Chipper retired after the 2012 season. Prado was sent to Arizona in January 2013 as part of the package that yielded Justin Upton and Chris Johnson . B.J. Upton signed as a free agent six weeks earlier. McCann signed with the Yankees last winter.
If we add the 100-strikeout seasons compiled by Jones, McCann, Prado and Infante, we get a grand total of one — Infante with Detroit in 2004. If we add the 100-strikeout seasons of Uggla, Johnson and the brothers Upton before they became Braves, we get 17. (As Braves, they’ve added six more.) By various mechanisms, this organization has shed men who were skilled at putting the ball in play and replaced them with guys more apt to swing and miss. To be fair, the results haven’t been entirely regrettable: The 2013 Braves led the National League in home runs and strikeouts while winning the NL East by 10 games.
Judging from the pattern of his acquisitions, general manager Frank Wren displays a clear preference for power over OBP. In the seasons since 2010, the Braves have finished 14th, seventh and fourth among NL teams in on-base percentage. (The 14th came in Larry Parrish’s unlamented season as hitting coach.) They won 89, 94 and 96 games in those seasons, making the playoffs twice. Even with their offense in the gutter, they awoke Friday leading their division.
Still, no offense should be this puny, least of all one that has spent so lavishly on its everyday eight. Uggla barely plays anymore, so we can’t blame it all on him. We can, however, note that a team that led the NL in walks in 2012, its first season under the hitting-coach tandem of Greg Walker and Scott Fletcher, has stopped walking. As of Friday, the Braves ranked 13th among the league’s 15 in bases on balls. That’s where the OBP has gone.
The most alarming OBP dive has been Heyward’s. You’ll recall that Chipper identified him in 2010 as among the team’s best at getting aboard, and he was. As a rookie, Heyward had an on-base percentage of .393. He hasn’t approached that since, and as of Friday his OBP was .304. (By way of contrast, Uggla had an OBP of .309 last season, even as he hit .179.)
Generally it works the other way: A rookie hacks at everything but starts to learn the strike zone. Heyward was better at working a count as a rookie — remember when everyone raved about his plate discipline? — than as a fifth-year man. Last month Ben Reiter of SI.com quoted a scout as saying of Heyward: “He’s easy to pitch to if you’re willing to pitch inside. The ball he hits well is the ball out away from him. Anybody that pounds him in can get him.”
Because the Braves’ offense took flight last season when Fredi Gonzalez, just for the heck of it, made Heyward his leadoff hitter, the manager tried it again in 2014. It hasn’t worked this time. Nor has having B.J. Upton (OBP of .280 with 51 strikeouts in 135 at-bats) hit second succeeded. These Braves can’t do as the Braves of 2010 did and stack their best OPB guys back-to-back-to-back because only Freddie Freeman and Justin Upton even qualify.
Actions, as we’re constantly reminded, have consequences. Wren has built a team capable of hitting the long ball to the exclusion of all else. (As of Friday, the Braves ranked seventh in the league in homers, but last in hits.) Few could have imagined that Uggla and B.J. Upton would simply stop hitting — and nobody in the world expected so little from Heyward — but this roster was never constructed to play A-B-C baseball.
The Braves just won their division via the clout-or-out method. This year, they’re clouting less and scoring barely at all. Owing to its pitching, this is still a first-place team — a first-place team with a third-rate offense.
