Hearing that Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez had decided to make B.J. Upton his leadoff hitter, my first response was to check the date. Was it April Fool’s Day? (Nope. It was June 24.) The second response was to label it a clutching of the proverbial last straw. What tactician chooses to start every game with one out and nobody aboard?
Informed Wednesday of my initial incredulity, Gonzalez said: “It wasn’t really the last straw.”
(Point taken. The absolute last straw would have been making a leadoff man of Dan Uggla, who once played for the Braves and who remains on the roster, though not so you’d notice.)
“B.J. had hit there before,” Gonzalez said. (True. Upton batted leadoff 167 times over eight seasons with Tampa Bay to no great effect, and 19 times as a Brave in 2013, managing a batting average of .178 and an on-base percentage of .256 in those 19 games.) “I actually approached him about it in Washington. He said he’d be OK with it.”
On that Tuesday in Houston, nothing suggested that Upton would be any better hitting first than when hitting — or not hitting, as was mostly the case — anywhere else in the order. His batting average entering the game was .202; his OBP was .272. He met neither requirement of a leadoff man: He didn’t hit, and he didn’t get on base.
Then again, Jason Heyward didn’t appear to be an obvious leadoff candidate last July, but he hit .322 with an OBP of .403 after being deployed there. (He had hit .226 with an OBP of .330 in the No. 2 slot.) Surely not coincidentally, the Braves won their first 11 games with Heyward leading off.
Even baseball men don’t know why, or even if, changing places in the order makes a difference. (Gonzalez: “I think people make too much of that lineup stuff.”) But what happened with Heyward last summer is happening again, sort of, with B.J. Upton.
It would be overstating to suggest that Bossman Jr. has turned into Rickey Henderson reincarnate. Upton entered Wednesday’s game batting .265 with an OBP of .306 as leadoff hitter. If that didn’t sound like much, consider that he’d hit .207 in the No. 2 spot and .171 at No. 8. He’s at least getting a hit a game now, which means he’s getting on base. If this isn’t quite prime leadoff production, it beats the heck out of what he was doing elsewhere.
Surely not coincidentally, the Braves had gone 7-1 with Upton batting leadoff to reclaim first place in the National League East, if only by a half-game. This time a week ago, I’d have guessed the Braves were more apt to go 1-7 than 7-1 with the Braves’ No. 2 batting No. 1, which might show just how little I know. Or it might not.
“What if it’s coincidence?” Gonzalez said, asking the question I was about to ask. “You want to better yourself and get us going, but who knows about the timing of it?”
There’s no question that Gonzalez picked a soft landing spot for B.J. the leadoff man. Day 1 of the experiment marked the first of 31 consecutive games the Braves will play against opponents currently below .500. A struggling team, which the Braves were, can get well over such a month. On cue, the healing has begun.
It started, figuratively and literally, with moving Upton up top, but there has been more to it. Freddie Freeman is hitting again. The rookie Tommy La Stella broke the 0-for-40 drought that put an end to his audition atop the order. The listing bullpen has steadied behind the return of Jordan Walden. Except for Mike Minor, the starting pitching remains stellar.
“This is what our team could be,” Gonzalez said. Then, expressing a sentiment seldom voiced this decade: “I really like our approach at the plate.”
What’s needed to kick-start a team is unknowable. (Were the solution so obvious, no team would ever hit a rough patch.) Once a team gets going, though, it can be hard to halt. And B.J. Upton, once a key reason why the Braves couldn’t hit, has become a major part of a team playing its best baseball of a season now in its second half.
“It’s contagious,” Gonzalez said before Wednesday’s game, and the first inning bore him out. Upton lined Jacob deGrom’s first pitch into left field. (A nine-game hitting streak for B.J.!) Soon the Braves led 3-0. Upton got on base and scored a run. He still mightn’t be anyone’s idea of a leadoff hitter, but he’s doing what a leadoff man is supposed to do.
