Next on the Braves’ agenda: What to do with B.J. Upton
Now that Dan Uggla has been dispatched, the Braves’ attention can shift to their other salary drain. If the past five games were any indication, they haven’t yet figured out what to do with B.J. Upton.
He didn’t play in Seattle last Tuesday. He started and batted eighth the next day. He batted leadoff against Washington on Friday and hit a fourth-inning homer off a Stephen Strasburg curve, leading one baseball man to wonder why Strasburg did Upton the favor of throwing a curve. He again batted leadoff in Saturday’s long-delayed game, striking out three times and grounding out with the winning run at second in the ninth. He didn’t start Sunday night.
On Monday, the Braves’ lineup for Game 1 against the Dodgers had Upton back in the lineup but not in the leadoff spot. Emilio Bonifacio, who’d hit .304 since being acquired at the trade deadline, was there for the fourth time in six games, playing shortstop in place of Andrelton Simmons. Bonifacio can man many positions, but the most obvious place for him — assuming Simmons heals soon — figures to be center field. Which leads us, and surely the Braves, to wonder yet again: What to do with B.J. Upton?
In June, Fredi Gonzalez redeployed Upton as his leadoff man. The tack seemed, to put it kindly, counterintuitive. You make baseball’s strikeout king — Bossman Jr. leads the majors in whiffs by some distance — the first hitter an opponent sees? Why not make Julio Teheran throw with his left hand while you’re at it?
The move wasn’t quite the epic fail most among us figured it would be. (It didn’t hurt that Upton’s first game batting first coincided with the Braves embarking on their month-plus of games against sub-.500 opposition.) Upton batted .220 with an on-base percentage of .282 as a leadoff man, which by his modest standards — he’s hitting .209 with an OBP of .278 overall — wasn’t awful. It was, however, awful by the standards of Major League Baseball.
The schedule has toughened and the Braves have fallen 3 1/2 games back in the National League East and two games out of the second wild-card spot, which means they can no longer afford to lead with their worst. Bonifacio’s arrival offers an option that didn’t exist in July. Gonzalez appears willing to exercise it. Which leaves Upton … where?
“Just trying to put the best lineup on the field,” Gonzalez said, speaking before Monday’s game. “Changing things a little bit, tinkering a little bit.”
Beyond the here and now, there’s the weightier matter of tomorrow. Upton is under contract through 2017; after this season is done, he’ll still be owed $46 million. Reports swirled that the Braves were trying like crazy to trade him before the deadline, but the man who’s the opposite of indispensable won’t be easy to dispense. About the only way the Braves could move Upton would be for a player carrying a contract as bad or worse, and there aren’t many of those. And even if the Braves could make such a deal, what sort of upgrade would that be?
Regarding Upton, the esteemed ESPN analyst Dan Szymborski wrote via email: “I don’t fault the Braves for making the signing — I would have signed him for that contract, too. I think where the fault lies is their inability to factor in new information, something we also saw when they hung onto Uggla long past there being any real chance of him having value. Not every bad investment is ill-conceived, but you’ve got to be willing to know when to cut your losses. Even if Upton still can help a team as a fifth-outfielder type, he has no business starting for an MLB team in 2014 and certainly not hitting leadoff.”
According to Szymborski, a team should expect to pay between $5.5 to $6 million for each win above replacement. Using Baseball Reference’s formula, Upton’s WAR two-year rating as a Brave is minus-2.2. Wrote Szymborski: “Technically, he should be paying the Braves to play him — like a vanity press thing!”
Barring an improbable Upton upswing or the greater improbability of finding a trade partner, the Braves will again face the dilemma just confronted with Uggla: How long can they justify keeping him on their roster before paying him to go away? In Upton’s case, the bill will be even higher and that’s a major consideration. The Braves’ other starting outfielders can become free agents after next season, when Uggla’s buyout is final, and any money spent to make B.J. Upton disappear could compromise the effort to retain Justin Upton and/or Jason Heyward.
Weird, isn’t it? The Braves just rid themselves of the worst player in the majors, and still they can’t feel good about their lineup. Sooner or later, they’ll have to decide what to do with B.J. Upton. Preferably sooner.
About the Author
Mark Bradley is a sports columnist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He has been with the AJC since 1984.
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