Over at CNNSI, Jon Heyman has posted his latest curmudgeonly screed.  It's basically a rant about teams being too cheap (no wonder people think this guy is a bit too cozy with Scott Boras).  One of the teams he mentions is the Braves.  He states that due to Frank Wren being "remarkably cheap," there was "no discernible improvement" in our roster.

Now, I think it's pretty hard to argue that Wren was "remarkably" cheap, but my real problem is with the "no discernible improvement" crack.  I've seen this meme in many national columns.  It's understandable on one level, since the players we've acquired, by and large, are not exciting, and we gave up Javy Vazquez (of course, there was approximately a 0% chance Javy would equal last year's production anyway).  But if you spend just a few minutes examining our stats from last year and comparing them to reasonable projections for the players we will have this year, it becomes clear that the 2010 Braves are--on paper, anyway--at least somewhat improved from last year.

Let me count the ways:

1) The outfield.  I don't think outside observers realize just how awful our outfield was last year.  Think of this: All 3 members of our starting outfield at the beginning of last year (Anderson, Schafer, Francoeur) played at below replacement level last year.  In other words, we could have picked up 3 random bench players / minor leaguers and gotten better production.  Check out their combined line: 1053 PAs, .251/.298/.366 (AVG/OBP/SLG), 20 HRs, -11.4 UZR, -1.8 WAR (Wins Above Replacement, via FanGraphs).  

About the only good thing you can say about that line is that it's not Greg Norton's (more on him in a sec).  This year, we'll start the year with McLouth, so he replaces Schafer's ~200 PAs.  The rest will be divvied up among Cabrera, Heyward, Hinske, and possibly Schafer (but presumably only if he shows he can do better than last year).  Unless something really wacky happens, replacing those 1000 or so horrid PAs should be good for at least 4 more wins by itself, because even if Melky stinks and Heyward's not ready for prime time, they'll still be better than replacement level.  (McLouth will obviously far outdistance Schafer's numbers.)  There's a good chance of a 6-8 win improvement if someone has a breakout year.

2) Greg Norton has been put out to pasture.  Not to be mean, but man was he bad last year.  He slugged less than .200!  How do you even do that?  On the plus side, he walked 8 more times in 97 PAs than Frenchy did in 324 PAs.  But still, he managed to cost us almost a win (-0.9 WAR) in less than 100 PAs.  Replacing his at-bats with Hinske (or anyone else, really) will at least get us back to replacement level, and probably a bit better.  Add another 1-2 wins.

3) Improvements from holdovers.  McCann and Escobar are just entering their primes and could break out.  Plus, McCann's eyes should be fixed now.  Chipper and Lowe are good bets to bounce back at least somewhat.  Hanson and Prado will start all year.  Add in the fact that no holdover is an obvious bet for major regression (like Vazquez would have been), and it seems likely that we'll improve even in the areas where we "stay the same."  We could easily see a 4 WAR improvement (or more) from this group, but let's be conservative and say +1 WAR.

Compare that to the 2 likely areas of decline:

1) The Vazquez to Hudson drop-off.  Hudson's good--he could easily be better than Vazquez this year--but he's not going to match Javy's 2009.  Seems like a good bet for around -3 WAR compared to last year.

2) The bullpen.  I don't know that there's ever been a fool-proof bullpen, but this certainly isn't it.  There's a decent chance Wagner and Saito match Soriano and Gonzalez' production and everybody else fills in ably.  There's also a decent chance that a few guys blow out their arms from overuse and we see Craig Kimbrel closing in August.  Still, the bullpen is the easiest piece to fix midyear via trades or promotions.  I think it'll end up being OK.  Let's be pessimistic, though, and say that this costs us another -1 WAR or so (the bullpen totaled 5.2 WAR last year, so that's a relatively big drop-off).

This is far from a thorough analysis (maybe I'll break it down further in future posts), but even on the conservative side, we're looking at a very likely 6 win improvement versus a possible 4 win downgrade.  That's a total of +2 wins, and it could easily be a much bigger improvement than that.