Editor's note: The following is an editorial opinion by an individual author and is not necessarily representative of the thoughts of Talking Chop and SB Nation.
Unless something dramatic happens in the next three years, BJ Upton will go down as the worst free agent signing in Atlanta Braves history. BJ was signed before the 2013 season to the richest free agent contract in team history at 5 years and 75 million dollars. Through the first two years of that deal the Braves paid BJ 30 million dollars and in return the Braves have gotten production that Fangraphs rates as slightly worse than what the Braves could have expected from a AAA player like say Todd Cunningham. Among qualified hitters over that two year period, BJ ranks as the worst hitter in all of baseball just below Adeinny Hechavarria and Zack Cozart. BJ has been an awful baseball player relative to other Major League players during his Atlanta tenure, all while making the most money on the team.
None of that is controversial or worth much in terms of analysis. BJ has been a very bad Major League baseball player over the past two seasons and everybody know that he has been very bad. It is frustrating though that for many people the obvious cause of BJ’s failures is that he is a lazy person. A quick twitter search of BJ Upton and lazy yields plenty of results of mostly Atlanta fans calling their centerfielder lazy. Such accusations are not new either as he was labeled as a lazy player when he was in Tampa Bay.
On a macro level there is really no justification for ever calling any professional athlete lazy. There are 750 players on MLB rosters and while you can argue that BJ is currently not one of the 750 best baseball players in the world he is certainly in the top 1,000. That is 1,000 players in a country of 316 million people, in a sport that has become massively popular in many Latin countries as well as Japan. How many people in the world have played baseball at some point? I wouldn’t know how to begin to calculate that number but it is certainly in the hundreds of millions. Of the hundreds of millions of people alive today who have played baseball in some capacity BJ Upton is certainly one of the 1,000 best. If I were to choose a conservative number and say that 100 million people alive today have played baseball at some point, BJ is among the top 0.0001 percent of these people.
In addition from being a great player relative to the general population BJ Upton has in the past been an outstanding baseball player relative to MLB. In 2007 BJ was one of the top ten hitters in the American League and in 2008 BJ had one of the greatest postseasons of all time. For those who may have forgotten, in 2008 BJ had a postseason that ranks fourth all-time in home runs, 9th all-time in total bases, and 5th all-time in runs scored. From BJ’s first full season in 2007 until his last year before coming to Atlanta, Upton finished 31st among all MLB players in total value as calculated by Fangraphs. That is to say that in BJ’s first five full seasons in MLB he was one of the best players in the sport and had one of the greatest postseasons of all time.
BJ’s previous success makes it inarguable that he has accomplished more in his chosen profession than almost any person alive today has accomplished in theirs. After all what are you in the top 0.0001% in? Even today, if BJ is the worst player in MLB he is still better at baseball than most readers of this article are at literally anything they have ever done. Relative to the general population BJ is in the elite of the elite when it comes to his profession.
Of course the elephant in the room when discussing whether a professional athlete is lazy is that such claims are always heavily shaded by racism. In addition to BJ other players that are often called lazy include his brother Justin, Hanley Ramirez, Robinson Cano and other players of color.
What these so called lazy athletes have in common is they are amongst the very best in the world at what they do, they are not white, and they get called lazy by people sitting on their couch watching them on television who are likely not in the top 0.0001% of their chosen profession. This cannot be viewed as anything less than absurd especially when the majority of players who get called lazy are actually really good MLB players. Justin Upton for example gets called lazy despite being one of the best outfielders in MLB for several years now.
The absurdity would be hilarious if it didn’t have real world consequences. The widespread accusations of laziness that persist against non-white professional athletes illustrate the racist undertones and entrenched biases that are still present in our modern society. Beyond the illustrative racism, when people write BJ off as lazy they miss the very interesting actual reasons for why BJ has been so poor. BJ Upton turning into a pumpkin over the course of one offseason is very unusual and it is worthwhile to look for the reasons why.
Decline is a natural part of any professional athlete’s career but BJ is unusual in the way that his decline was both so sudden and unusually early. BJ was 28 years old when he signed in Atlanta which is directly in the middle of the area generally considered a baseball player’s prime. In fact a 2010 study by JC Bradbury showed that the average MLB player hits his prime at age 29. If BJ had followed the typical trajectory of MLB players he would have had his best MLB season in his first year with the Braves. Instead BJ was arguably the worst player in the sport and BJ did this while not being hampered by injury or some other mitigating factor. BJ become this bad one season after he was the third best position player on a playoff team.
The big question then becomes why did BJ’s become so bad when he should have been hitting his athletic prime. Obviously, I find the explanation that he became too lazy to work hard unconvincing. For that explanation to be correct it must be assumed that BJ was willing to work as insanely hard as becoming an elite MLB player requires but then completely gave up on a lifetime of hard work once he arrived in Atlanta. Since that assumption seems farfetched there must be a more feasible explanation for BJ’s decline. Fortunately, anyone willing to do a little work themselves can find a more realistic explanation for what happened to BJ Upton.
Now I am not a scout and I lack the ability to analyze a baseball player’s swing in any meaningful way. However, I am capable of both recognizing my limitations and identifying people who excel in areas in which I am lacking. David Lee of the Augusta Chronicle is one of the best minds writing about baseball today and unlike me is capable of giving a meaningful scouting report on things like a hitter’s swing. David has followed BJ closely since he has been in Atlanta and has written excellent articles explaining the actual baseball reasons for why BJ has been so bad. Read David’s work for yourself but the essential point is this:
Upton has proven himself to be a tinkerer at the plate. At the beginning of 2012, he was fluid but with huge head-to-toe movement toward the ball. By the end of 2012, he was rigid with little momentum to the ball and had developed the dreadful extended trigger.
His swing was the same at the beginning of 2013, which should have been a warning of bad things to come. He had basically killed momentum to the ball and slowed his swing for the purpose of shortening his actions. The result was a .184 average.
He entered 2014 with more crouch as a "band-aid" for the problem. The crouch is usually intended to get his bat to the zone quicker and with more hip action. But the waggle trigger remained, so any change to the hips or lower body was rendered useless.
In short, BJ got his swing mechanics so messed up that his bat speed declined and started struggling to catch up with MLB pitching. When BJ does manage to make contact his bat speed isn’t sufficient to drive the ball and usually results in weak grounders. Important in a discussion of BJ’s work ethic is David’s point that over the past two years BJ has constantly tinkered with his swing in an effort to fix the problem as evidenced by the different mechanics BJ has shown as a Brave. Basically, there is concrete evidence that BJ understands the problem and has worked hard to try and fix it but to this point has failed. When someone blames BJ's struggles on laziness they are ignoring concrete evidence of an alternative explanation in order to take a racist stance that is unsupported by any empirical data.
BJ Upton's Atlanta career illustrates the importance of swing mechanics, the dangers of over tinkering, the ways that tiny details make all the difference in the world, and the ways in which a free agent signing that seemed reasonable at the time can go so thoroughly wrong. Reading David’s writing on BJ over the past two seasons has taught me about the importance of hip speed in a swing, the effects of a crouch or waggle in a hitter’s swing, and the destructive nature of reduced bat speed. All of this is fascinating, real insight into what has ruined BJ’s career, as well as useful information about what is important to making any MLB hitter successful.
Most people don’t look at a player struggling the way BJ has struggled and say something about how his bat speed has slowed down. Such advanced analysis is beyond most sports fans and sadly there are few professional writers doing the hard work required to truly educate their readers. Still for anybody willing to do a little research themselves, the real reasons why BJ is no longer the player he once was are out there. Given all the information that is available about BJ Upton’s past success, his more recent failures, and the analysis of his mechanics done by David there is nothing lazier than coming to the conclusion that BJ just doesn’t work hard enough.