Braves play surprisingly well in May

A 15-13 month takes the Braves back to .500 as they enter the second third of the season.

When the Braves started the season with a 10-12 record by the conclusion of April, it was not particularly surprising. After all, that's a .455 winning percentage, which extrapolates out to 73-74 wins, which is about what the Braves were expected to do coming into the season. While April's component pieces for the Braves were contrary to what most fans expected (solid offense, poor starting pitching, disaster of a bullpen), the overall result was fairly quotidian, certainly nothing to write home about, unless you're the type of person who writes home (or whatever) every day, and writing about the Braves is better than the weather or whatever.

May was, in some ways, a return to baseline expectations for the team. But in other, pleasantly unexpected ways, it was also exemplary of the Braves overcoming both their internal challenges and the pessimistic expectations regarding their performance.

Series by Series

2-1 in three games against the Reds (the first game of the four-game series was lost in April)
Series win over the Phillies
Swept in Washington
Lost a series in Cincinnati
Sweep in Miami
Split a two-game series with the Rays
Series win (3 games to 1) against the Brewers
Series loss in Los Angeles to the Dodgers
Split a four-game series in San Francisco

Amusingly, the Braves went 3-3-3 this month: three series wins, three series losses, and three splits (counting the Reds series at the beginning of May). Yet, despite that, the Braves finished the month with two more wins than losses, due to said Reds series and the fact that one of the series wins came in a 4-game series.

May 2015, By the Numbers

15-13 record (25-25 overall)
Currently projected for for 77 wins (based on 25 banked wins and estimated performance based on prior results for remaining 112 games), which is +3-4 games better than preseason projections. Why is this cool? Because about a third of teams generally fall within 3 wins of their projections, and only a third of teams outplay their projections by 4+ games. So odds are very much being defied here.
Offense: 81 wRC+ for the month (88 for non-pitchers), good for 2nd-worst in NL and 3rd-worst in MLB (excluding pitchers, 2nd-worst in NL and 5th-worst in MLB). After including baserunning: 4th-worst in NL, 7th-worst in MLB.
Defense: 10th in MLB, 7th in NL (by UZR, adjusted for position).
Total position player value, including UZR for defense: 10th in NL, 21st in MLB
Rotation: ERA - 6th NL, 11th MLB; FIP - 7th NL, 13th MLB; xFIP - 10th NL, 17th MLB.
Relievers: ERA - 2nd-worst NL, 3rd-worst MLB; FIP - worst in NL, 3rd-worst MLB; xFIP - 3rd-worst NL, 7th-worst MLB.
Overall pitcher value: 10th in NL, 19th in MLB.
Run differential: -4. Pythagorean expectation for May: 13-15.

So, things are returning to normal a bit. The offense in May was largely as expected: dreadful. The rotation returned to respectability (though in a surprising turn of events, Teheran's been dragging them down, while Foltynewicz and Perez have provided some neat value in the backend). The bullpen, well, the less said there the better. Avert your eyes!

Anyway, the Braves played two games over .500 while their run differential indicates that they should perhaps have gone two games under .500 instead. In April, the Braves' run differential was indicative of a 73-74-win team; in May, they're up to a 78-win team with a -4 differential over 28 games, but nothing like the 87-win pace their 15-13 record reflects. So hey, wins are pretty neat. I don't see much for the Braves to really keep it going in terms of peeling off more over-.500 months, but they've been surprising in a few ways already, so why stop now?

Big Damn Hero of May 2015, Position Players - Jace Peterson

No, it's not recency bias. Yes, that win against the Giants was awesome, but so is Jace Peterson. And really, who else could it even be? In some ways, Jace Peterson was May in microcosm for the Braves: the overall line wasn't gorgeous everywhere (106 wRC+ is solid but not spectacular), but it had its pretty parts (team's best defender as of the latest defensive metrics update, even better than Simmons after positional adjustment; also now the 15th-best defender this season after positional adjustment overall) and some awesome moments (more on that below).

Peterson kept up a pretty pedestrian batted ball profile and didn't have a crazy month on the back of a strong wRC+. Instead, he cut his strikeout rate by about a third compared to his play in April, letting more balls fall for hits. While for most hitters, strikeouts are a part of their game and compensated for by an increase in power, Peterson doesn't have much pop (though again, see below for where I use anecdata to prove myself wrong), and cutting down on his strikeouts while maintaining a similar batted ball profile was a key for him in putting up an above-average offensive line.

Big Damn Hero of May 2015, Starting Pitchers - Shelby Miller

Shelby Miller? Shelby Miller. Shelby Miller! Shelby was awesome, coming within one out of a no-hitter against the Marlins, allowing fewer than an earned run per nine innings, and posting an FIP of 2.70 for the month. He was worth 2.3 RA/9-WAR for the month, more than the rest of the rotation put together. For the month, he never completed fewer than six innings and gave the team a chance to win each game he pitched. A few days ago, he was saddled with a very tough hard-luck loss after allowing just one run in seven innings. But who cares? He's Shelby Miller, and he's awesome.

Big Damn Hero of May 2015, Relievers - Jim Johnson

Jim Johnson had himself a solid May. The 2.19 ERA and 2.12 FIP were neat, but he also didn't blow a save and accumulated 6 holds in 13 appearances for the month. He really only blew the game once (against the Giants), allowing two runs in an inning of work to transform a 2-1 game into a 4-1 deficit. and only allowed a run in one other appearance all month (where it was a 4-1 game that he let become a 5-1 game, so eh). He was a fairly bright spot in a pretty dicey bullpen, and that spot was illuminated a bit more in May. He actually pitched a complete game shutout over nine separate appearances, stringing together nine consecutive scoreless innings. Good stuff. If he reels off a June and July like his May, the Braves should be able to leverage his performance into something of some measure of value.

My Favorite Moments of May 2015

A disclaimer: this one's offense-heavy. Yes, Shelby Miller was dominant, and I love watching him pitch, but he's like an inexorable tide of awesome that erodes and eventually topples the opposition. He's not that burst of instant gratification that comes suddenly and makes you fist-pump like Eric Hinske just hit one into McCovey Cove. Without further ado, let's get to the good stuff.

Kelly Johnson makes a winner out of Folty in his first major league start

Let's start from the beginning of the month (recency bias, it's happening). Mike Foltynewicz was making his first career start after the Stults/Cahill experiments went south quicker than ice cream during an Atlanta summer, and had fallen into a 3-0 hole against the Reds. Folty provided his own thunder against Anthony DeSclafani with a 2-run double. Then, in the fifth, this bit of awesome happened:

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Boom! Kelly knew it. The fans in the bleachers knew it. That ball was crushed and made a winner of Folt .45 in his first big league start. It also contributed to Kelly Johnson's 26% HR/FB rate, which is a thing.

Phil's Excellent Adventure (not at the Ted, though)

No, this one happened in Cincinnati, and was really a few different things going on, all within quick succession. Here's the scene: tie game in the 9th, and the Reds bring on Cylon Model #14, Aroldis Chapman. Chapman dismantles Cameron Maybin brutally, and Gosselin is inserted to pinch-hit for Luis Avilan against Chapman. Gosselin proceeds to rip Chapman's third pitch up the middle for a single. After a Markakis dunker into center, things get awesome.

And just because he wasn't done yet, after a Simmons strikeout to leave the Braves with just one out in the inning, Goose proceeded with the following:

The run stood up, and once again, Phil Gosselin stood supreme. My favorite part is that Tucker Barnhart looks so defeated he kind of falls over face first after grabbing the ball. It's like he's facepalming the ground or something. Actually, my favorite part is that Phil Gosselin is 2-for-2 in appearing on these end-of-month awesomeness lists. Hopefully he returns in time to appear on the June one as well.

Jace in the Hole

Moving right along (it's funny - these are in descending order of how awesome I thought they were, but also proceed sequentially as far as the calendar goes), we have the Braves' only walkoff so far this season. Here's what it looked like:

I don't really know what Jace Peterson and Eric Young Jr. are doing at the end of that celebration, but it's pretty awesome, just like this hit. This was a pretty tight game that featured no scoring after the fifth inning, and Peterson got a huge two-out hit to send everyone home happy.

Ur be-ing awesome

Juan Uribe is a weird player. He's not like, Hunter Pence weird, but he's still weird. He bats weird, he fields weird, unremarkable six-player deal ever, it's weird in general. But you know what's not weird? Something like this:his career is weird (best season came at age 34; he's been in the majors forever even though he's had 6 seasons of < 1 fWAR to go with 8 seasons of > 1 fWAR), his name was missing a letter on his jersey, he was traded in the most

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Boom goes the ~~dynamite Braves' 2013 season~~ Madison Bumgarner's time on the mound. Uribe absolutely crushed it, and set the stage for a condensed epic back-and-forth battle that would take place over the next two innings.

This might be the best play for the Braves all season

So you probably know what's going to be below. But watch it anyway, because it's the best. Just the best. What's not the best is that for some reason this video isn't available for embedding yet, so click here to see this awesome moment. And then watch it again. And again.

My Least Favorite Moment of May 2015

Once again, Jason Grilli is at the heart of this ignominious feature. It's not really that I have a problem with Grilli's performance, it's just that 9th-inning damage is the worst, and that's when Grilli is most likely to be deployed. (And maybe I'm still not over that whole Dan Uggla thing?) Anyway, the worst moment of May 2015, I think, came on May 12 against the Reds. With one out in a tie game in the 9th, Grilli allowed all-around-fun-guy-and-holy-crap-he-played-first-base-for-the-Reds Brayan Pena to reach with a single. He then promptly allowed a walkoff double to can't-play-the-field-anymore Devin Mesoraco, which was brutal.

Avert your eyes if you want to avoid misery.

There were two horrible parts to this, other than the walkoff loss. First, Simmons miffed the relay receipt and was then very miffed at himself. You hate to see that, especially when Simmons was one of the few players that could've really made a difference and cut the runner down. On top of that, it was a blown chance to possibly see another magical play for him, and I greedily treasure those opportunities. The other part was that, for once, Fredi Gonzalez used Grilli in a non-traditional closer situation: a tie game on the road. Of course, that backfired. I hope Fredi doesn't take anything away from that result, but that doesn't mean he won't.

Overall, it was another Baseball!-y month. I'm sure June will bring more of the same.