With one calendar month of the season now in the books, it’s time again for my favorite thing to plague you all with — monthly recaps. Enjoy this walk through short-term memory lane.
The Braves finished April (as well as three season-opening games in March) with 14 wins and 15 losses. On the surface, that number is underwhelming. After all, they went the entirety of the 2018 division-winning season with only one sub-.500 month, and just like that, they’ve already managed one this year. Yet, if you take a step back and think about it, it’s not really underwhelming at all. That isn’t to say it’s a good thing, just that it sort of is, kind of like the Braves through their first 29 games. A lot of this season is going to be viewed through the lens of preseason expectations, and the general expectations were that this Braves team is good, but perhaps not good enough. My own basic expectation is that this is an 83-to-85-win team (call it 84), with something more akin to an 87-win talent base but a lot of challenges in translating that base to on-field performance, which makes the talent play down. (Note that these win totals already bake in the competitive schedule, division and league the Braves face — in a vacuum, this team could be much better, but lots of other National League squads are pretty beefy as well.)
So, the good news in this regard is that if you expected an 84-win team, the Braves didn’t really do much to dispel that notion. Sure, 14-15 is not on pace for 84 wins, but had the Braves just won their last game of the month, they’d be at 15-14, which is exactly on pace for 84 wins. In other words, they’re one game away from being right where expected, and if they really are an 84-win team, then going 14-15 (or 16-13) is the second-most-common expected outcome. The bad news, though, is that an 84-win team likely isn’t going to cut it. Will 84 wins even be good enough for third place in the division? Even fairly modest projections for other teams guesstimate perhaps a tie for third in the NL East with that win total. In other words, the Braves were a team not really expected to make the playoffs when all was said and done in 2019. For the Braves to flip that script, they could have come out swinging in defense of their division title. They didn’t; playing to (or slightly below) expectations isn’t a great outcome at this point.
Fangraphs publishes game-by-game win expectancies, based on underlying team quality as well as the starting pitching matchup for that game. An image of these expectations and their results is below.
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Using these win expectancies, the Braves should have finished at 15-14. (Hey, guess, what, that’s the same expected record just from ignoring game-by-game stuff entirely.) The way they got to 14-15, though, is also not particularly weird: 9-9 in the 18 games where they had a win expectancy above 50 percent, and 5-6 in the 11 games where they had a win expectancy below 50 percent. They went 5-1 in their six most “gimme” games (including three against the Marlins) and 0-3 in the three most “gimme” games for the other team, each of which featured Julio Teheran as Atlanta’s starter. You could think of an inability to sweep the Marlins as the reason for the month’s losing record, I guess. It’s up to you.
In the end, though, the Braves haven’t really budged. The changes from preseason expectations per Fangraphs’ playoff odds feature are below, but the real point here is that the Braves are basically where they started. Most other teams are too, though some have made moves up and down the playoff odds hierarchy.
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It’s worth noting that it’s not all so aggressively ochre for the Braves based on their past 29 games. The team’s Pythagorean expectation is 15-14, which is a little better, though again, not enough better. BaseRuns has them at 16-13, which is even more interesting. Those figures are consistent with the different “ordered” win percentages from Baseball Prospectus. If you wanted to, you could use this to reinforce the same expectations from above — the Braves have the talent to do a little better, but they don’t always deploy it well enough for win totals to align with it. Anyway, bottom line: the Braves didn’t really do anything to improve or seal their fate in April. Onto May!
It is worth noting, though, that it’s not just in overall record where the Braves met expectations. They also did so in the composition of their performance... though really in an exaggerated way that needs “kinda, sorta” qualifiers.
On the position player end, the Braves were expected to have a top ten squad, if not something better. Instead, “something better” is where they ended up. The team’s hitting and fielding performance ranks third in baseball at the end of April play, with 6.3 fWAR. They leapfrog the Astros into second if you remove pitchers from the equation. They’re just barely behind the Dodgers in team non-pitcher wRC+ (123 to LA’s 124). They’re a top-ten baserunning and defensive squad, too. Ronald Acuña Jr., Freddie Freeman, and Tyler Flowers all amassed 1.0 fWAR or more (Flowers in just 59 PAs!) through April; the Astros are the only team with more than three position players to clear this threshold so far. An expected success, exaggeratedly so, has been the Braves’ hitting and position player performance.
On the pitching end, the Braves were expected to mix-and-match a below-average-but-not-dreadful rotation and bullpen. Instead, they got the exaggerated, worse-than-expected version of both. The rotation recovered a bit as the month went on, but still finished 20th in MLB in fWAR with just 1.5. Mike Soroka and Max Fried bailed out their rotation-mates with great Aprils; much of the rest of pitcher roulette self-immolated, with Touki Toussaint, Bryse Wilson, and Kyle Wright giving the team five disastrous starts that combined for -0.5 fWAR in under 20 innings of work.
The bullpen, though... yeesh. It finished the month as the second-worst unit in baseball, and the worst in the NL. It finished second-worst in FIP- and fourth-worst in xFIP-. It finished third-worst in WPA, and in the bottom ten in both how much WPA it lost (i.e., it lost a lot of WPA) and how much WPA it gained (i.e., it didn’t gain very much WPA). Only one team had more reliever meltdowns (giving up six percent of WPA or more), and only three teams had fewer reliever shutdowns (adding six percent of WPA or more). Twice as many relievers had negative fWAR on the month for the team than had positive fWAR. The Braves had to deploy 16 relievers just to get through April; the average team has only used 12-13 so far. Put the bullpen together with the rotation and the Braves had the fourth-worst pitching staff in baseball in April.
As a fun note, the Cardinals actually had a worse pitching staff performance than the Braves, due to dreadful, sub-replacement level starting pitching and a bullpen that didn’t help much. Position player-wise, they’ve been on par with the Braves. Yet, they have the best record in the NL. Conventional wisdom suggests they’re outperforming a bunch of run differential-type peripherals, so it’ll be interesting to see how they fare going forward.
So, now you know how the Braves got here. Let’s look at actual stuff that happened in more granular detail. Onto monthly awards!
Totally Meaningless Ivan Award for April 2019 Performance - Position Players
Well, this probably isn’t surprising to anyone. With 1.1 fWAR, Ronald Acuña Jr. has been a top-25 player in baseball so far. He leads the team in that mark, as well as in homers with six. In a small sample, he’s shown some defensive improvement, as he has a gaudy 5 DRS already (small sample DRS, you crazy), as well as a +1.6 UZR. (Worth noting, though, that the Statcast OAA/CPA metrics have him as a negative defender this year so far, though they had him as a positive defender last year when UZR didn’t.)
The reigning NL Rookie of the Year faded a bit over the course of the month. Through April 16, he had an insane 200 wRC+ (.327/.464/.709) with all six of his homers and an even amount of walks and strikeouts. Since then, though, he’s hit some serious doldrums, with a 56 wRC+, just two extra-base hits (both doubles), and more than three times as many strikeouts as walks — it’s been nearly the worst 13-game stretch of his career to date. As a result, both Freddie Freeman and Josh Donaldson have surpassed him in the xwOBA department, with the former also passing him in outcomes and the latter drawing just about even. Still, despite his short-stint struggles, he’s come through, adding 0.56 WPA (more than anyone other than Freeman or Donaldson has on the year) in those 13 games.
Totally Meaningless Ivan Award for April 2019 Performance - Starting Pitchers
This somewhat feels like a fait accompli, or something a long time coming, but hopefully now it’s here for good — Mike Soroka made his way back to the majors and dominated opposing hitters once again. Sure, it was only three starts, but they were the kind that warrant celebration. In each, he allowed just a run. He’s yet to allow a home run. His worst K/BB ratio among all three starts was 7/3. His worst Game Score (v2) was 60. His pitching triple-slash is a ludicrous 38 ERA- / 48 FIP- / 66 xFIP-. Among starters with as many innings and starts as he’s had (16 frames, three starts), he’s second only to Sonny Gray in FIP- and is sixth in xFIP- (Ryu, Snell, Scherzer, Cole, Paxton). He’s second only to Luis Castillo in xwOBA yielded thus far among any pitcher with as many or more batters faced.
It’s only been three starts, yes, but they’ve been insanely good — better than advertised, even. If the Braves are going to do more than expected of them this year, Soroka’s health and continued elite performance is probably going to be a big reason as to why. If he pitches even half as well as he’s done so far for the rest of the year, he’ll end up clearing the four-win mark. Wow.
Totally Meaningless Ivan Award for April 2019 Performance - Relief Pitchers
When doing the IWAG projections for the 2019 season, I commented, in all seriousness, that I knew IWAG’s reliever components were well-calibrated because they had Luke Jackson forecasted for replacement-level performance. I think I also commented that ZiPS was particularly weird in projecting Jackson for an 0.6 fWAR performance this season.
Well, it’s May 1, and Luke Jackson has 0.2 fWAR with a 60 ERA- / 76 FIP- / 69 xFIP-. He’s already amassed 0.76 WPA, and hasn’t recorded a single meltdown. In fact, other than allowing semi-garbage time runs on Opening Day on a Rhys Hoskins grand slam, Jackson hasn’t even allowed a run all month. The most baserunners he’s allowed since then is two. His worst outing since then was arguably something like facing three batters in an inning, walking one, and not striking any of them out. He’s second to Soroka on the team in xwOBA-against so far. It’s been quite a comeback. Can he keep it up?
Best Offensive Play
Let’s start with the good stuff. Who likes game-winning homers? I do. You probably do too. Josh Donaldson connected for one, saving the Braves from getting swept at home by the Rockies in fairly embarrassing fashion for a second consecutive season. Thanks, Josh.
Like, the only way it could have been a bigger blow is if it happened in the ninth, or it was a come-from-behind grand slam or something. This might already be the offensive play of the year for the team. 0.692 WPA goodness on that one swing, that’s not something you see or amass every day.
Best Run-Stopping Play
These are the sorts of plays I wonder if anyone really remembers when it’s all said and done. They’re huge when they happen, but later failings erase their relevance. This was exactly one of those. Facing the Marlins in a tie game in the top of the eighth, the Braves asked Chad Sobotka to keep the bats at bay. He didn’t really succeed. He walked the leadoff man (welp). A pinch-runner for the leadoff man stole second. Sobotka got a strikeout, but then issued another walk. Then, a passed ball moved the go-ahead run to third. But, luckily for the Braves, inducing a grounder combined with some on-the-button defensive positioning for this fortuitous way for Sobotka to escape the inning with no damage:
That ball was hit at 102 mph and had a hit probability of 68 percent, by the way. Great save by Swanson. But, again, this probably won’t be remembered, since it was the farcical catcher breakdown game that the Braves lost 4-2 when Jorge Alfaro hit his second homer in the ninth.
Most Dominant Offensive Performance
Yeah, okay, it’s still going to be the one with Josh Donaldson’s huge home run up there. That wasn’t even Donaldson’s only contribution! He walked in the first, scoring ahead of a Freddie Freeman homer. He drew another walk, this time with one out in the fifth, but was stranded as the Braves loaded the bases in a tie game but couldn’t break through. It was only after that that he pulled the big stick out of his bag of tricks and delivered a win.
Most Dominant Starting Pitching Performance
On April 5, Kevin Gausman made his first start of the year after missing the beginning of the season with the usual pitcher maladies. Things looked a little grim very early on, as he issued back-to-back walks to start the game. Then, he went full-on robotic domination on the unsuspecting Miami batsmen. In short, he faced the minimum from that point on. To wrap up the first, it was double play, groundout. In the second, strikeout, single, double play. He struck out the side in the third. The next six hitters he faced flew out. Then he struck out the side again. He allowed a leadoff single to snap his streak of 13 straight Marlins retired, coaxed a fly out, and then ended his day by securing another double play. Seven innings, two hits, two walks, seven strikeouts.
Watch two innings of dominance below:
The contact management in this start was pretty crazy. Gausman allowed only three balls with a hit probability above 50-50. Two went for the two hits he allowed; the third was a lineout and the only ball he allowed to leave the bat at over 100 mph. Aside from Soroka’s start against the Padres, no Braves’ starter has elicited a lower xwOBA in a start so far this season.
Most Dominant Relief Pitching Performance
As mentioned, the relief pitching has been anything but dominant. It’s also far too reminiscent of the Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times,” far too often. The only upside to that is that sometimes it creates an opportunity for a member of the roster to shine. That’s what happened in the rubber game against the Marlins.
With the Braves holding the slimmest of leads (3-2), they asked Jesse Biddle to pitch the seventh despite two right-handed batters due up. Biddle allowed consecutive singles, and the Marlins had the tying and go-ahead runs on base. With two more righties due up, Biddle was relieved of his duties, and in came Wes Parsons.
Parsons did not mess around. He threw four pitches to Brian Anderson. They went whiff, foul, foul, whiff, and just like that, there was one out. He then went to work on Starlin Castro, keeping the ball low and away... until he hung a slider over the heart of the plate. But, providence struck on the play. Castro somehow beat the ball sharply into the ground to third, where Josh Donaldson started a very slick inning-ending double play. It wasn’t necessarily all Parsons, but he did what much of the bullpen failed to do again and again — come in and get outs without walking the world.
Check out the slick double play that saved the Braves’ bacon below. The downside is that Arodys Vizcaino would blow the game in the ninth by allowing a game-tying homer to Curtis Granderson, but the upside is that Dansby Swanson walked the Braves off later in the inning.
Most Crushed Ball
Oh lawd he comin’ — I don’t know what else to say. Hardest-hit ball of Ronnie’s young career, by over a full mph. A top ten exit velocity homer this season. Crushed.
Okay, now onto the bad stuff.
Worst Offensive Result
This wasn’t really anyone’s “fault,” it just sucked. Bottom of the eighth, tie game, and Dansby Swanson on second. Tyler Flowers hits a ball at 102.7 mph, a top ten exit velocity for him this year... but right to first baseman Christian Walker, playing way over away from the line. .603 xBA / .595 xwOBA on the play, and here we are. Just brutal. You can watch it here (no embeddable highlight for some reason): https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/sporty-videos?playId=c855d2eb-b596-404f-8aa4-87ccfef36d27
The Braves would go on to lose on an A.J. Minter implosion in the ninth... so maybe a silver lining is that even had they scored on this liner, it just would’ve been an implosion anyway.
Worst Pitching Result
Speaking of A.J. Minter... after walking both righties he faced in a one-run game, this happened.
Gross. Just gross. More on it further below.
Worst Offensive Performance
To add insult to further insult with regards to that Tyler Flowers lineout, the rest of his game that day was also awful. He flew out to start two innings and struck out with the tying run on second to end the inning, In some ways, it’s kind of nice that the worst offensive performance was something this relatively inconsequential, and it’s a testament to the quality of offensive ball-battering the Braves have enjoyed this month, but it was still annoying.
Worst Starting Pitching Performance
The best was Gausman. The worst was Gausman. And while, yes, the Braves had some legitimate implosions that got guys yanked early (Newcomb, Toussaint) those were bad on paper but write-off-able because everyone implodes and then gets yanked here and there. It’s the slow, agonizing collapse of missed opportunities to stem the bleeding that’s truly the worst, and that’s what happened with Gausman in Cincinnati.
First, Gausman allowed a homer to Yasiel Puig in the first, putting his team in a 2-0 hole. He later allowed a homer to Tucker Barnhart to fall behind 3-0. The Braves battled back to take a 4-3 lead, but Gausman was allowed to continue to work despite facing the same Reds order that had already homered twice off of him a third time. It worked until it didn’t, as these things usually do (or don’t). Gausman managed to retire five of the first six hitters he faced third TTO, but then a fielding error, his own inability to convert a bunted grounder into an out, and a two-run double by Jose Peraza, of all people, doomed him and the Braves. Bleh. For his efforts in falling behind not once but twice, Gausman received -0.471 WPA on the day.
Worst Relief Pitching Performance
Okay, let’s revisit that terrible A.J. Minter outing. Minter comes on with a one-run lead for the bottom of the ninth. He promptly allows a double to lefty-batting David Dahl. He gets a strikeout of another lefty batter, and despite a wild pitch pushing the tying run to third, gets another strikeout. He needs just one more out to seal the win. Or, well, someone does. But Minter is left in to face Ian De(s)mon(d). He falls behind 3-1, gets a whiff to make the count full, and then walks him on a fairly close pitch. He then faces Drew Butera, and walks him on four straight. Up comes Charlie Blackmon, and well, you know the rest.
Much like Donaldson’s homer, this might be the worst bullpen meltdown the Braves suffer this year. It was that bad.
Most Crushed Ball Allowed
Oh, poor Jesse Biddle. Yikes.
I honestly have no idea where this ball even landed. It was the 14th-hardest homer hit this year, and the one with the sixth-greatest projected distance. Oof is all you can really say.
See you next month!
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