<img alt="Washington Nationals v Atlanta Braves" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ACLhLQdQ30HZPBd82b9gxsxbZLA=/0x0:6000x4000/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73552179/2167475602.0.jpg">
Photo by Kevin D. Liles/Atlanta Braves/Getty Images
The Braves are getting real production from several players who were not on a MLB 26-man roster earlier this year. Injuries hurt, and the Atlanta Braves have been in excruciating pain since — oh, I don’t know — about six innings into the first game of the year. The seemingly ever-growing list of catastrophic injuries has been well-documented, from Sean Murphy’s oblique strain on Opening Day to Austin Riley’s hand fracture less than two weeks ago. Just in case you haven’t fully grasped the scope of Atlanta’s injury plague, I have some delicious misery nuggets for you to chew on.
There have been 10 players from the 26-man roster on Opening Day who have missed at least 15 games this year. Assuming no further injuries occur (what an assumption), and assuming that Ozzie Albies returns somewhere around September 10th, the Braves 26-man roster from Opening Day will have missed a combined 16% of the season due to injury. Worse still, because many of the injured players are bonafide stars, they will have lost a staggering 29% of the projected fWAR from the Opening Day 26-man roster by the end of the season.
(If you are on a mobile device then this table is best viewed in landscape mode. Preseason projections come from Steamer.)
Now, the analysis here is not quite as simple as saying “The Braves dropped 14 to 15 wins due to injury.” Obviously projections are just projections, and several of the guys who have missed time were admittedly not playing as well as they were projected to do back in pre-season. Even if you assume the projected WAR totals were accurate, calculating the amount of actual wins that were lost to injury would mean the projected WAR lost (14.5) minus the actual WAR recorded by the players who filled the playing time for which the injured players were projected. It’s those fill-ins that we’re here to talk about today.
Earlier in the season, any fill-in the Braves chose after a key injury suddenly became something akin to Mike Foltynewicz at the plate. When Ozzie Albies had to miss about 10 days after fracturing his toe on a HBP in April, the unfortunate platoon of Luis Guillorme and David Fletcher combined to slash .185/.207/.259 for a 23 wRC+. When Albies’s wrist was fractured on an unlucky play at second base in July, the initial solution to fill the everyday second baseman vacancy was to call up top prospect Nacho Alvarez Jr., who posted a -27 wRC+ (not a typo — it’s not only 27 but it’s negative 27, at that) and -0.5 fWAR in just 8 games before promptly returning to Gwinnett.
In the outfield, Jarred Kelenic and Adam Duvall (who split up their platoon to become full-time players for awhile) have combined for a 65 wRC+ and -0.7 fWAR in 520 PA since Ronald Acuña Jr. tore his ACL. During the two months that Michael Harris II was sidelined with a strained hamstring and Kelenic shifted to CF, Braves left fielders ranked 28th in MLB with a 59 wRC+ and dead last in MLB with -1.3 fWAR.
The list goes on and on, and the lack of competent replacements wasn’t limited to just position players. After Spencer Strider sustained a season-ending elbow injury in just his second start, it took a long while for the Braves to find their solution in Spencer Schwellenbach (more on that later). Aside from Schwellenbach, Braves starting pitchers who were not in the Opening Day rotation have made a combined 23 starts, averaging fewer than 5 innings per game with a 7.19 ERA and 5.03 FIP. The Braves went 7-16 in those 23 games.
These numbers — the negative WAR totals, the wRC+ under 50, the ERA in the 7’s — they’re not normal. It’s not just below average production, it’s below replacement level production, and it was absolutely killing the team. Thankfully, the Braves have finally found three guys to come out of nowhere and plug the gap: Ramón Laureano in the outfield, Whit Merrifield on the infield and the aforementioned Spencer Schwellenbach in the rotation.
Laureano began the year with Cleveland but he posted just a 50 wRC+ in his first six-to-seven weeks and was DFA’d. He then signed a minor league deal with the Braves in mid-May and was brought up from Gwinnett a few weeks later when Michael Harris strained his hamstring. Laureano’s first couple of weeks with the Braves were relatively inauspicious as he slashed .257/.257/.457 with 0 BB and 11 Ks, good for a 92 wRC+. Then he really cemented himself as “part of the team” by getting injured after 11 games. He missed nearly a month with a left oblique strain before forcing all of Braves country to endure an absolutely brutal first four games off the IL – 6 strikeouts in 10 plate appearances, plus the infamous overran ball in extra innings to hand the Mets a walk-off win.
Since then? Laureano has been unstoppable. He’s hit .337/.382/.578 with 6 HR in 89 PA since that disastrous play in New York, good for a 165 wRC+ that leads all Braves hitters in that span. There isn’t much discipline in his approach but he’s consistently hit the ball with authority since coming to Atlanta. He’s played so well that he has completely superseded any platoons — claiming the everyday left field role and pushing Jarred Kelenic to the bench as the Braves cling to any offense they can get their hands on.
Like Laureano, Whit Merrifield also came to the Braves after being DFA’d, and he also had an inauspicious beginning to his tenure with the Braves. While warming up for his first game in a Braves uniform, he broke his fingernail all the way back to the base of the nail after fielding a bad hop. Inauspicious, yes, but also hilariously on brand for the 2024 Braves.
By the time it became clear that Nacho Alvarez Jr. was simply not ready for MLB, Whit’s finger was healed up, and he took over as the everyday 2B. In 109 PA since, he’s slashed .275/.383/.396, good for a 122 wRC+.
Most of what we’ve seen from Whit coincides with the skills he has always possessed: Great bat control with an ability to spray the ball to all fields for a good average, but very little power. What is unusual about his time in Atlanta so far is his walk rate. His career BB% is 6.5% — for context, that’s a touch lower than Ozzie’s career BB% — but in Atlanta, Whit has worked a walk in 14.7% of his plate appearances. There’s nothing fluky about the way he’s gone about earning his walks, as his chase rate in Atlanta is miles below what it has been for the rest of his career. With Whit’s high OBP earning him the leadoff spot for the time being, I’m wondering if pitchers will be more motivated to stay in the zone against him so that they don’t put a speedy runner on base for the big boppers behind him.
The biggest development for the Braves organization this year without a shadow of a doubt, is the emergence of Spencer Schwellenbach. He has been simply unbelievable and deserves a whole article dedicated to the singularity of his greatness. For now I’ll keep it brief, though. His 3.76 ERA through 15 starts, while a total gift in and of itself considering the disastrous state of the 5th rotation spot before his arrival, actually belies just how good he’s been. Every ERA estimator (FIP, xERA, xFIP, SIERA) agrees that his ERA deserves to be somewhere between 3.00-3.15.
Out of 131 pitchers to throw at least 80 innings this year, Schwellenbach ranks 6th in CSW% (% of pitches that resulted in a called or swinging strike), 3rd in O-Swing% (% of pitches thrown out of the zone that induced a chase),and 3rd in SwStr% (% of pitches thrown that result in a swinging strike). He also ranks 9th in K-BB%, which has traditionally been a very strong indicator that a pitcher will continue to be good in MLB. Not only has Schwelly stabilized what was previously a tragic back-end of the rotation, he has proven that he has the potential to be a top of the rotation arm going forward. Looking beyond 2024, his development brings a seismic shift to a Braves pitching landscape that has been staring down the potential departures of two of its staples in Max Fried and Charlie Morton.
Despite all that has gone wrong this season, the Braves enter a four game series in Philly on Thursday sitting just 5 games back of the NL East lead. The odds of coming back in the division are still long, as FanGraphs gives the Braves a just 13.8% chance of doing it. If they want to pull off the comeback, their biggest need remains star-level production from their star-level players (Matt Olson, Marcell Ozuna, Michael Harris II, Chris Sale, Max Fried, etc.).
However, if Schwellenbach continues pitching like an ace and Laureano and Merrifield continue performing like above average players down the stretch, that would certainly help the cause. All the better if the recently acquired Gio Urshela is able to step up and join this unlikely cast of fill-in heroes.
<img alt="Washington Nationals v Atlanta Braves" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ACLhLQdQ30HZPBd82b9gxsxbZLA=/0x0:6000x4000/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73552179/2167475602.0.jpg">
Photo by Kevin D. Liles/Atlanta Braves/Getty Images
The Braves are getting real production from several players who were not on a MLB 26-man roster earlier this year. Injuries hurt, and the Atlanta Braves have been in excruciating pain since — oh, I don’t know — about six innings into the first game of the year. The seemingly ever-growing list of catastrophic injuries has been well-documented, from Sean Murphy’s oblique strain on Opening Day to Austin Riley’s hand fracture less than two weeks ago. Just in case you haven’t fully grasped the scope of Atlanta’s injury plague, I have some delicious misery nuggets for you to chew on.
There have been 10 players from the 26-man roster on Opening Day who have missed at least 15 games this year. Assuming no further injuries occur (what an assumption), and assuming that Ozzie Albies returns somewhere around September 10th, the Braves 26-man roster from Opening Day will have missed a combined 16% of the season due to injury. Worse still, because many of the injured players are bonafide stars, they will have lost a staggering 29% of the projected fWAR from the Opening Day 26-man roster by the end of the season.
(If you are on a mobile device then this table is best viewed in landscape mode. Preseason projections come from Steamer.)
Now, the analysis here is not quite as simple as saying “The Braves dropped 14 to 15 wins due to injury.” Obviously projections are just projections, and several of the guys who have missed time were admittedly not playing as well as they were projected to do back in pre-season. Even if you assume the projected WAR totals were accurate, calculating the amount of actual wins that were lost to injury would mean the projected WAR lost (14.5) minus the actual WAR recorded by the players who filled the playing time for which the injured players were projected. It’s those fill-ins that we’re here to talk about today.
Earlier in the season, any fill-in the Braves chose after a key injury suddenly became something akin to Mike Foltynewicz at the plate. When Ozzie Albies had to miss about 10 days after fracturing his toe on a HBP in April, the unfortunate platoon of Luis Guillorme and David Fletcher combined to slash .185/.207/.259 for a 23 wRC+. When Albies’s wrist was fractured on an unlucky play at second base in July, the initial solution to fill the everyday second baseman vacancy was to call up top prospect Nacho Alvarez Jr., who posted a -27 wRC+ (not a typo — it’s not only 27 but it’s negative 27, at that) and -0.5 fWAR in just 8 games before promptly returning to Gwinnett.
In the outfield, Jarred Kelenic and Adam Duvall (who split up their platoon to become full-time players for awhile) have combined for a 65 wRC+ and -0.7 fWAR in 520 PA since Ronald Acuña Jr. tore his ACL. During the two months that Michael Harris II was sidelined with a strained hamstring and Kelenic shifted to CF, Braves left fielders ranked 28th in MLB with a 59 wRC+ and dead last in MLB with -1.3 fWAR.
The list goes on and on, and the lack of competent replacements wasn’t limited to just position players. After Spencer Strider sustained a season-ending elbow injury in just his second start, it took a long while for the Braves to find their solution in Spencer Schwellenbach (more on that later). Aside from Schwellenbach, Braves starting pitchers who were not in the Opening Day rotation have made a combined 23 starts, averaging fewer than 5 innings per game with a 7.19 ERA and 5.03 FIP. The Braves went 7-16 in those 23 games.
These numbers — the negative WAR totals, the wRC+ under 50, the ERA in the 7’s — they’re not normal. It’s not just below average production, it’s below replacement level production, and it was absolutely killing the team. Thankfully, the Braves have finally found three guys to come out of nowhere and plug the gap: Ramón Laureano in the outfield, Whit Merrifield on the infield and the aforementioned Spencer Schwellenbach in the rotation.
Laureano began the year with Cleveland but he posted just a 50 wRC+ in his first six-to-seven weeks and was DFA’d. He then signed a minor league deal with the Braves in mid-May and was brought up from Gwinnett a few weeks later when Michael Harris strained his hamstring. Laureano’s first couple of weeks with the Braves were relatively inauspicious as he slashed .257/.257/.457 with 0 BB and 11 Ks, good for a 92 wRC+. Then he really cemented himself as “part of the team” by getting injured after 11 games. He missed nearly a month with a left oblique strain before forcing all of Braves country to endure an absolutely brutal first four games off the IL – 6 strikeouts in 10 plate appearances, plus the infamous overran ball in extra innings to hand the Mets a walk-off win.
Since then? Laureano has been unstoppable. He’s hit .337/.382/.578 with 6 HR in 89 PA since that disastrous play in New York, good for a 165 wRC+ that leads all Braves hitters in that span. There isn’t much discipline in his approach but he’s consistently hit the ball with authority since coming to Atlanta. He’s played so well that he has completely superseded any platoons — claiming the everyday left field role and pushing Jarred Kelenic to the bench as the Braves cling to any offense they can get their hands on.
Like Laureano, Whit Merrifield also came to the Braves after being DFA’d, and he also had an inauspicious beginning to his tenure with the Braves. While warming up for his first game in a Braves uniform, he broke his fingernail all the way back to the base of the nail after fielding a bad hop. Inauspicious, yes, but also hilariously on brand for the 2024 Braves.
By the time it became clear that Nacho Alvarez Jr. was simply not ready for MLB, Whit’s finger was healed up, and he took over as the everyday 2B. In 109 PA since, he’s slashed .275/.383/.396, good for a 122 wRC+.
Most of what we’ve seen from Whit coincides with the skills he has always possessed: Great bat control with an ability to spray the ball to all fields for a good average, but very little power. What is unusual about his time in Atlanta so far is his walk rate. His career BB% is 6.5% — for context, that’s a touch lower than Ozzie’s career BB% — but in Atlanta, Whit has worked a walk in 14.7% of his plate appearances. There’s nothing fluky about the way he’s gone about earning his walks, as his chase rate in Atlanta is miles below what it has been for the rest of his career. With Whit’s high OBP earning him the leadoff spot for the time being, I’m wondering if pitchers will be more motivated to stay in the zone against him so that they don’t put a speedy runner on base for the big boppers behind him.
The biggest development for the Braves organization this year without a shadow of a doubt, is the emergence of Spencer Schwellenbach. He has been simply unbelievable and deserves a whole article dedicated to the singularity of his greatness. For now I’ll keep it brief, though. His 3.76 ERA through 15 starts, while a total gift in and of itself considering the disastrous state of the 5th rotation spot before his arrival, actually belies just how good he’s been. Every ERA estimator (FIP, xERA, xFIP, SIERA) agrees that his ERA deserves to be somewhere between 3.00-3.15.
Out of 131 pitchers to throw at least 80 innings this year, Schwellenbach ranks 6th in CSW% (% of pitches that resulted in a called or swinging strike), 3rd in O-Swing% (% of pitches thrown out of the zone that induced a chase),and 3rd in SwStr% (% of pitches thrown that result in a swinging strike). He also ranks 9th in K-BB%, which has traditionally been a very strong indicator that a pitcher will continue to be good in MLB. Not only has Schwelly stabilized what was previously a tragic back-end of the rotation, he has proven that he has the potential to be a top of the rotation arm going forward. Looking beyond 2024, his development brings a seismic shift to a Braves pitching landscape that has been staring down the potential departures of two of its staples in Max Fried and Charlie Morton.
Despite all that has gone wrong this season, the Braves enter a four game series in Philly on Thursday sitting just 5 games back of the NL East lead. The odds of coming back in the division are still long, as FanGraphs gives the Braves a just 13.8% chance of doing it. If they want to pull off the comeback, their biggest need remains star-level production from their star-level players (Matt Olson, Marcell Ozuna, Michael Harris II, Chris Sale, Max Fried, etc.).
However, if Schwellenbach continues pitching like an ace and Laureano and Merrifield continue performing like above average players down the stretch, that would certainly help the cause. All the better if the recently acquired Gio Urshela is able to step up and join this unlikely cast of fill-in heroes.
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