Comments on: Good riddance: A postmortem for the 2008 Atlanta Braves (Part I: Manager and Coaches)

By: Mac Thomason

Mac Thomason — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 19:48:10 +0000

Part II now up.

By: Lunatic96

Lunatic96 — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 19:40:43 +0000

I think a large reason we didn’t score as many runs as we should have is we had Francouer batting 5th or 6th for a large portion of the season. When you have a player who bats .192 w/ RISP in +175 PAs you’re bound to score less runs than expected.

By: ububba

ububba — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 19:29:22 +0000

Maybe I’m a semantic stickler (or something else), but this definition of luck has always bothered me, too.

I think I’ve understood what sabe-types mean when they refer to “bad luck,” but I don’t exactly subscribe to that definition. I don’t know what to call it, but it’s not always “luck” in my book.

To me, luck is when a good player gets hurt, a ball takes a wicked hop, a Texas Leaguer drops in, an ump kills you with a lousy call or when you get rained out while losing 7-0 in the 4th inning.

I don’t think having a bad year in one category is exactly luck either. Do we call Francoeur’s bad year, for extreme example, “bad luck”? No, we say he sucked this year.

If a guy hits .200 with runners on base in 2008, I say he sucked in 2008 in that situation. If you want to call it luck because he hit .300 in that situation the year before, go ahead.

I’ll just say he had a good year in ’07 & a lousy one in ’08. I wouldn’t necessarily call him an overall choke artist or a clutch guy unless he’s shown a career of it—especially in the world of the extra-round post-season where you now see players roll up scads of games, all of them huge by definition.

By: Mac Thomason

Mac Thomason — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 19:07:14 +0000

Anything more than 67 percent is good. There just aren’t a lot of runs involved in advancing from first to second. As for baserunning other than stolen bases, I will check the stats, but you’re simply wrong if you’re insinuating that sabermetricians aren’t studying baserunning, because a lot of strides have been made in recent years.

I don’t think you’d find thirty, much less eighty, runs in the baserunning either. It may be a lack of “timely hitting”, but that really is luck — there is no demonstratable ability to hit better in any clutch situation you can name. A guy hits .350 with runners on one year and .250 the next, that’s just luck, not a sudden attack of cowardice or whatever.

By: Robert

Robert — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 18:58:44 +0000

they had a high success rate — 68 percent.

They were 24th in the majors in success rate. But my point was really about baserunning to which stolen bases are only a piece. A team that does not get the extra base, or worse makes an out trying (I’m looking at you Yunel), will naturally underperform their run projection. It’s not luck, it’s the makeup of the team.

Sabermetrics (This is not meant to label you a sabermatician, but just a general statement) greatest weakness by far is labeling anything and everything luck.

By: ububba

ububba — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 18:25:30 +0000

The Braves are the anti-Angels.

By: Mac Thomason

Mac Thomason — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:52:27 +0000

I’m not much for stolen bases, but while the Braves didn’t steal many, they had a high success rate — 68 percent. There is basically no correlation between stolen bases and runs scored. The “situational hitting” is covered above; the Braves were very bad at it, I think because they were too willing to take outs rather than try to get hits.

By: NickC

NickC — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:48:58 +0000

I wouldn’t underestimate the benefit Devine gained from being away from Atlanta.

Let’s be honest, giving up 2 grand slams and a season ending home run in an epic playoff game isn’t the best start to a career and once he left he got a fresh start where none of that mattered.

By: Robert

Robert — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:07:32 +0000

Ok the Braves were 7th in OPS in the NL and 6th in runs in the NL. My apologies that my original post was so misleading. And yes I’m aware of the limitations of OPS thanks. I’ll stand by my assessment. OBP can be devalued somewhat by poor base running and bad situational hitting. Home runs always work.

By: Mac Thomason

Mac Thomason — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:01:06 +0000

You can’t compare the Braves to the majors, you have to compare them to the league, because there is still a DH effect… OPS, or OPS+, is a bad measure for the Braves, because it counts OBP and SLG as equal, which they are not. One point of OBP is worth at minimum 1.4 points of SLG. (Some estimates say as high as three points, but that throws off the calculations.) The Braves were very good at getting on base, so this obviously hurts them.