To say this was a disappointing season for the Atlanta Braves would be an understatement. After surprising the league, overtaking the Washington Nationals last year, and starting this year as the youngest team in baseball, things were looking up for the Braves despite the national media’s love affair with the Nationals. Most picked the Nationals to win the division, and obviously they were right to do so, but the Braves should have been much more competitive than they were this season. When teams underperform, the question of “who is to blame?” starts to pop up quite often.
Let’s start with what went wrong. While the big concern was whether the pitching staff would hold up after Kris Medlen and Brandon Beachy went down for the season in Spring Training, the real issue with the Braves this season was at the plate.
The Braves had a 101 wRC+ last season and dropped all the way down to 88 this year. What caused that drop off? The main culprits were Chris Johnson and Andrelton Simmons going from a 126 and 91 mark respectively to an 81 and a 72. In addition, they got nearly nothing from their bench this season from the likes of Ryan Doumit, Jordan Schafer, and Gerald Laird. Last year, they got solid production from those three spots, with Evan Gattis occupying the role Doumit is in this season. The lack of a bench presence and poor production across the infield aside from first base and catcher are the biggest reasons the offense dropped from slightly above average to far below average without seeing a huge change in personnel.
So if all the Braves did personnel wise was promote Gattis to a starting role (where he actually has hit better) along with tweaking the bench, someone internally has to be to blame for the offensive woes, right? I expect hitting coach Greg Walker will almost certainly be gone after this season. Hitting coaches usually are the first to go when a team struggles as much as the Braves did, and while I do not think Walker is necessarily to blame for his hitters’ performance he certainly was not able to get through to B.J. Upton or Dan Uggla as they continued to perform very poorly at the plate.
With Walker almost certainly gone, the targets then move to Fredi Gonzalez and Frank Wren. Many Braves fans downright detest Gonzalez as a manager, whereas I am more-or-less indifferent to him. He manages the way most managers manage, and while I certainly think he can be more tactical and logical in his in game and lineup decisions, I think he has done a decent job over his tenure in Atlanta. The team has been very competitive, mostly due to their talent, but I could certainly see the Braves opting to go in a different direction since they underperformed so mightily with such a young team. What I would recommend is firing Gonzalez – but only if they have a replacement already in mind. If they fire him just to fire him and go look for another ho-hum manager, I think it’s a move that could only cause more issues than it would help. I have certainly been wrong before, but I have a difficult time blaming Gonzalez for all of the club’s issues this season.
Wren is the most interesting and likely most difficult decision the team will have to face. He has done a great job in trades, with Uggla (the trade itself, not the extension), Michael Bourn, Justin Upton, and Jordan Walden all being added for essentially a group of role players and Martin Prado. Where he has struggled is on the free agent side, and with some of the extensions he has handed out. He obviously did not fare well with B.J. Upton and is now saddled with that bad contract for the next three seasons. It is difficult to blame him specifically for Derek Lowe and Kenshin Kawakami not panning out since the Braves needed to make a splash to bolster a broken rotation in free agency that year, but he was the general manager who handed out the contracts that the team eventually had to eat. I have always been of the opinion that free agency, specifically with long term contracts, is not the way to build a winning team. You are paying for past production and rarely do you get the type of performance from that player after he receives the big contract. This is mostly due to an aging curve issue and not an effort issue.
The extensions I specifically took issue with were Dan Uggla’s and Chris Johnson’s. The trade for Uggla was great, as he moved what was then a utility player in Omar Infante and a lefty reliever in Mike Dunn for an All-Star second baseman and right-handed bat the Braves desperately needed in the middle of the order. The problem was that he offered Uggla a long term extension before he ever put on an Atlanta jersey. Guys like Uggla, who specifically offer value only in their on base ability and their power while playing at a premium defensive position, are not guys you want to be tied to for extended periods of time. Sure it could have worked out, and I would not have been shocked if Uggla performed well enough for the contact to be close to worth it, but I was skeptical of the deal at the time and it proved to be an even worse deal than I anticipated at the end of the day.
More recently, the aforementioned Johnson deal is why I would not be shocked or incredibly upset if Wren was let go. He offered a guy who had a “breakout” year that was entirely fueled by a high batting average on balls in play a three-year extension for $24 million. He most certainly could have went year-to-year without taking on too much risk that Johnson would outpace his expected arbitration numbers. The deal now locks the Braves into having a lackluster third baseman who is only above average in hitting singles. He provides no value defensively, he hits for very little power, and runs like he is in quick sand. Do not let the six stolen bases confuse you – speed is not a part of Johnson’s game. This is the one contract, despite the others such as Freeman’s, Simmons’s, and Teheran’s, that I cannot wrap my head around. It puts the team in a frustrating position, and even though there are not a ton of third base options available on the market, he still had little reason to lock up Johnson into his 30’s after his breakout season that looked luck-driven to almost all of us.
So, the question is “Should the Braves clean house?” In my estimation, yes. The hitting coach is as good as gone, Gonzalez did not get the most out of his bench players like Bobby Cox used to, and Wren – despite making savvy moves such as Aaron Harang and Ervin Santana to occupy spots in a busted rotation – has struggled to build a farm system that continually runs out top prospects as the Braves have been accustomed to over the past couple of decades. While that is surely a high standard to hold, the Braves know what model works for a team in their payroll situation, and having a lot of their money tied up in lackluster deals and a farm system that projects as one of the lowest quality systems in the league, I would not be shocked nor against Wren getting the boot as well. If all three go, expect Roger McDowell and some front office executives, such as John Coppolella, to move on as well. I would love to see Coppolella get a shot at the general manager job, but I would be somewhat surprised to see the Braves get rid of their general manager and promote from within. This should be a very interesting offseason for the Braves as they prepare for their final two seasons in Turner Field before moving up to Cobb County into SunTrust Park at the start of the 2017 season. Giving the team a year under new management before the big move would make a lot of sense, and I expect the Braves to make some very big decisions over the next few months in preparation of their big move.
