RESULTS: TT Writers’ Atlanta Braves Roster Predictions
About a month ago, we at Tomahawk Take agreed to partake in a friendly competition regarding the Atlanta Braves’ Opening Day roster.
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Just after the Braves’ 2016 Spring Training Schedule began, I published an article that included all of our then current writers’ picks for the Opening Day 25 man roster.
A slew of late-Spring moves has yielded the squad that will be in uniform this evening. The roster is pretty surprising, as injuries, transactions, and on-field performances have shaken things up since the early goings. From my perspective, here below is a list of the most unpredictable Spring happenings that affected the roster that we’ll start the season with:
- Jeff Francoeur was not only signed to a minor league contract, but showed enough baseball skills and perhaps clubhouse presence to make the club.
- After not attracting any suitable trade offers, Michael Bourn was a late roster cut. This of course means the Braves elected to pay him a significant portion of his veteran salary to not play baseball for the club, rather than keep him on the roster.
- As the Spring schedule neared its close, the Braves signed OF Drew Stubbs. Stubbs then made the Opening Day roster despite having only six plate appearances to make an impression.
- The Braves will start the season with only one LHP in the bullpen. Not only that, but said singular lefty is former and now again current Brave, Eric O’Flaherty. Alex Torres was cut in the last week of the Spring after pitching his way out of what looked like a pretty safe spot on the roster once Andrew McKirahan and Ian Krol bit the roster dust.
- John Gant has ridden a stealth horse of momentum right into an Opening Day roster spot. This may be little more than a tip of the cap to Gant, as someone in the bullpen will be heading back down when Jhoulys Chacin is called up to make his first start (see DOB’s article for an explanation). Just the same, these are heady times for the young man.
So there you go. Perhaps I included that list to preemptively make excuses for the lack of accuracy on display in my own roster predictions. Either way, here are the predictions, followed by a crowing of a champion.
Again, jump over here to DOB’s article to catch up on the Braves’ 25 man roster before you see how we did as prognosticators.
Take note since we started this contest, we have had the good fortune to add other writers to our staff.
I had to decide how to rank our efforts, laudable as they were. I landed on just counting up the number of incorrect responses, and ranking from there. Not because I’m a sadist, but because it was easier to do. So there.
NOTE: I did not consider positions in the final tally. This mattered only in the case of Fred and I choosing Williams Perez as relievers. Therefore, if you object to my tallying method, dock the two of us one more error. Lastly, you’ll notice that Fred has 4.5 misses. That’s because he listed a player to be named later; I arbitrarily awarded Fred half a correct pick, for reasons mostly limited to my view that it would be the funniest way to go about it.
Half-point or full, Fred is hereby crowned our official roster soothsayer. If you want to know anything about stocks, or whether or not to go on that second date or whatever, he’s your guy. His cell number is… check that, I’m told to not reveal that information.
The Results, ranked by least number of incorrect responses:
Fred Owens – 4.5
Philip Tapley – 5
Alan Carpenter – 6
Jeff Schafer – 6
Dan Horton – 6
Chris Jervis – 6
Fletcher Batts – 6
Brandon Woodworth – 7
Benjamin Chase – 7
HAPPY OPENING DAY EVERYBODY!
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