Atlanta Braves Morning Chop: A Difference in Effort
The Beginning of the End for Erick Aybar?
It was a quiet announcement on Saturday:
Erick Aybar, after taking a pitch off the ankle, has been placed on the Disabled List. It could be a while before he’s re-activated. And that would have little to do with his actual injury.
Aybar has been terrible. Historically so. Offensively and defensively. Despite early encouraging thoughts, despite a reasonable .279/.313 Spring, Erick Aybar has been been literally the worst in baseball: he ranks 181st out of 181 qualified hitters so far this season.
His slash line: .182 / .225 / .209 / .434
Yes: that’s a .434 OPS.
Ben Zobrist has a .451 OBP alone.
Since 2000, Aybar’s season thus far is the 2598th worst out of 2612... and all of the others had an entire season to produce a lower fWAR… which Aybar was on pace to exceed by mid-July.
If you go strictly by batting average, the only ones worse than he in that 2000-2016 time frame were Derek Norris of the Padres (tied in 44 games, though he was a defensively-useful catcher) and Dan Uggla (.179).
That year (2013) Uggla still somehow managed to slug 22 homers and come up with a 0.5 fWAR.
This does beg the question: how is it that so many otherwise respectable players have their careers die so quickly and so dramatically in Atlanta?
- 2000 Bobby Bonilla (-1.1 fWAR)
- 2001 Ken Caminiti (-0.8 fWAR) and Rico Brogna (-0.7)
- 2002 Vinny Castilla (-1.5 fWAR)
- 2003 Darren Bragg (-1.1)
- 2004 Mark DeRosa (-1.4)
- 2005 Adam LaRoche (-1.8)
- 2007 Jordan Schafer (-0.7) and Scott Thorman (-1.0)
- 2008 Jeff Francoeur (-1.2) and Matt Diaz (-0.8 in 43 games)
- 2009 Jeff Francoeur (-0.9) and Garret Anderson (-1.0)
- 2010 Melky Cabrera (-1.4) and Nate McLouth (-1.4)
- 2011 Alex Gonzalez (0.6… thanks to defense alone, and not always then, even)
- 2012 Eric Hinske (-1.3) and Matt Diaz (-0.8 in 51 games)
- 2013 Melvin Upton Jr. (-0.6)
- 2014 Dan Uggla (-0.5 in 48 games)
- 2015 Alberto Callaspo (-0.5 in just 37 games)
- 2016? Aybar (-1.7 in 44 games), Adonis Garcia (-0.7 in 30), Daniel Castro (-0.6) and A.J. Pierzynski (-0.7 in 29)
Most teams can handle having one of their key players tank during a season. That last line tells you what you need to know about the way things have gone for the Braves so far in 2016.
This is a player who slumped to 1.0 last season, but had a 4.3 WAR year in 2014.
In any case, this DL stint could be the beginning of the end for Aybar’s short stint in Atlanta.