Atlanta Braves vs. NL East position by position: First Base.

This introduces the 2018 edition of an annual series to evaluate the Braves’ position players against those of the National League East.  Today:  first base.

The Atlanta Braves feature the best first baseman in their division.  This isn’t a surprise, but the size of the gap might be.  Some changes are coming in the division, though, but you can still expect this contest to continue to be… no contest.

Let’s take a look:

Mets – Adrian Gonzalez

Lucas Duda is gone and Dominic Smith is coming back… eventually.  But this week brought a change.  With the signing made official on the 18th, Adrian Gonzalez has now officially been a Met for longer than he was a member of the Braves… just over 48 hours.

But what will he bring to the Mets as their first try for first base?

Depending on who you believe… the answer might be ‘not much’:

Presumably, Gonzalez is only there to keep the base warm until Dominic Smith arrives… and sticks.

Smith’s 2017 attempt at the majors didn’t go particularly well (.198 average with a .658 OPS in 183 trips to the plate), but if you were to rank the NL first basemen by WAR (minimum 160 plate appearances) from 2017, you’d find Smith 26th out of 30 at a -0.6.

Frankly, it’s actually difficult to do that badly in a short stint like that (though Ryder Jones of the Giants bested even that with -1.2 fWAR in 164 PA).

But here’s another problem for the Mets:  Gonzalez posted -1.1 fWAR for his 252 PA in 2017.

On the defensive side, the fangraphs numbers are a bit misleading.  At first glance, you’d think that their negative scores (-5.7 for A-Gon; -4.1 for Smith) are terrible, but there is a context to be considered:

First off, there is some ‘cross-contamination’ going on – Buster Posey is listed among the NL first basemen, even though his primary position is still catcher.  On top of that, the +5.8 total defensive score given him by fangraphs includes his catching work.

Second, fangraphs grades every first baseman (other than Posey) with a negative defensive rating.  Yes – all of them.

This includes the Gold Glove and Fielding Bible award winner for 2017:  Paul Goldschmidt… who posted -7.6… the 23rd worst among those on the chart.  Beyond that, A-Gon had been a Gold Glove winner in the past.  Sure – he’s lost a step or two… or three…but the glove still plays.

So let’s go back to an old-school idea and simply look at the errors committed by each player.

I’ll spoil some of the data that should be reviewed later just to save some trouble for all of us:

• Gonzalez:  2 in 501 innings
• Smith:  2 in 378 innings
• Justin Bour (Miami):  1 in 862 innings
• Rhys Hoskins (Philly):  3 in 203 innings
• Tommy Joseph (Philly): 8 in 1048 innings
• Carlos Santana (Philly):  5 in 1226 innings with Cleveland
• Freddie Freeman:  4 in 877 innings
• Ryan Zimmerman (Nats):  12 in 1162 innings

It’s only a year’s worth of data, but I don’t know that more years would necessarily change the error rates drastically.

So in reality, it is very likely that defense will be the strength of the game supplied by either Gonzalez or Smith.

Unfortunately for the Mets, that might be the best bright spot they will be able to come up with here… and that’s why this positional check ranks the Mets a (very distant)…

5th in NL East

Marlins – Justin Bour

I almost put Justin Bour up a notch… until I realized that he could easily be the only true offensive threat in the Miami Marlins entire lineup.

Gone are Giancarlo Stanton (6.9 fWAR), Marcell Ozuna (4.8), and Dee Gordon (3.3).  Probably following him – at least by mid-season – are Christian Yelich (4.5) and J.T. Realmuto (3.6).

Those constituted the top 5 producers for the Fish in ’17… that’s 23.1 lost fWAR… and Bour was #6 at 2.2.

Beyond that, they might have Starling Castro and Derek Dietrich. Miguel Rojas did well in limited action.

Heck, you could probably win some bets if you can name the members of their starting lineup on a day-to-day basis for the upcoming season.  No wonder that their fans are upset.

Fact is:  Justin Bour just isn’t going to have a lot of help with him for a while… and that means he’ll see a lot fewer pitches to drive and a lot fewer than 25 homers this time around.

This year is Bour’s first foray into arbitration.  He’s filed for $3.4 million while the team countered with $3.0 million.

I seriously hope he wins, for he’s gonna be earning every single dollar.  He ranks…

4th in the NL East

Nationals – Ryan Zimmerman

Offensively, the rest of these rankings are fairly close – at least on paper.  The bottom line is that performance at the plate will ultimately depend on each team’s ability to keep their players on the field for the most time.

In this instance, the biggest separator for placing Ryan Zimmerman in this position is his glove – or more specifically, his arm.

As noted, while the bottom-line-number metrics don’t really give us a true indication of how first basemen actually handle their position, this is simply a sad fact:   you want the Nationals to be in a defensive situation in which Zimmerman has to throw the baseball.

This is well-known and well-documented.  The Nats has managed to hide this enough so that Zimmerman’s bat can do most of the talking, but when a first baseman makes 7 throwing errors during the course of a season, it’s still noteworthy.

On the offensive side, Zimmerman recovered nicely from a bad/injury-plagued stretch over 2014-2016 (.218 in 2016) to post a solid 2017 at the plate:

• 36 homers
• .303 average, .358 OBP, .930 OPS
• 138 wRC+ and 108 RBI to bolster a stacked lineup (which probably doesn’t hurt his numbers)
• Overall scored a 29.9 offensive rating with fangraphs and 3.3 fWAR

So really, it’s all about defense for Zimmerman, for he held up his end on the offensive side very well… at least in 2017.  So in this group of first basemen, that ranks him…

3rd in the NL East

NEW YORK, NY – OCTOBER 09: Carlos Santana #41 of the Cleveland Indians rounds the bases after hitting a two run home run scoring Jay Bruce #32 against Luis Severino #40 of the New York Yankees during the fourth inning in Game Four of the American League Divisional Series at Yankee Stadium on October 9, 2017 in the Bronx borough of New York City. (Photo by Mike Stobe/Getty Images)

Phillies – Carlos Santana

In 2017, Rhys Hoskins was promoted to the majors and threw down 2.2 Wins Above Replacement (WAR) in just 50 games with 18 homers, a 1.014 On-base-plus-Slugging (OPS).

The Phillies then said ‘thankyouverymuch’ and went out to spend the second-highest amount of cash this off-season on any free agent thus far:  3 years and $60 million guaranteed to former Cleveland first baseman Carlos Santana.

Hoskins will be okay though – the Phillies will try him out in left field, so that will be interesting to follow over the course of the season, but now they have a second solid bat in their lineup in Santana.

Also… don’t just think that Hoskins will necessarily regress much, either:  in the past 2 full seasons (AA/AAA/Majors), he’s hit 85 home runs.  In getting Santana, then, they aren’t trying to diss Hoskins… instead, they are adding more hitting.

So… about Santana.  Here are his WAR and plate appearance numbers over the past 7 seasons with Cleveland:

• fWAR (2011) 3.3, 2.9, 3.6, 2.6, 2.1, 3.7, 3.0 (2017)
• PA 658, 609, 642, 660, 666, 688, 667

Oh?  You like OPS and scaled runs-created (wRC+; 100 is average) better?

• OPS (2011) .808, .785, .832, .792, .752, .865, .818 (2017)
• wRC+ 124,120, 132, 127, 107, 131, 117

You would find it difficult to locate many players with that kind of consistency and production… which is why the Phils opted to throw $20 million per year at him.

Santana will be 32 years old shortly after the start of the 2018 season, so it’s tough to imagine this production to last through the entire life of this contract… but that’s about 2019 and following, and thus beyond the scope of this ranking.

So it is exactly for the reason of that consistency that Santana is ranked…

2nd in the NL East

Braves – Freddie Freeman

We Braves’ fans already know that when Freeman is healthy and in the groove, he puts up MVP-level numbers, and that should continue for the foreseeable future.

His numbers for the past 5 seasons bear this out:

• fWAR (2013):  5.0, 4.1, 3.4, 6.1, 4.5 (2017
• PA  629, 708, 481, 693, 514

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of variation due to varied injuries… most lately due to wrist ailments.  But in those 5 seasons, Freeman has posted 23.1 fWAR.

No other Brave has even hit double digits over that span.

In the entire National League, only Paul Goldschmidt (27.9) and Joey Votto (26.2) have bested Freeman among first basemen.

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When considering all positions for NL players from 2013-17, Andrew McCutchen and Posey beat out Freeman (25.2, 24.0 respectively) and Bryce Harper ties him at 23.1, but that’s it.

His National League ranks for those 5 seasons in some other first base categories:

• HR:  4th
• RBI:  4th
• Avg:  5th
• OPS:  3rd among those with more than 250 PA’s
• wRC+:  6th (146)

That’s elite-level performance.  So on National Hugging Day, let’s throw out a virtual hug to our Freddie Freeman, who we rank…

1st in the NL East

Next: A Chat with the Marlins fans

We will aim to complete these position checks by the time players start reporting for Spring training.