Atlanta Braves Spring Chop: how real are the stat numbers?

Generally speaking, you can take Spring Training numbers and throw them away.  But here’s something that might give them a bit more context.

The Atlanta Braves have an off day from Grapefruit league action Tuesday.  It gives us a chance to take a look at where they are and how they are doing.

I was trying to figure out exactly what shape such a story would take when this tweet popped up:

My own philosophy about Spring stats is generally this:  if you’re great, it’s not terribly meaningful  for the regular season.  If you’re awful, though… that might portend a bad start to the year, at least.

Additionally, I tend to pay much more attention to the players that are getting the early reps in these games:  after all, the ‘major league’ players play early, get a couple of swings or innings in, and then hit the showers while the minor league crews finish up.

BaseballReference.com – bless them – has concocted a metric to represent this… as noted above, it’s this ‘Opponent Quality’ column.

Nobody with any sizable number of AB’s or innings pitched will have a ’10’ rating:  heck, in every contest, there’s a road team and those are generally loaded with rookies, those trying to make a club, and true minor leaguers.

That’s why Kurt Suzuki‘s 8.6 rating is so surprising… and significant.  It basically means that 86% of the time, he was facing real major league competition… and he excelled while doing that.  Of those with at least 5 AB, that 8.6 is 7th highest among all Spring hitters.

By the way:  the next two names on the chart after him are ‘Freddie Freeman‘ and ‘Tyler Flowers‘ – both also with 8.6 competition ratings, though one (Flowers) hasn’t fared nearly as well.

So does that mean that Suzuki is ready to make a hot start once the whistle blows on March 29?  Maybe – and maybe not.  But I would tend to trust his 1.119 OPS more now that I know what was behind it… except that he’s hit .476 and we all know that this is a ridiculous hit rate.

Braves Hitters

(Minimum 10 Plate appearances)

STIFFEST COMPETITION:   Suzuki, Freeman, Flowers, Markakis (8.5), Santana (8.3), Inciarte (8.2), Colon (7.9), Decker (7.7), Tucker (7.6), Culberson (7.6)

LEAST COMPETITION:  Cristian Pache (5.0, 10AB), Carlos Franco (6.1), Dustin Peterson (6.3), Austin Riley (6.5), Lane Adams (6.7), Rio Ruiz (6.7)

Of note in the middle:  Ozzie Albies, Ronald Acuna, Jr., Johan Camargo:  all 6.9.  Rob Brantly (7.2), Dansby Swanson (7.1)

In this light, Swanson’s .238 average actually looks a bit worse than it was, as does Ruiz’s .236.  Would have liked to see Acuna competition number in the mid-7’s, perhaps… of course in AAA, that will effectively be even lower, right?

Braves Pitchers

Almost by definition, the starting pitchers – or those aspiring to be that – will see the best hitters.  So it should not be a surprise that these opposition ratings will be high.

That would especially be true for starters who made multiple road appearances.  Here are some selected Braves pitchers:

STIFFEST COMPETITION:   Folty (8.5), Kazmir (8.5), Blair (8.4), Teheran (8.4), McCarthy (8.3), Whitley (8.3; just 2.1 innings), Wisler (8.3), Ramirez (8.0).

IN THE MIDDLE:  Sam Freeman (7.9), Newcomb (7.8), Soroka (7.6), Vizzy (7.5), Sims (7.4), Socolovich (7.4).

LESSER OPPO:  Moylan (7.3), Carle (7.2), Fried (7.0), Minter (6.8), Winkler (6.8) Gomez (6.7), Brothers (6.7), Jackson (6.5), Hursh (6.2)

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It’s a catch-22 for many of the relievers… they will appear later in games, but then they will face lesser hitters.  It’s why you will often see a closer in anywhere between the 3rd and 7th inning.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t exactly sugar-coat many of the poor performances we’ve seen – Hursh, Brothers, Gomez, and Jackson in particular.  And as suggested earlier, if you’re bad in Spring, getting to the regular season doesn’t give you a lot to look forward to – aside from a more regular routine.

So in short:  the numbers of Mike Foltynewicz now suddenly look Cy-Young-esque (no runs allowed this Spring, with an outstanding line across the board).  Scott Kazmir‘s line (4.66 ERA) is not as bad, and the rest of the rotation-as-we-know-it looks solid.

The bullpen?  Hit or miss… but we already knew that.

Next: He will get to ATL - Acuna or Later

So it’s hardly the Rosetta Stone of Spring number translation, but adding this competition metric does provide a measure of context to the effort and performances recorded.