Atlanta Braves franchise history: top 10 outfielders part 1

My look at the best players in Atlanta Braves franchise history continues with a review of the top ten outfielders.

I originally planned to look at each outfield position separately, but records of the early years don’t contain enough detail, and as we know, outfielders bounce around a lot. So, I decided to lump them all together, and build a list of the top ten Atlanta Braves’ franchise outfielders, Because there are so many I’ll present a couple at a time.

Limiting it to ten meant I once again had to lower limit on games played and plate appearances; I settled on 560 games and 2350 PA. I know the cutoffs are odd, but the text will explain my decision.

Playing for the franchise longer edged out some good performers who came and went relatively quickly, including Hall of Fame players like Joe Kelly and Jim O’Rourke; sorry Duff Cooley fans, he didn’t make the cut.

The 149-year history of the franchise includes 108 players who played in at least 154 games and made at least 500 PAs for the Braves’ franchise.  As in previous posts, I used plus stats as a tool to compare them across different eras.

Plus stats like OPS+ tell us how well a player stacks up against the rest of the league when he played, with 100 as league average. Using a Fangraphs custom player search by position, a created a table of the following plus stats. I added other statistics for each player’s page on Baseball-Reference when needed to fill out the profile

• wOBA – if you care about determining how well a player contributes to run-scoring, wOBA is a more accurate representation of that contribution than OPS
• wRC+ – If you want a rate statistic for hitters that weights each offensive action and controls for league and park effects, wRC+ is for you.
• AVG+
• OBP+
• SLG+
• fWAR
• dWAR – Baseball-Reference’s defensive WAR stat
• rWAR I looked at every player’s plus stats, sample-size in terms of games played, impact on the franchise, and contribution to the team’s success.

Number ten: A solid player

I’d wager most fans today have never heard of Sid Gordon; his SABR biography describes him as:

a man who came to play every day no matter whether the manager played him in the outfield or third base or where he inserted him in the lineup. An amiable and well-liked ballplayer. . .

I guess being a star in those days meant something different than it does today. In 1948 Gordon finished fifth in the NL with 30 homers, behind Johnny Mize, Ralph Kiner, Stan Musial, and Hank Sauer, and third in OPS (.927) and OPS+ (142) behind Musial and Mize.

In 1949 Bobby Thompson took fourth place in homers pushing Gordon to number five, while Enos Slaughter, and some kid named Jackie Robinson, meant Gordon landed in fourth-spot with a .909 OPS and a 142 OPS+.

Gordon joined the Boston Braves after the 1949 season in the trade that sent Al Dark and Eddie Stanky to the Giants.

• in 1951, Gordon finished third in MLB  with a 156 OPS+,
• fourth in MLB with 154 wRC+,
• fifth in MLB with 6.4 rWAR,
• tenth in MLB with 5.5 fWAR,
• #17 in MLB with a  409 wOBA, and
• finished #22 in NL MVP voting.

He enjoyed three more seasons as a top 20 batter with the Braves, finishing #22, #16, and #30 in  MVP voting.

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

Gordon’s Baseball-Reference similarity score compares him to former Atlanta Braves outfielder Brian Jordan at the same age.

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table

More injuries

Carty always hit well, but some – most importantly, Aaron, in 1967– felt he didn’t hustle all the time. Rumors of a trade started after a disagreement with Aaron, but nothing ever materialized. Carty’s ’67 season suffered, and he missed 1968 entirely because he contracted Tuberculosis.

He came back in 1969 and again hit well, but a shoulder dislocation in the spring troubled him all season. He returned for the stretch run for the NL West title, batting .383/.400/.630/1.030  in the last 21 games of the season as the Braves went 17-4.  Carty finished #13 in NL MVP voting in 69 and replicated his offensive heroics against the Mets in the NLCS, batting  .300/.462/.500/.962 in 10 PA.

In 1970, the tall left fielder won the NL batting title and led the league in OBP in 1970 .366/.454/.584/1.037,  and finished tenth in NL MVP voting. A knee injury in winter ball described by a team doctor in his bio “as bad a knee injury as an athlete can have.” His fans in Carty’s corner received buttons saying SMILE — the Beeg Boy’s Back, but a blood clot cost prevented him from returning,

After a 1971 season when he played just 86 games due to elbow tendonitis and a recurring hamstring injury, the Braves traded him to Texas for Jim Panther. Panther appeared in relief 23 times in 1973 and never played affiliated ball again.

A grand finale

Carty’s career as a member of the Braves covered parts of eight seasons. His final line of .317/.388/.496/.884 with a 143 OPS+, 23.2 rWAR, 26.1 fWAR, is impressive and makes me wonder how things might have turned out had Bragan just played him in left field, and ask him not to play winter ball.

Carty still lives in the Dominican Republic. In 1988, he led the Dominican Republic’s Senior League team to a third-place finish in the first Men’s Senior Baseball League World Series, and typically, the 49-year old Carty won the home run contest.

League founder Steve Sigler said, “He’s still an amazing hitter [at age 49], and he was the only one using a wooden bat.”

Carty became a member of Caribbean Baseball Hall of Fame in 1996 and the Latino Baseball Hall of Fame in 2011,

That’s a wrap

The first two outfielders in the list couldn’t be more different in the way they played, yet they produced remarkably similar results,

Carty and Gordon aren’t names that come up often, but both played a significant part in the history of the Atlanta Braves franchise.

Stay tuned for part two, here at the Take.