“Where do I begin?” That’s the question the Atlanta Braves are probably asking themselves right now as yet another series loss pushes them back.
It is clear that this Atlanta Braves roster has talent — it was enough to nearly make the World Series last year. Right now, though, that run seems a long way in the past.
So if you’re in the Braves front office and you want to honor that talent by fixing up the roster for the stretch run, then where do you go to start? How many changes will you need to do?
Baseball-reference.com has a handy chart that breaks down every team by position and scales the performance of every player (in total) that has played during the year.
In that way (for example), we can compare the left-field position across all of MLB and see which teams have had the best-contributing players in left-field… and so on for every position.
So here’s how things stack up (the numbers are baseball-reference’s reckoning of Wins Above Average). We’ll start with overall team performance in total:
TEAMS – THE TOP TEN
- Houston (11.6)
- San Fran (10.1)
- Toronto (8.9)
- Dodgers (7.7)
- San Diego (7.3)
- White Sox (7.2)
- Boston (6.1)
- Tampa Bay (4.3)
- Milwaukee (4.1)
- Oakland (3.1)
At 12th overall are the Mets (1.7) and at 14th we find our Atlanta Braves (0.8).
The numbers cited essentially validate themselves, as every team listed above is at least in strong contention for a playoff berth. It also suggests that the NL East is indeed a weak division overall (the Marlins are actually 11th with a 2.8 score).
So where should the Braves look to get help to boost their score? On the next page, we’ll look at their ranks by position.