When Chris Johnson almost won a batting title

Going into the 2013 baseball season, the Atlanta Braves were attempting to do something they haven’t done in over a decade. That is ask someone not named Chipper Jones to play an everyday third base. In stepped the focus of this piece, Chris Johnson. The Braves acquired Johnson as the secondary piece in a huge deal that brought Justin Upton to Atlanta in exchange for fan-favorite Martin Prado and others.

Initially, Johnson was brought in to form a platoon at third base with the left-handed hitting Juan Francisco. However, once Johnson got rolling he quickly became the everyday third baseman. So how did a guy who was brought into the organization to form a platoon nearly win a batting title? If you were to look at Chris Johnson’s numbers coming into the 2013 season you could see why the Braves had planned to only play him against left-handed starting pitchers. He had yet to log a season with over 500 AB’s entering 2013 and his highest OPS+ season (121) was his rookie year back in 2010.

It wasn’t just the previous 2013 data that made his runner-up finish surprising. It was the aftermath of 2013 that made this season such an outlier. Here are some of Johnson’s career numbers:

• Slash line of .275/.313/.404
• .312 wOBA
• 96 wRC+
• Career bWAR of 0.6

In a vacuum Johnson was a very league average big leaguer across his eight year career. All of this makes the anomaly of 2013 a very fascinating deep dive.

What was different about Johnson’s 2013?

When looking at Johnson’s 2013 numbers compared to the rest of his career, a few things stick out. First off, in order to post a career high .321 batting average and compete for a batting title, Johnson had to have a very obvious thing go his way, a high BABIP. It’s no coincidence that his career mark on batting average on balls in play (BABIP)  was set during that 2013 season at a mark of .394. Many things can fuel a high BABIP, but the first number I tend to look at is strikeout percentage. And sure enough we saw another career best from Johnson in 2013. His 2013 K% was the lowest of his career (21.2%) by nearly three full percentage points to his previous best in 2011 (24%). Something we have heard from the broadcast booth a thousand times, putting the ball in play did in fact lead to good things for Johnson.

These couple things fueled a career best slash line of .321/.358/.457. All things considered Johnson could’ve won the batting title had he simply taken more walks that year. Ultimately, it was Michael Cuddyer of the Colorado Rockies (because obviously Coors breeds batting titles) who won the 2013 NL batting title, finishing with a .331 batting average. Perhaps the funniest thing about the 2013 season was despite a career year from Johnson, he was not the best hitter in the Braves lineup that year. That distinction belonged to 23 year-old Freddie Freeman. The young version of Freeman finished third in the batting title race and had a much better slash line of .319/.396/.501 and an OPS+ of 147.

The aftermath

Johnson’s 2013 success in both the regular season and postseason (7 for 16, .438 avg. against the Dodgers) may have led to a premature contract extension from Frank Wren.

Although things were trending up for Johnson, he quickly regressed back to some of his career averages. As a result, it was less than two years after his magical 2013 season, Johnson was traded to Cleveland for Nick Swisher and Michael Bourn, in an exchange of bad contracts.

The 2013 season boiled down to an outlier for Chris Johnson, but it’s still fun to look back at the beginning of life without Chipper at third base. The time up until Austin Riley implanted himself as the guy at third was a bit frustrating at times, but we cannot deny it got off to a much better start than expected, thanks to that magical 2013 season from Johnson.