The Braves were one of the top scoring teams in the NL even with our 6-win June, Chipper and
McCann's injuries, and no real leadoff man. So when I hear people saying that the Laroche trade killed our offense and the doubters about the right side of our infield I feel I need to respond. The skeptics of Kelly Johnson at second may have a point about his defense but you can’t knock his bat. He may not have the speed of Jose Reyes or the plate discipline of Kevin Youkilis but he is a perfect option for the top of the lineup. He is a .281 career minor league hitter with a .366 OBP and capable of double digits in homers and steals. By the way, that OBP is higher than the likes of Jose Reyes, Jimmy Rollins, David Eckstein, Johnny Damon, Hanley Ramirez, and a host of other notable leadoff men. We aren’t looking at one of the flashiest leadoff men here, but he will be effective.
Renteria did tail off a bit last year but you can’t complain about the overall stats. His ability to drive the ball to the opposite field is a great asset and I don’t really see a more perfect number two hitter besides Derek Jeter in baseball today. I was a bit skeptical after the Red Sox catastrophe with him, but I think you can all agree that watching Marte flop and Renteria bounce back gave us only more confidence in the genius of John Schuerholz.
We haven’t seen Chipper in 140 games sine ’03 but hopefully these new cleats that Chipper will be donning will help his chronic foot problem and get him back out for 140 games like he is predicting. If you stretch his stats to 140 games, Chipper would have landed himself smack dab in the middle of the MVP race. People seem to overlook that in just over 400 Abs he hit .324 with an OPS of 1.005. I would be happy with 130 games from Chipper and Aybar playing the rest. Aybar seems to be capable of a .300 average so we should get pretty solid production even on his days of rest. At 130 games at last year’s rate we are looking at around 31 homers and 102 RBIs, but with a capable leadoff man in front of him I see no reason why that number shouldn’t hit 115. That would certainly be near the top of the list for third basemen.
Hopefully this won’t be the last year of our cleanup hitter, but I guess we have to prepare for the worst. Fortunately after dropping ten pounds and going into his contract year I think we may see a career year for Andruw. After watching Soriano tear up RFK in his walk year I guess my hopes may be a bit too high, but this is as good a year as ever for Andruw to make another run at that MVP. In ’05 he had his monster power year, last year he actually started hitting with runners on, and this year if he could put it all together, is 50 HRs and 150 RBIs too far out of the question? His defense is one of the only constants this team has experienced lately and even though people put him down outside of the organization for being bigger than his younger years, he still makes it look easy and is in a class of his own defensively (although Ichiro may give him a run in his first year in center).
In ’05 Francoeur was the wonder child of Atlanta and last year it was McCann with good reason. Catcher isn’t a position where much is traditionally expected offensively, but with the best offensive catcher in baseball, I think we are officially spoiled. Brian supposedly added some upper body strength this offseason and if he stays healthy I think he can hit .320 with 30 HRs and 100 RBIs at least. Salty has already been pushed out of Atlanta’s future plans behind the plate so McCann must be doing something right.
I guess I can’t really be too disappointed in his .293 OBP after Frenchy hit 29 HRs, knocked in 103. His step forward this year is that he became the guy all of the Braves fans wanted up when the game was on the line. The most interesting news that has gone under the radar is the Terry Pendleton is working on a new stance with Jeff that would widen his base and keep his head from moving as much. Sound familiar? It is very close to what TP did with Andruw that led to his breakout year in ’05. I am not saying Francoeur will hit 50+ homers next year, but maybe we could see a surge in power to the 40 HR mark? One can always hope.
Thorman is a personal favorite of mine, so I seem to be a little higher on him than most. I wasn’t that impressed in his time in Atlanta, but his track record tells us he should improve drastically now that he is in his second year here. His first year in A+ he hit .243, the next year it was up to .299; his first year in AA he hit .252, the second it shot up to .305; his first year in AAA it was .276, last year it rose to .298 and now his first taste of the majors he hit .234. Are you sensing a pattern here? He may not hit 30 HRs or .300, but I don’t think .280 with 25 HRs is out of the question. The power is definitely there and it is nice to see a player that runs every ball out for a change. Early sleeper for Rookie of the Year in my opinion.
The left field spot would take too much time to get into all the candidates with Diaz, Wilson, and Langerhans as the favorites to get the majority of the playing time out there. Instead I am going to focus on a guy who is the underdog at spring training; Gregor Blanco. I have always been a fan of having almost a second leadoff man in the last spot. Get on, steal a base maybe, get bunted over, and now the leadoff man is a hit away from another run. We would sacrifice any power but would have a number eight hitter who hit .290 with a .403 OBP in AAA last year and over 30 steals. One thing that Blanco doesn’t bring to the table that Wilson would… that awesome mullet.
