I let my brother go to the devil in his own way

With apologies to Robert Louis Stevenson, lets get into the strange case of the Atlanta Braves.

Its difficult to find a category, offensively or defensively, that as a team, the Braves aren’t in the top 3 in. Yet they are currently sport a 10 – 12 record and sit uncomfortably in next to last place in the NL East. We all know about their record in close games (1 – 7), and their poor bullpen support, but still, you are talking about a team with a 24 run differential on the positive side, yet they have a losing record.

I thought I would take a closer look at the stats and see what was going on here. If we can chalk up the poor record to the luck of one run losses, then we can all sleep easier at night, because as we all know, the first rule of luck is that eventually, we all even out. Bad makes way for good and vice versa, it gives some reliability to the seemingly unreliable nature of luck. When things are bad, you can pretty much assume that some point, without even trying, your luck will change. Its the silver lining in bad luck and the paranoia in good, it keeps you on your toes while not letting you stay for too long.

However, once I pulled everything apart and really looked at, there appears to be something much more sinister than Lady Luck at work here.

Some stats to throw at ya:

	AB	R	H	BB	SO	2B	3B	HR	OBP	SLG	OPS	BABIP	BB%
Overall	738	105	208	73	119	35	6	27	0.345	0.455	0.8	0.336	9.0
Loss	387	37	90	35	55	12	3	9	0.296	0.349	0.645	0.271	8.3
Win	351	68	118	38	64	23	3	18	0.401	0.573	0.974	0.411	9.7

Pretty easy to understand, right? Top line is the Braves overall performance, the Loss line is their offense during losses, and the Win line is their offense during wins. Generally, I think you can assume that teams play worse in their losses, I mean, thats why they lose right? But this is a HUGE difference. We’re talking 300 points difference in OPS, thats ridiculous.

Ok so the offense sucks when they lose. But surely the pitching is picking them up at least a little in those losses right? So maybe we can just blame this all on the offense, right?

	IP	H	R	ER	BB	SO	HR	K/9	bb/9	HR/9	h/9	ERA	RA
Overall	186.2	164	81	72	70	157	13	7.57	3.38	0.59	7.92	3.48	3.92
Loss	96.2	99	65	57	37	83	11	7.76	3.46	1.03	9.26	5.33	6.08
Win	90	65	16	15	33	74	2	7.39	3.29	0.2	6.5	1.50	1.60

Umm, no. The pitching sucks when they lose, too. Pretty even on the K/9 and the BB/9, but wow on the extra hits and home runs. Not only has the pitching fallen apart during these losses, but based on the earned run and runs allowed differential, it looks like the defense has been in the bag as well.

I don’t have access to line drive percentages and defense metrics per games to be able to break this down all super stat, but I can look at it quick and dirty by errors. I know that errors don’t mean as much as plays made in their zone, or plays made outside of their zone, but it does give us something.

Losses – 10 errors

Wins – 5 errors

The Hardball Times has all kinds of great fielding stats, and when comparing the Braves to everyone else, they are a pretty dead on average. Their infield is a little better than the norm and their outfield is a little worse than the norm, but overall, they do just fine.

However, just based on errors, it looks like the defense falls apart during losses as well. As I said, errors aren’t everything, but they’ve made twice as many when they lose as when they win, thats at least a little significant.

So wow, brother Hyde rears his ugly head in this maddeningly inconsistent team. This kind of up and down performance really cuts into my leisure time. Instead of sitting back and drinking a beer or five and watching the beautiful graceful sport of Baseball, I’m on the edge of my seat wondering who’s going to show up.

I guess if I’m going to choose not to panic, since its only April 24th, I can do so with relative ease knowing that this is a solid offensive baseball team and they are not defined by the .645 OPS of their losses. April can be a month of working out kinks and figuring out where to get your groove on. Its hard to believe they could maintain such a split over the long hall and that their overall OPS of 800 is probably right about where they should be. As things smooth out, I expect to see that be a more a consistent output.

As far as the pitching goes, it will continue to remain a work in progress. Its a rag tag bunch for sure, and if I was going to expect inconsistency, I’d look for it there, in both the starters and the bullpen. If the offense evens itself out, and has more games in the 5 – 6 run range, the Braves should still be able to overcome an inconsistent pitching staff.

Speaking of luck…anyone notice that .411 average on balls in play? Yeah, i noticed that too. I’m electing to ignore that for now and hope that Lady Luck likes the new Home Jerseys…