Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of the Daily Notes.

1. Brief Review: Burch Smith’s Second Start
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Brief Review: Burch Smith’s Second Start
Introduction
San Diego right-hander Burch Smith, owner of both a mid-90s fastball and excellent line in the Double-A Texas League, made his major-league debut last Saturday against Tampa Bay and the results were poor (box). He made his second start last night (Friday) at home against Washington. What follows is a brief review of that second start.

Smith’s Results
Because he conceded three home runs, but because he also posted an 8:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio against just 23 batters, there’s a gap between how many runs Smith conceded and how many one might expect him to concede usually. For example, Smith’s single-game ERA and FIP were 8.44 and 7.90, respectively — which is to say, not ideal. His single-game xFIP, however (which metric normalizes home-run rate per fly ball), was just 2.49 — which is to say, much better. Overall, here’s his line from the Friday night (box): 5.1 IP, 23 TBF, 8 K, 1 BB, 1 GB on 13 batted-balls (7.7% GB), 6 H, 3 HR, 5 R.

Smith’s Pitches
As the PITCHf/x chart below (featuring pitch speed and horizontal movement) reveals, Smith threw somewhere between three and five pitches (depending on how one separates the fastballs): a fastball, a changeup, and a curve.

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Hey there, and welcome to the second part of the sixth edition of The Worst Of The Best. Here’s a link to last week’s second part, which happened to cover twice as many weeks as usual due to reasons. This post would’ve gone up sooner in the day, but MLB.tv chose this afternoon to be obnoxiously buggy with the archives, and this series is completely, utterly, helplessly dependent on MLB.tv functioning like a reliable service. Which it normally does, because it’s great, but that only makes it all the more frustrating when it doesn’t, especially when you need it for part of your job. If MLB.tv were to never work again, I, too, would never work again, here. I’d be stripped naked. When the archives are malfunctioning, I lose my cool. I yelled at my computer because I couldn’t watch Jeff Locke throw a two-strike breaking ball to Kyle Lohse for 20 minutes. There’s an ugly side to me, and MLB.tv knows just how to reveal it to the world.

Anyway, I was eventually able to obtain everything I needed, so off we go with the week’s five wildest swings, or five swings at pitches furthest from the center of the strike zone. I don’t count attempted hit-and-runs, and I don’t count checked swings that were judged to have gone too far. That Lohse swing I waited 20 minutes to see? Checked. We’re looking at games from between May 10 – May 16, and of course there are going to be .gifs ahead. I hope you like two-strike breaking balls, because we’ve got a lot of ‘em. And only three pitchers! Unless you count a fourth pitcher, who was serving as a hitter. Whatever, you’ll see what I mean. Let’s get this over with.

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Episode 338
Regarding Mike Bates, it’s fair to say that he (a) writes for NotGraphs and SB Nation, (b) looks outward for affirmation of his self-worth, and (c) is the accidental guest on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 52 min play time.)

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In the 1990s, the Yankees had a pretty fantastic offense. They won three World Series trophies, and would win a fourth to kick off the aught’s. Everyone remembers their great offense. But what might get lost in the weeds a little bit is just how fantastic the Astros’ offense was in the ‘90s, because they were pretty great too. They had the best offense in the National League for the decade, and they would really hit their stride in 1998, when they put up the best offensive team performance in the wild card era.

The decade would start a little slowly. Craig Biggio started to hit his stride in 1991, but didn’t take off until 1994. Jeff Bagwell was great right away, but he wasn’t the superstar we remember until 1993, and didn’t make his first All-Star team until ’94. The 1990 squad saw Bill Doran and Glenn Davis both post 135+ wRC+ marks, but they each missed a large chunk of time, which muted their impact. In 1991, Bagwell would debut, both Ken Caminiti (77 wRC+ in ’90, 97 in ‘91) and Luis Gonzalez (just 23 plate appearances in ’90, 113 wRC+ in ’91 as full-time player) broke out, and the team also added Steve Finley to the mix as well. It was still a modest bunch — the team’s 93 wRC+ in 1991 as an offensive unit (ie — removing pitchers from the mix, which I’ll be doing throughout the article) ranked only 23rd out of 26 teams, but the foundation was built. They wouldn’t post a wRC+ under 100 for the rest of the decade, and starting in ’93, their offense became and remained a top-10 unit:

Plenty of good hitters cycled in and out of the organization during the decade. In addition to those already mentioned, the team also featured Moises Alou, Derek Bell, Carl Everett, Richard Hidalgo, Dave Magadan and Bill Spiers, to name a few. You’re probably thinking, ‘Uh, what about Lance Berkman?’ Technically, Berkman did suit up during the ‘90s, but it was for just 106 PA in ’99, during which he hit a paltry .231/.321/.387. Berkman’s era of domination didn’t start in earnest until the aught’s.

Back to the chart, you might notice that one of the years sticks out. That’s right, 1998, that fanciful year when the pack of fickle mush heads known as America fell in love with the national pastime all over again. Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire stole most of the spotlight, and while the Astros would dominate the NL Central with a franchise-best 102 wins, they would be unceremoniously dropped in the NL Division Series by the Padres, three games to one. Though the Padres won 98 games themselves that season, Houston seemed to be the clear favorite at the time, and looking back that bears out. The two teams finished with nearly identical pitching stats as a team, but then the Astros probably had a little bit of an edge entering the playoffs thanks to Randy Johnson and his general on-fire-ness. And on the other side of the coin, San Diego was not in Houston’s league in terms of defense and hitting. In fact, no one was in Houston’s league that year or in the wild card era when it came to putting the bat on the ball. Here’s the list of the best offenses since 1995:

The team was led, as it was for a very long time, by Bagwell. For a five-year period, Bagwell hit more than 50 percent better than the league average, and he was smack dab in the middle of that streak in ’98. That season, he hit .304/.424/.557, for a .421 wOBA and 162 wRC+. The numbers aren’t even career bests, nor were the 34 homers he socked, but they were obviously numbers anyone would die to have. During the first four years of this run, ’96-’99 to be precise, Bagwell also walked more frequently than he struck out. In the surrounding years, a lot of this could be attributed to his high intentional walk totals. In 1996, he was given an intentionally free pass 20 times, and that number went up to 27 in ’97, and he got the four fingers from the dugout 16 times in ’99. In ’98 though, he was skipped around just eight times. As good as Bagwell was, pitchers kind of just had to take their lumps with him, because the team just hit that well that year.

The player who hit behind Bagwell for the majority of the season was Alou, who had arrived in the offseason during the Marlins’ hideous original fire sale. The Marlins received some nice pieces when they sold off their World Series-winning club, but they received exactly nothing for Alou. But Alou delivered plenty to the Astros. He had the best season of his 17-year-career in ’98, as he hit .312/.399/.582, good for a .415 wOBA and 158 wRC+. Together, Alou and Bagwell were the only teammates to finish in the top 10 in wRC+ that season:

Biggio didn’t too shabbily himself. With a .395 wOBA and 145 wRC+, he was one of the 25 best hitters in the game, and handily the best hitter at the keystone, with only Jeff Kent within shouting distance of him. Just on the strength of those three guys, the Astros had an offense that would stack up just fine. But wait, there’s more!

Patrolling right field that season was Bell, who was still a couple years away from “Operation Shutdown,” and he had his career year in ’98 as well. Bell was worth less than one win in six of his 11 major league seasons, but he managed to turn in 5.7 WAR in ’98 — a career year in nearly every category. In center field for the majority of the year was Carl Everett, himself a couple years away from letting us all know that Derek Jeter is not a star and that dinosaurs didn’t exist, had his breakout season in ’98. His 125 wRC+ was the first of a good three-year run, but it was good for just fifth among qualified Astros’ hitters.

They didn’t stop there though, as the team also had a few part-time players who came through with large contributions. In his 102 games and 342 PA, Sean Berry tallied 2.7 WAR thanks in large part to a .387 wOBA and 140 wRC+. Hidalgo played great defense in his 66 games, mostly filling in for Everett in center, but he also hit to the tune of a 122 wRC+ in 234 PA. Spiers played more frequently than both of them but not enough to qualify for the batting title. And while his .273/.356/.396 line, good for a .337 wOBA and 107 wRC+, wasn’t spectacular, his wRC+ placed 15th among third basemen that season (min. 400 PA), which fits nicely given the production elsewhere. Even an aging Jack Howell chipped in 42 PA of 130 wRC+ action early in the season.

Not everyone hit, of course. Regulars Brad Ausmus (93 wRC+) and Ricky Gutierrez (84 wRC+) weren’t exactly assets offensively, but they weren’t the worst either — among those with 400 or more PA, Ausmus’s wRC+ ranked eighth of 14 catchers and Gutierrez’s ranked 16th out of 27 shortstops. So even they could have been worse. Reserves Tony Eusebio (73 wRC+ in 203 PA), Tim Bogar (9 in 169) and Dave Clark (52 in 146) were also liabilities, but hey you can’t have everything, right?

Teams like the 1998 Astros don’t come around too often. Not only were they so mashtastic that no one has bested them during the wild card era, but their season stands in the top 10 since Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. Led by two should be hall of famers and a charter member of the hall of nearly great, and flanked by a number of other guys breaking out all at the same time, Houston had — when context is applied — a historically great offense. Hopefully, when we remember the great teams of the ‘90’s we won’t forget this squad just because they only won one postseason game nor had a player engage in a nation-swooning home run chase.

Hello there present friends, future friends, and probably not my brother. Brother, if you’re reading this, send me a sign, that isn’t a comment posted down below. Welcome to the first part of the sixth edition of The Worst Of The Best. Here’s a link to last week’s part, that actually covered two weeks instead of the customary one. If you’d like to read about skincare products made from goat milk, go here. If you’d like to read about hatmaker Polly Singer, go here. If you’d like to read about Magic Valley High’s production of “The Yellow Boat,” go here. If you’d like to read about really wild baseball pitches, and if you’d like to see them, please proceed.

We’re covering May 10 – May 16, with a top-five list of the pitches furthest from the center of the strike zone. It’s all based on PITCHf/x, and there are going to be .gifs, in case you weren’t already aware. And a whole lot of screenshots, too many screenshots. Some pitches just narrowly missing: Cody Allen to Torii Hunter on May 11, and J.P. Howell to Adam LaRoche on May 15. Cory Gearrin threw a pitch to Didi Gregorius that was more than four feet outside. Could Cory Gearrin throw a pitch so wild that Didi Gregorius couldn’t field it? Yes, of course, one doesn’t field pitches. We’re ready for the list now, and this week’s list comes with a special bonus. I’ll put it first!

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From 2007-2009, Ryan Rowland-Smith was an effective pitcher for the Seattle Mariners. The Australian-born southpaw appeared in 88 games and logged an ERA below 4.00 for three years running. His move from the bullpen to the starting rotation had been seamless. His future looked bright.

Then the roof caved in. In 2010, Rowland-Smith went 1-10 with a 6.75 ERA. He allowed 141 hits in 109 innings and walked nearly as many batters as he struck out. He hasn’t pitched in the big leagues since.

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When it comes to minor league and amateur baseball, scouting box scores tells only a piece of the story. In mid-April, I had the opportunity to travel to Greenville, S.C., to see West Virginia Pirates right-hander Clay Holmes. Five days later, North Carolina State ace Carlos Rodon pitched the Saturday night game at Georgia Tech. As of today, Rodon is the top prospect in the 2014 draft.

Admittedly, my last NCAA baseball game was in 2011, when now-Mariners prospect Danny Hultzen faced off against now-Padres prospect Mark Pope. Carson Cistulli would shame me in public for my general lack of interest in the college game, but that lack of familiarity is a driving factor for this piece.

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In Sports Illustrated’s 2013 baseball preview, Tom Verducci wrote a great profile of the Tampa Bay Rays and their approach to optimizing the performance of their pitching staff.

One topic that was especially interesting to me was the apparent importance the Rays place on the 1-1 count. Verducci recounts how pitching coach Jim Hickey described the organization’s focus on getting opposing batters into 1-2 counts:

The Rays believe no pitch changes the course of that at bat more than the 1-and-1 delivery. “It’s almost a 200-point swing in on-base percentage with one ball and two strikes as opposed to two balls and one strike,” Hickey told the pitchers.

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Some weeks, there are major developments in the business of baseball — like a team signing a new local TV contract. Some weeks, there are little developments on the big developments. My posts tend to focus on the big developments, but that leaves you in the dark on the little developments, unless those little developments become big developments down the road.

Dollars & Sense keeps you up to date on the smaller stories that are important but may not justify a separate post. Today, we have news on attendance through the first quarter of the seasons and expanded in replay in 2014.

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FanGraphs is proud to be a sponsoring partner of the third Saber Seminar, a great event held each year in Boston. The two-day gathering will be held on August 17th and 18th on the campus of Boston University, and the list of 2013 speakers is pretty amazing. Along with a former Major League pitcher, current executives, scouts, and a wide range of insightful people from various industries associated with the sport, Bill Petti, Dave Allen, and myself will represent FanGraphs at the event, and you will probably find a few other FG personalities hanging around as well.

I attended the event last year, and it was one of the highlights of the year for me. There were some really great research presentations — one of the people presenting this year as a member of the Royals front office presented last year as a grad student, so I think you can guess that his presentation was pretty neat — and a lot of fascinating discussion with many of the brightest people in and around the sport. If you’re going to be in the Boston area that weekend, I highly recommend attending, and it’s probably worth traveling to Boston that weekend to take part even if you’re not a local.

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“Stabilization” plate appearance levels of different statistics have been popular around these parts in recent years, thanks to the great work of “Pizza Cutter,” a.k.a. Russell Carleton.  Each stat is given a PA cutoff, each of which is supposed to be a guideline for the minimum number PAs a player needs before you can start to take their results in that stat seriously.  Today I’ll be looking at the issue of stabilization from a few different angles.  At the heart of the issue are mathy concepts like separating out a player’s “true skill level” from variation due to randomness.  I’ll do my best to keep the math as easily digestible as I can.

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Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of the Daily Notes.

1. Featured Game: Washington at San Diego, 22:10 ET
2. Other Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Featured Game: Washington at San Diego, 22:10 ET
First of All, Concerning a Regret of the Author’s
The author would be remiss not to mention how he’s ashamed of having used the phrase “doubling down” in the title of this post, which expression (i.e. “doubling down”) appears to be some manner of card-playing terminology, but which the author has only ever encountered colloquially, and from which expression he’s derived little pleasure previously.

Moving On, With Regards to This Game
Starting this game for San Diego is Burch Smith, to which right-hander’s major-league debut the author dedicated the largest part of his Notes column this past Saturday and about which right-hander’s debut one might reasonably use a word like “Ick” or “Yeesh.”

Burch Smith’s Debut, His Line from It
Here’s Burch Smith’s line from his debut on Saturday (box): 1.0 IP, 10 TBF, 2 K, 2 BB, 2 GB on 6 batted-balls (33.3% GB), 6.46 xFIP.

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As I’ve mentioned previously, top prospects tend to be a rare breed at the Triple-A level. Triple-A players tend to be guys about which we have a pretty good idea, and if they’re really good prospects, they probably aren’t long for the level. So when a night features two top prospects on the mound, it’s a good idea to go. This time meant seeing Adam Morgan from the Phillies organization and Daniel Corcino of the Reds organization.

Let’s start with Morgan. He has a lean frame, and I’d say he might even be a touch taller than his six-foot-one-inch listing. His delivery is pretty standard, but he does have a slight crossfire delivery. The landing is a bit stiff, cutting him off a bit, and I think it’s part of the reason he pitches up in the zone, inducing a lot of fly balls. The lefty does repeat the delivery well, but I’d like to see him stay more on line with the plate.

Moving on to his stuff, the fastball was mostly 92 mph-to-93 mph, and he was able to maintain the velocity throughout his appearance. The downside is that it didn’t have significant movement, and if he’s going to pitch up in Citizens Bank Park, I worry about that being a problem. To keep batters off his fastball, Morgan adds three solid pitches in a curveball, change, and slider. The curveball and change-up were his best pitches in this one. The curve was 73 mph-to-77 mph and had good downward break that missed a few bats, and the change-up was in the low-80s with some sink and tail, also getting a few swings-and-misses. Morgan’s slider wasn’t as good, sitting 83 mph-to-85 mph with solid depth and horizontal movement, but he was inducing more soft contact than misses with it. It is a solid arsenal, but I didn’t see a pitch that I thought would miss a lot of bats at the next level.

Daniel Corcino elicits some Jose Johnny Cueto comparisons, and looking from a physical standpoint, I see some similarities. Corcino is on the shorter side but is solidly built, especially strong in the legs. His delivery is a bit of a mess, though. As he turns and faces third base, he turns past perpendicular with third base – another Cueto similarity – but his back bends backward toward first base like a backslash – / – from the catcher’s perspective. When he begins coming forward, he seemed to have trouble recovering his balance enough to throw quality strikes. He has never thrown a lot of strikes in his career outside of 2011, and until he straightens out the balance portion of his delivery, he might continue having those problems.

The stuff was a little underwhelming as well. He threw two variations of fastballs. The four-seamer sat in the same range as Morgan’s, but he did hit 94 and 95 mph with it a few times. The second fastball was a two-seamer that sat 89 mph-to-91 mph, and it had some promising bite to it, breaking a couple bats. Besides the fastball, I was expecting a better change-up that would elicit more Cueto comparisons, but he didn’t seem to have a great feel for it that night. He hung a few and threw a few decent ones, but he didn’t miss a bat with one. His slider, however, did miss a few bats at 84 mph-to-85 mph with mostly horizontal movement, but it needs some tightening to miss bats at the next level.

Both pitchers have had a rough start to 2013. Morgan has a 4.97 ERA and 4.83 FIP, and Corcino has been even worse with a 7.20 ERA and 5.23 FIP. The real marker of trouble, however, is in the strikeout rates.

Morgan struck out almost 29% of High-A hitters last season before seeing that drop to 20% at Double-A. It has been 15.6% this season. The positive is that Morgan is still throwing strikes, but his lack of an out pitch seems to be catching up with him. His assortment of pitches and ability to throw strikes with them was enough to befuddle A-ball hitters, but he’ll need a little more work in Triple-A this season. He’s only 23-years old, and he has some time to improve the secondary pitches. But as of right now, he’s more of a 4 or 5 instead of a 3.

Corcino has seen a similar drop in strikeout rate. After obliterating A-ball in 2011 with a 27% strikeout rate and a 6% walk rate that was 4% lower than any other year, Corcino’s K rate dropped to 21% in Double-A, and it has dropped to 16% this season. Even more troubling is that the walk rate is up to 10-11%. Corcino is just 22-years old and six months younger than Morgan, but he’s also not big-league ready at the moment.

It’s good to remember that these pitchers are still young, and we’ve only seen their first month and a half at Triple-A. Their strikeout rates are heading in the wrong direction, but they are still developing and adjusting to the fact that they can’t just blow it past better hitters. As of this viewing, I would peg both as being closer to 4/5 pitchers. Morgan could use a grade improvement in one of his secondary offerings, and Corcino needs to improve his control and command along with a reappearance of the change-up that had evaluators buzzing a year or so ago.

8th inning, Angels lead the White Sox 4-2. Dane de la Rosa starts the inning.

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In a Friday matinee, the sensational Matt Harvey will take the mound for the Mets against the Cubs in Chicago. Though the Cubs are hardly to be considered a daunting opponent, Harvey’s right-handed, and the Cubs hitters to be worth a damn so far are the left-handed Anthony Rizzo, the left-handed Luis Valbuena, the left-handed Nate Schierholtz, and the left-handed David DeJesus. At a glance, you might figure this could be a tougher matchup for Harvey than it seems.

And it might well play out that way, because, baseball. The other day, after Dave Cameron ripped the Mariners for starting Raul Ibanez against CC Sabathia, Ibanez singled and homered. Hilarious! There’s absolutely not a single way to know how a given player is going to perform on a given day. Harvey might be aces, Harvey might be awful, or he might be somewhere in between. But if we’re going to think about the probability, we shouldn’t be worried about Harvey facing the Cubs’ lefties. Because to this point in his career, Harvey’s been doing something unusual.

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This is a slightly different type of article. I will look at how a single franchise has filled a single spot on the diamond. The Braves have had a pretty good track record with center fielders, developing three of the top fifty center fielders of all time, Wally Berger (#46), Dale Murphy (#37), and Andruw Jones (#9).

But when they didn’t happen to draft or sign a historically good CFer, their approach became much more patchwork. Center field is one of the most important positions on the field, and one of the most difficult to fill. Here’s how the Braves did it.

Wally Berger was a really good player who happened to play for a lot of really bad Boston Braves teams in the 1930s. But I will focus on the last three decades or so. From 1980 to 1986, and half of 1989, the Braves’ primary center fielder was Dale Murphy, a charter member of the Hall of Very Good; from 1998 to 2007, it was Andruw Jones. For the other 17 seasons, they’ve had to make do.

In 1987, they started a CF-for-CF challenge trade streak that’s remarkable to recount in retrospect:

1. In January 1987, they traded Brad Komminsk (who’s now best remembered as a legendary tools bust) to Milwaukee for Dion James.
2. In mid-1989, they traded James to Cleveland for Oddibe McDowell.
3. (There were no challenge trades for the next few years. In 1991, they released McDowell, signed Deion Sanders, and traded C Jimmy Kremers and RHP Keith Morrison to Montreal for Otis Nixon.)
4. In 1994, they traded Sanders to the Reds for Roberto Kelly. (LHP Roger Etheridge also went to the Braves, but he never made the majors.
5. In 1995, the Braves traded Kelly to the Expos for Marquis Grissom. (OF Tony Tarasco and RHP Esteban Yan also went to the Expos, but neither amounted to much.)
6. In 1997, the Braves traded Grissom and right fielder David Justice to Cleveland for Kenny Lofton and lefty reliever Alan Embree.)

The next year, Andruw Jones was their center fielder until 2008.

From 1980 to 1986, the Braves got 33.5 WAR from center field, an average of 4.8 WAR a year. The Braves wouldn’t come close to that number for quite some time. Still, Dion James was quite good in 1987, as the full-time center fielder, and the Braves got 3.3 WAR from their center fielders that year.

But James turned back into a pumpkin in 1988. (There were a lot of players like that in the offensive explosion of ’87 and the collective hangover of ’88.) The Braves effectively had a center field-by-committee in 1988, and the Braves never quite solved the position. In addition to James’s uninspired play, poor performances were turned in by “Royal” Albert Hall, a late-70s Braves draftee; by Terry Blocker, acquired from the Mets for a PTBNL; Tommy Gregg, acquired from the Pirates for 3B Ken Oberkfell; and Jerry Royster, signed as an FA for what would be his final season. In all, the Braves got -1.8 WAR from center field that year.

It was so bad that Murphy, by then the full-time right fielder, shifted back to center field for the first half of 1989, until the Braves picked up McDowell. Oddibe was very good immediately after the trade, and the Braves got 3.1 WAR from center field that year.

But like James, McDowell’s bat turned cold the following season, so in 1990 the Braves turned to Ron Gant, who had come up as a stone-handed second baseman. Gant handled center field for most of 1990 and 1991, with a bit of Oddibe McDowell and free agent pickup Otis Nixon sprinkled in. Gant’s glove was iffy, though, and while it seemed to be decent enough in ’90 it took a turn for the worse the following year, so the Braves got 5 WAR from center field in 1990 but only 1.9 WAR in 1991.

Gant could really hit — he was a 30/30 man in both 1990 and 1991, when that really meant something — but he couldn’t really pick it in center. So, in 1992, Gant was mostly the left fielder, with Nixon splitting time in center field with new free agent pickup Deion Sanders. The same was true in 1993, and the fleet-footed and sure-gloved duo gave the Braves consistency up the middle, as the team got 5.9 WAR from center field in 1992, and 4.0 in 1993.

Sanders started as the full-time center fielder for the first two months in 1994, but by the end of May, the team felt like making a change. So they packaged him to Cincinnati for the beguiling Roberto Kelly, who appeared to have speed, power, and defense, and was an All-Star in 1992 and 1993. But the 29-year-old’s best years were behind him, and he never lived up to his 5-tool promise. He was only decent in the two and a half months before the baseball strike, and the Braves got 1.6 WAR out of center field in two-thirds of a season.

So the Braves traded Kelly to the team that finished ahead of them in the standings in the aborted 1994 season, the Expos. And they received Grissom, a free-swinger who had led the majors in steals in 1991 and 1992 and had been an All-Star in 1993 and 1994. He won the Gold Glove for the Braves in 1995, and more importantly, he caught the final out of the 1995 World Series, the first championship for the franchise since 1957 and the only one that it has won since moving to Atlanta in 1966.

Atlanta got 1.9 WAR in center field in 1995, largely because a BABIP-unlucky Grissom saw his batting average dip to .258 that year. Grissom’s BA rebounded in 1996, and the Braves got 4.7 WAR from CF that year.

Still, Braves GM John Schuerholz wanted to obtain the starting center fielder from the team he had beaten in 1995, so, the next offseason, he traded away two-thirds of his outfield, sending Grissom and often-injured right fielder David Justice to Cleveland for Kenny Lofton and reliever Alan Embree. Braves fans decried the trade, as Justice was one of the most popular players on the team, and while Lofton played quite well, he only played 122 games as a Brave, never fitting in the clubhouse. He departed as a free agent at the end of the year and immediately re-signed with Cleveland. Still, the Braves got 8.9 WAR from center field that year, because when Lofton wasn’t playing, the Braves could count on 20-year old wunderkind Andruw Jones, who spent most of the year in right field.

Jones played nearly every inning of nearly every game for the next decade and did so at a Hall of Fame level, as the Braves got 61.7 WAR from center field over a 10-year period, best in baseball. (The Cardinals were second, having had some very good years from Jim Edmonds, J.D. Drew, and the perennially underrated Ray Lankford.)

But the Braves did not have much of a plan for Jones’s departure. For 2008, the Braves traded reliever Joey Devine to Oakland for center fielder Mark Kotsay and salary relief. As was his wont, Kotsay played okay but was occasionally injured, and in August, they traded Kotsay to the Red Sox on waivers for a minor leaguer. Gregor Blanco and Josh Anderson played center in Kotsay’s absence. The Braves got just 2.5 WAR from CF that season: not a disaster, but nothing like what they were used to.

In 2009, the Braves handed the center field reins over to Jordan Schafer, a toolsy minor leaguer who played terribly before admitting that he had been hiding a wrist injury. So they traded for another center fielder, sending minor league outfielder Gorkys Hernandez and two pitching prospects to Pittsburgh for Nate McLouth. McLouth had been a fluky All-Star in 2008 and played okay for the rest of the year, but the Braves still got only 1 WAR from center field that year.

That offseason, the Braves traded pitcher Javier Vazquez to the Yankees for pitching prospect Arodys Vizcaino and Melky Cabrera, who was seen as an outfield tweener, with a glove better suited to a corner and a bat better suited for center. However, in 2010, McLouth and Cabrera were both sub-replacement level, and the Braves were caught in the same situation that they had faced in 1988. They played Gregor Blanco in center field, then packaged him with two relievers to the Kansas City Royals to obtain reliever Kyle Farnsworth and center fielder Rick Ankiel. In all, the Braves got -1.7 WAR from center field that year.

The 2011 season started out with more of the same, as McLouth continued to play poorly, and Schafer was awful in a callup. Finally, the Braves packaged him with three pitching prospects to the Astros for center fielder Michael Bourn. The Braves received 1.5 WAR from center field, largely thanks to Bourn. It was worst in the league, but still three wins better than the previous season.

Best of all, they had Bourn for all of 2012, and the 29-year-old had a career year, as the Braves received 5.6 wins from center field. Then, he departed for free agency, and the Braves did something that they had not done in the previous three decades: they opened their checkbook for a marquee center field free agent, bringing in B.J. Upton.

As you can see, the Braves did not like to pay top dollar for center field. Almost invariably they preferred to fill the position with a prospect or someone acquired by trade, with the exception of Deion Sanders. This may be because defense tends to be undervalued while offense tends to be overvalued, so the Braves could use their productive farm system to address their center field needs by patchwork, mostly choosing to acquire light- to average-hitting glove men like Nixon, Grissom, and Bourn. The most effective hitters in center field were almost invariably players the Braves had developed internally: Murphy, Gant, Jones.

The Braves of 1987 through 2011 probably would have traded for Denard Span rather than signing B.J. Upton. It is certainly possible that team strategy has changed, as many have written about the way that teams have begun hoarding prospects like never before, so it’s possible that the Braves’ trade-and-trade-some-more will need to change, too.

Upton was a departure for the Braves in many respects, the most expensive free agent the team has ever signed, and the first time in memory that the team has looked to fill center field from the free agent market. The ink has barely dried on his contract, so I shouldn’t make too much of his early-season struggles. But it is worth bearing in mind: if past history is any guide, there’s a chance that the Braves will try to solve their next hole in center field by trading Upton in 2016 or 2017.

There are a few different ways I could begin this post, and I can’t settle upon a best one, so you’re going to get them all. Prepare for a blitz of introductions. Jason Grilli was the fourth overall pick in the 1997 draft, and he was sent from the Giants to the Marlins in a trade for Livan Hernandez. He made his big-league debut for Florida in 2000, when he was 23 years old, and as a starter he worked 6.2 innings. In that one debut start, Grilli allowed more baserunners than he’s allowed so far in 2013 as the Pirates’ closer. As of Wednesday, he’s up to 16 saves.

Moving on. Every year, a handful of pitchers try to come back from existing completely off the radar. Most of them try to return and fail, but sometimes they succeed and make for improbable stories. A few years ago there was Ryan Vogelsong, and now there’s Scott Kazmir, who everyone previously assumed was never to be heard from again. Another guy trying to come back is Jeremy Bonderman, with the Mariners organization. He’s presently in Triple-A, and while he might not make it back to the majors, at least he knows a part of him is alive and well at the highest level. Because it was Bonderman who gave Jason Grilli some invaluable advice on developing and harnessing a slider.

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Apparently, a memo went out to every major media organization that covers Major League Baseball, telling them that they should write about the ever increasing rise of strikeouts in the sport. Back in March, Tyler Kepner wrote this article for the New York Times. Last Thursday, Scott Miller did a piece on the topic for CBS Sports. On Monday, Joe Lemire tackled it at Sports Illustrated. On Tuesday, Anthony Castrovince weighed in at MLB.com. Pretty much all of them hit on the same general points, with a continuing focus being on the change in approach among hitters. Each writer notes that the rise of statistical analysis has taken some of the stigma away from the strikeout, to the point that a hitter who strikes out 150 or 200 times per year is no longer considered to be an offensive black hole.

There’s almost certainly something to that idea, as we even published an article yesterday explaining why the Braves historic strikeout pace hasn’t really hurt their offensive production. It’s hard to argue that the move towards more analytical approaches to team building haven’t decreased the emphasis on strikeouts as a measure of offensive contribution, and it’s likely that the modern front offices care much less about strikeout totals for their hitters than those of the previous generation.

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If you knew Emilio Bonifacio‘s younger brother was an outfield prospect in the Kansas City Royals’ farm system, you might assume the two are roughly similar. But Emilio — a speedy, switch-hitting, utility man for the Toronto Blue Jays — and Jorge have little in common, at least when it comes to their games. Jorge, the younger of the pair, is a burly right fielder with a strong arm. He was enjoying an excellent campaign as a 19-year-old in the Carolina League when he broke his hamate bone Tuesday during batting practice. Reports suggest he’ll miss six to eight weeks.

It’s difficult to say how the injury will affect his development. Even after returning to the field, the alleged power-sapping effects of a hamate break can linger. Whether appropriate or not, the injury will cast a shadow over the rest of his season.

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