re: Braves fans turn away: BJ Upton

It was painfully obvious that he wasnt going to succeed in Atlanta, and the people that actually thought he could be a 30/30 guy for us either never saw him play, or they never looked at his stats.

First off, you have to take out his 2007 and 2008 seasons. They were blips, and not indicative of his future, since we had the 2009-2012 seasons to go off of.

He hit 52 home runs from 2009-2011, which are just over 17 a year, but he did jump that number up to 23 in 2011. In 2012, he hit 28, which helped his paycheck immensely, but if you looked deeper at his stats, then you would easily see regression in his future.

Spray Chart

On the right graph, you see his home runs from the 2012 season in which he had 28. Almost every single one of them were dead pulled down the line, and they barely went over the fence. Tropicana Field is 315 feet down the line, and the left field power alley is 370 feet. Pretty nice for a right handed hitter. Also, BJ was able to play 40 more games at Fenway, Yankee Stadium, Camden Yards, and Rodgers Centre. All of which are known to be at least favorable hitters parks. Turner Field is a more neutral park for hitters, and is 335 to the line, and 380 in the power alley. BJ is not a power hitter, so all those homers that just barely went over the fence at Tropicana and other small parks, would be outs at Turner Field. He would also be moving to the National League, which changing leagues is always a question mark for players, and he would be playing 30 games in Washington, Miami, and New York, which all are neutral to pitchers parks. Pretty much anyone with half a brain, or knew how to interpret stats would see that those home runs would be dropping significantly.

Now lets go to stolen bases. His peak year was 08, when he swiped 44. In 09 and 10, he held pretty steady with 42 each year. 2011 came along and he dropped to 36, and in his final year with Tampa, he was at a career low, 31. Thats not some anomaly. That is a trend, and if you question his ability to change leagues, and get on base, then he would have even less opportunities in Atlanta.

Which brings me to my next point. On Base Percentage. Besides the two outliers in 07 and 08, Upton never was great at getting on base. .313 and .322 in 09 and 10 were below average. He did up it in 2011 to .331, which isnt great, but respectable. Then came 2012, when he went homer happy. It plummeted to a awful .298. That easily tells you that his swing was more erratic, and with the higher homer totals, he was trying too hard to hit balls out. This also goes along with his career low in walks. He only walked 7.2% of the time in 2012, which was 4% lower than any other year. I could also get into his out of zone swings, zone swings, out of zone contact, and out of zone contact, but just know it spiked badly in 2012.

So we have a guy that was going to regress in home runs, maybe by a lot, depending on where he went in free agency. Someone that doesnt get on base a good bit, and that was trending downward. Someone that was stealing less bases every year, and someone that had a career K rate that was hovering around 26%.

Yet Frank Wren gave him 75 million dollars, and we are either going to have to eat a lot of money, or pair him with a pitcher(Minor maybe) and take on a bad contact, just to get him to leave.

I still cant believe people that actually thought he would be good in Atlanta.

Edit:For the record, I really wanted Ben Revere from Minnesota. Would have cost a ok prospect, but he could steal bases, and be an actual leadoff hitter.