So...how good are the Braves?

Some say the Braves are back to their dominant form. to back up their statement they claim the following facts:

-They are 12-7.

As Bill Parcells likes to say, "You are what your record says you are"

-They are 6-2 in games decided by 2 runs or less.

The sign of a solid bullpen (although i'd argue that it's not as solid as most people think). You can't win the close ones if you can't win the 8th and 9th innings. Record in close games is what killed the Braves in '06

-They haven't yet lost a series.

Great, so no one can play a series against us and win more games than we do...isn't that the goal of October baseball? Even more ensuring is the fact that we've already played 2 series with the Mets, going 4-2 against them.


Others claim that the Braves have not yet proven themselves. Here are the facts they use to point to their statement:


Pythagorean Record is currently at 10-9.

Winning a close one and then getting blown out the next day is a sign that maybe things aren't as good as the record indicates.

The past week or so, they've played .500 baseball.

Oh, I was hoping nobody else would notice. The first 2 weeks we go 7 - 2, now we are sitting at 12-7. Still a good record, don't get me wrong. But we have gone 5-5 the past 10 days. We won't be able to hang with the Mets for long unless we can win a bit more.

With the exception of the Mets, they've played nothing but sub .500 teams

So as we stand right now we are 4-2 against good teams (or a good team), 8-5 against bad teams. It's kind of funny. At the beginning of season, everyone was saying the first few weeks of the Braves season will really set their tone, because they start the season right off playing division opponents for almost the entire month (save chicago and colorado). Now sports writers are using the same fact to prove a different point, saying, these are weak teams, the real test is yet to come.

sidenote...I don't want to spend too much time on the last point. But has anybody looked ahead to the Month of May. May will have some fantastic matchups as the Braves play the Dodgers, the Brewers, the Redsox, oh...and the Mets of course. We play those 4 teams that have been battling for the best record in baseball. It should be fun, if I had tivo...I'd tivo those games (just trying to get into practice of using tivo as a verb). If you really want to point to strength of schedule, let's point to the Month of May, and see how the Braves do.

So, back to the back and forth discussion how good the Braves really are. Is it as good as the first few facts point to? Or are they not quite as good as the second set of facts point toward.
To me, it boils down to which record means the most. Most of those facts involve a Win-Loss record of sometype. But which one means most. Overall record? Pythagorean record? Record in close games? Record in the past 10 days?

Most of you are probably going to hate this answer, but my answer is somewhere in the middle. They probably aren't as good as the top set of facts indicate, they probably aren't as bad as the bottom set of facts indicate. Just somewhere floating in the middle (another sidenote, does anybody besides me say that we're "in the middle" way to much? Church, Politics, now sports!).

I would be a little bit more comfortable if we had a better Pythagorean record. As I've said before, I don't 100% agree with the idea of Pythagorean record...but I don't 100% disagree with it either. There needs to be a bit bigger margin between our runs scored and runs given up. Most people say that the Braves need to score more runs to accomplish this. I certainly don't have a problem with us scoring more runs, but I'm not sure I agree that our offense is the big problem. After all, we are 5th in the national league in Runs scored/game(also 5th in runs), leading the league in homers, third in the league in SLG%, well above league average in OBP (would anybody have guess that we are second in the league in walks). Although there are a few holes and a few slumps in the lineup, the offense is OK (compared to the rest of the NL).

Our pitching is however below the league average in ERA, runs surrendered/game, and WHIP. When I first noticed this, I was stunned. How could our pitching be worse than our offense? Hudson is new and improved, smoltz is smoltz, James is a quality 3 guy. Our bullpen is one of the best out there. How can this be the problem. After more browsing of the stats, i then discovered the problem. The problem can be found here.

That link is the Braves pitching broken down by inning. What you notice is that the Braves have superb pitching in innings 1-3. Braves pitching has given up 23 runs in innings 1-3 and considering that 9 of those belong to Mark Redman, that puts us in pretty good at the beginning of the game. The problem, I believe, lies in innings 4-6 (or really, just 5 and 6). The braves pitchers have given up 15 homers all year. Ten of those have come in innings 4-6. The opposition is batting .308 against us in the 4th - 6th innings(Including almost .400 in the sixth). We are just completely getting hammered in the middle of the game! So what is it about innings 4-6 that make us so vulnerable?

I guess nobody really knows, but I have a few ideas. Inning 5-6 is normally the time when your starter starts to wear down and you start to go to the pen. So maybe (a) we leave our starters in too long and they give up lots of hits/homeruns because of their fatigue or (b) we don't have anybody good enough to get us to the 7th inning, when we turn it over to Mike Gonzo, then Soriano, then Wickman to end the game. I'm thinking of a few cases when Villareal or Yates gets handed the ball in the 5 or 6th inning and they don't get us to the 7th.

Whatever the problem is, I thought it was pretty interesting, seeing the pitching stats broken down by inning. Clearly we are most vulnerable during the middle of the game. We are solid in the first few innings. We haven't necessarily been awesome in the late innings (41 of 86 walks come in the late innings). But that isn't to the fault of wickman or soriano. The problem there is when McBride or Molyer would come in and turn a 7-1 braves lead into a 7-5 wickman save. The game is pretty much decided by that time anyways, so I didn't read too much into the 7-9 inning stats, they are so different from Wickman and soriano's stats.

In case your curious, here is the runs given up compared to runs scored broken down by 3 inning segments:

Runs given up Runs scored

innings 1-3 23 29
innings 4-6 34 26
innings 7-9 30 35

I realize several will disagree with me that the pitching is more of a problem than the offense. They'll point to the LF and 1B platoons and show they're lack of production. That's not incorrect. 1b and LF should step up, i don't disagree that we need more production from those slots. We really do! However, i feel like a bigger problem is getting to the 8th and 9th after our starter comes out. Or perhaps our bullpen is not as solid as Braves fans including me think.

Anyways, sorry this one was kind of wordy (and possibly a bit on the boring side). I learned a lot while browsing around looking at the stat distribution by inning. Tonight redman goes up against the Marlins, so I'm worried this might be the first series we lose. We'll see how it goes!