Not Against Simmons at Shortstop and Medlen Starting
May 29, 2012 at 1:29 pm by Ben Duronio under Atlanta Braves
I had an entire huge post written up about the potential decision to make Medlen a starter and Simmons the starting shortstop, but apparently wordpress lost it and I had already deleted it from my notepad, so I’m extremely frustrated about this.
In short, I approve of the decision. Minor and Pastornicky have not done what they have needed to do to hold onto the spots. Minor started off with good starts, had a few unlucky starts, and him, the catchers, and McDowell seem to be confused with how they want to attack hitters now. His sequencing is messed up, and going to the Minors to get confidence back would help more than consistently throwing gopher balls to opposing hitters. Medlen can move into the rotation and help, even though the bullpen would hurt. Todd Redmond might be the best option, but it seems as the though the Braves are completely against this option.
Pastornicky’s defense has been much worse than expected and his bat has not been worthy of every day play either. At least Simmons will provide value defensively but likely hit poorly. Starting the season with Pastornicky was the right choice, but what we have seen has certainly not been what we had hoped for or what was necessary to allow him to play every day at a crucial position.
It is not definite that either will perform better than the incumbents, but at this point both decisions make sense. The moves probably won’t happen right now, which buys time for them to step their production up, but I would not be against the Braves starting Medlen and using Simmons as the every day shortstop.
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Ben, the first sentence of your second paragraph gives the strong, incorrect impression that this is a pair of moves the Braves have already made. It sent me spinning off in confusion to the AJC’s Braves section and the Braves’ official site. Since that’s clearly not what you mean, you should say you approve of the “option” or “idea,” not the “decision.”
Same applies to your use of “decision” in the first sentence of your post, although initially I interpreted that as “decision as to whether to make Medlen a starter . . .”
Yes on all accounts! It’s not just that he’s been awful at SS, it’s that our guys at 3rd (Prado excluded) have no range, Uggla same deal, so having a plus defender at SS who will not be just giving runs away will upgrade this team tremendously. And Minor, he has excellent stuff, and he will eventually figure it out, but let him figure it out in the minors where 9 game losing streaks don’t matter much.
Yeah I found the opening of this to be misleading. I know the twittersphere was tossing these ideas around this morning but reading this made it seem like some official decision had already come through, haha.
Anyway, I agree on Simmons, would prefer to keep Meds in his current role.
I was thinking “isn’t this Teheran time?” But then I looked at his numbers at AAA and go severely bummed out. He’s regressing in almost every way statistically. Also, poor Todd Redmond. He’s just never gonna get a chance unless McCann’s mystery flu attacks the entire rotation (if it hasn’t done so already). His K/9 BB/9 HR/9 are pretty impressive so far, though i know next to nothing about the guy.
I have very little confidence in Simmons’ bat, but it’s at least a little reassuring that his numbers at Mississippi this season are better than Rev’s were last season. And it’ll be nice to not have a -1.3 dWAR SS in one of the worst fielding infields in the game. Oh how I miss your flashy moves, Yunel–though not your frosted tips or Sloth-esque grin.
Teheran has been throwing off speed pitches almost exclusively at AAA this year. The Braves know he has a dominating fastball. However, in order to succeed at the MLB level he needs to master his secondary pitches. That’s why his AAA line looks poor so far.
Was just looking at Simmons’ stats. Only 3 errors in 42 games this season. Good for a .987 fielding %. Pretty unusual to see a minor league SS with those kind of numbers.
Isn’t he already considered to be an upper tier defensive shortstop at the major league level? Regardless, would definitely be an improvement over a member of the bottom tier defensively.
Has anything leaked about the subject of Wren’s recent meeting with Gonzales? The info. I saw about it from Bowman certainly didn’t make it sound like a routine meeting. I’m sure it was related to the losing streak and team performance of course, but I haven’t heard anything spill out about any specific areas that might have been addressed.
Completely off-topic, but I wanted to send along this link (and I don’t have access to email at work or I would’ve sent it to one of the writers). This discusses Fredi’s absolute refusal to use Kimbrel in any situation other than a 9th-inning save situation:
http://nies.se/saving-the-best-for-never/
Very interesting read.
I should’ve said “Fredi’s, and basically every Major League manager’s, absolute refusal …”
Thanks for the article, Stephen! I know this was something we all discussed a week ago at the beginning of the streak.
I would like to post a question to everyone and CAC about what the commenter said at the end of that article. If you are supposed to use your best reliever in the highest leverage situation and you never know when that situation is, how in the world are you supposed to have that person warmed up in time?
In other words, using Hudson’s start for an example, how would Fredi know to get Kimbrel up the second Hudson walked the pitcher? Because, if he didn’t and waited till say it was 1st and 2nd, Kimbrel wouldn’t be ready anyway to face the bases loaded situation. The only way around that would be having your best reliever basically warming up every inning from say the 6th inning on?
If that’s the case, to me, that is kind of something that is un-accounted for in the “use your best” theory.
Yeah, I had a similar thought. It seems like it would be difficult to predict the high leverage situation. I have absolutely no idea how long it takes a reliever to get warm. It seems like some relievers can get warm over a batter or two, when a pitcher gets into a lot of trouble in the 6th or 7th inning after showing no signs of trouble beforehand.
I’m with you in that you wouldn’t want your best reliever warming up every inning just in case a high leverage situation comes up. However, in, say, a one-run game, when any difficult situation in the 6th inning or later is likely to be a high leverage situation (and possibly the highest of the game), and when you think it might be your starter’s last inning (or near it) anyway, I don’t think having your best reliever (Kimbrel) loosened up and ready to start throwing pitches to get warm is a bad idea.
The way to attack this is to identify one reliever (either the second best or the best reliever on the team) as the designated “get out of a jam” reliever while still having a traditional closer. So last year, instead of designating Venters as the 8th inning pitcher, he would have been free to come into the game essentially at the first sign of trouble (though last year, this question wasn’t as urgent as EOF, Venters and Kimbrel were all good). On the current team, if Fredi or whoever comes to the conclusion it is more important to throw Kimbrel out there to “get out of jams,” he could designate Kimbrel as that pitcher and have EOF or Venters close (preferably in a 9th inning situation with no baserunners). Generally I think baseball teams want to have a desginated “closer” going into a game. The question is should that closer be the best, or second best, or third best reliever in the pen.
I’m a bit confused by some predictions that peg Simmons as a replacement level shortstop – or slightly worse – right now. I just spent some time looking at the minor league numbers of comparable MLB shortstops, and the results were fairly heartening. He compares fairly well to Elvis Andrus, for example – I realize that Andrus was much younger during his AA stint, but he also produced immediately at the major league level. The numbers actually suggest something similar to Alcides Escobar with more patience – which is not a minor qualifier. I don’t know how to compare the defensive abilities of the two, but Escobar was a net win player even with a pretty disappointing adjustment to major league pitching.
Those comments would be concerning his offense of course. From what I remember of this discussion in spring training, Simmons has a hole in his swing that needed to be adjusted before making the transition to the majors. Even Jack Wilson was a successful hitter in the minors.
LOL… in regard to Wilson, define “successful.” ‘Cause that guy can’t hit for shit in the majors.
Wilson had a 318 / 375 / 449 career minor league slash line.
It’s really dicey comparing these stats, but these career minor league numbers: 309 / 386 / 418 are on par with Wilson’s. Those are Jeter’s career numbers in the minors.
Wow….
Off topic but just saw there’s a Constanza batting 9th and playing LF tonight…
Guessing Freddie to DL. Why not bring up Gartrell or Mejia? Or even better, why trade Drew Sutton for cash???
Medlen to Gwinnett to stretch out his arm… Guess he is gonna start
OMG… I just saw that too. Guessing we’re getting one half of what Ben has blogged about. I’m thinking Meds starts in place of Minor’s next go after the day off.
But, in regard to the Constanza move, am I alone in thinking that any opposing pitcher in the majors would look at our 7,8,9 hitters and literally laugh so hard their ass falls off? I mean, like truly LMAO?
If we were still playing the Nats, we might see Harper close the game against those hitters………..
Burning sage and sacrificing a chicken to a shrine for Jobu in Livan’s locker would look less desperate than bringing up Constanza, STARTING Constanza, AND hitting the pitcher 8th.
I’m sure Pedro’s lucky midget from the ’04 season is looking for work.
If that seriously is not a typo and Constanza is indeed hitting behind the pitcher (and not even a good hitting pitcher), then he should have his man-card revoked and be demoted to ball-boy/bitch
Randall Delgado is a good hitting pitcher.
I’m sorry, but I can’t help but think of this every time I see Constanza’s name in the lineup… :( http://www.fangraphs.com/not/index.php/predictable-unpredictability/
[...] to play shortstop in place of Rev. Tyler Pastornicky. As Ben Duronio of Capitol Avenue Club writes, both of these moves seems reasonable, and get the DSSR stamp of [...]
“I’m sure Pedro’s lucky midget from the ’04 season is looking for work.”
I wonder why no team in baseball, specifically the AL (with the DH), has never employed a midget (little person if you will) to play… Can you imagine the difficulty in throwing strikes to such a DH? He might have the best OBP in the history of baseball…
I thought a large part of the reason Pastornicky got the job out of spring training is Simmons’ defense didn’t look to be that much better than Pastornicky’s. If that’s true and since it is expected Simmons wouldn’t provide much offense, wouldn’t it make more sense to just start Jack Wilson and either keep Pastornicky around as the backup or call up or trade for a better backup (or starter)?
Simmons is way better defensively not sure where you read that