My Rebuttal

This morning ESPN's David Schoenfield posted a post that caught my attention on his SweetSpot blog on ESPN.com. In his blog post he claims that the Nationals look stronger than the Braves and are his pick to win the NL East in 2014.

Well I'm here to offer my rebuttal to Schoenfield's reasons for the Nationals winning the NL East in 2014. I'm going to address two of Schoenfield's claims, 1. that the Braves pitching staff will allow more runs in 2014 and 2. that the Braves are still relying on B.J. Upton and Dan Uggla.

1. Schoenfield claims that the Braves will allow more runs in 2014. Why? His main reasoning is that because in 2013 the Braves finished with the 5th fewest runs given up in a season in the NL in the last 30 years. That of the teams that rank in the top 10 on that list only the 1988 Dodgers allowed even fewer runs the next season. That every other team on that list allowed more runs the next year including the 1993 Braves and 2002 Braves. He claims that because the Braves allowed 52 fewer runs in 2013 than in 2012 they'll regress by at least those 52 runs in 2014 and maybe even more.

Schoenfield goes on to mention how losing Tim Hudson and Paul Maholm will hurt the Braves because they made 47 starts for the Braves in 2013. But he fails to mention that Hudson went down with a season ending ankle injury on July 24th and that the Braves went 39-22 after Hudson went down including a 14-game winning streak that started immediately after the injury.

He also failed to mention that Maholm in his final 13 starts of 2013 posted an ERA of 5.47 and that the Braves went 5-8 in those 13 starts.

He does make a very good point about the question marks surrounding Brandon Beachy and the newly signed Gavin Floyd. Beachy struggled to come back from Tommy John surgery in 2013 making only 5 starts before being shutdown for good after having an additional surgery to remove "loose bodies" in his elbow. Beachy has been cleared to have a normal off-season throwing program and is expected to be fully healthy at the start of spring training in 2014. Beachy was leading the NL in ERA in 2012 before he blew out his elbow, if he is able to regain that form he would be an upgrade over Hudson and Maholm.

Gavin Floyd, if he is able to comeback healthy, would be a superior number 5 starter especially in the NL. In the AL in hitter friendly U.S. Cellular Field in Chicago he was good enough to post fWAR's of 2.4, 4.2, 4.0, 3.9 and 1.9 from 2008-2012 before going down with Tommy John surgery after just 5 starts in 2013. There's not a team in baseball that wouldn't kill to have a pitcher capable of doing that in their #5 spot in the rotation.

Kris Medlen, Mike Minor and Julio Teheran are the top 3 starters and each should continue to progress and improve in 2014. If Beachy and Floyd prove healthy the Braves rotation could be even better in 2014 and that's not to mention Alex Wood and David Hale as options number 6 and 7. Alex Wood in 31 games (11 starts) in his MLB debut season of 2013 posted a fWAR of 1.6 with a 3.05 ERA and 3.57 FIP in his 11 starts.

Hale made 2 starts for the Braves in late September and gave up just 1 run in 11 innings with 1 walk and 14 strikeouts. It's far too small of a sample size to make a judgement on but it certainly was impressive considering it came for a team that was leading it's division and heading to the playoffs.

It's hard to imagine the bullpen being even better than it was in 2013 but it actually could be, even if David Carpenter and Luis Avilan regress some from the amazing seasons they had in 2013. Craig Kimbrel is still Kimbrel but the Braves could get even better if Jonny Venters comes back healthy in 2014 and if the Braves retain Eric O'Flaherty. EOF is currently a free agent. Alex Wood and David Hale could also be options in the bullpen.

So yes realistically the Braves pitching staff could actually improve and allow even less runs in 2014 or even at the worst be just as good as it was in 2013. There's no realistic reason to expect the Braves pitching staff to regress mightily in 2014 like Schoenfield is claiming.

Schoenfield goes on to mention that the Nationals rotation will be better than the Braves because they traded for Doug Fister to replace Dan Haren and that Fister is projected to be 21 runs better than Haren in 2014. He also claims that the Nationals starting pitching is deeper than the Braves which will allow them to survive injuries should they occur. If Beachy and Floyd are healthy and pitch up to the standard they have set for themselves I'll take Medlen, Minor, Teheran, Beachy and Floyd over Stephen Strasburg, Jordan Zimmermann, Gio Gonzalez, Fister and Ross Detwiler although it is very close.

2. The second reason we come to is that the Braves are still relying on B.J. Upton and Dan Uggla on offense. He mentions that still relying on those two, coupled with losing Brian McCann and having the pitching staff regress will ultimately doom the Braves.

Well it's hard to believe that both Upton (.184/.268/.289) and Uggla (.179/.309/.362) will be even worse in 2014. There's strong reason to believe that both will at least rebound somewhat in 2014. Even with the terrible seasons both had Upton is still a career .248/.329/.409 hitter while Uggla carries a career slash line of .246/.340/.458.

But the Braves still lost Brian McCann (.256/.336/.461). How will they survive that? What he fails to mention is that McCann hit just .220/.296/.384 in the second half of the season including 0-for-13 in the playoffs against the Dodgers. Evan Gattis, who's expected to assume the everyday role as the teams starting catcher, hit .243/.291/.480 in his rookie season of 2013. Even if he doesn't improve any on that line the .480 slugging is more than enough to survive losing McCann.

He mentions that there's reason to expect improvement from Jason Heyward and Justin Upton in 2014. Heyward played just 104 games in 2014 and after Fredi Gonzalez placed him in the leadoff spot he hit .322/.403./.551 in 134 plate appearances. Sure it's a small sample size but we'll get a chance to find out because Gonzalez has already stated that Heyward will begin the 2014 season in the leadoff spot. The Braves also went 25-7 after Heyward was moved to the leadoff spot on July 27th.

Justin Upton after a monster April in which he hit .298/.402/.734, hit just .256/.343/.409. If Upton can be more consistent in 2014 that would go a long way towards improving the Braves offense.

Chris Johnson hit an amazing .321/.358/.457 in his first season in Atlanta fueled by MLB leading .394 BABIP (Batting Average on Balls In Play). While there's strong reason to expect Johnson to suffer a huge decrease in BABIP this isn't the first time he's had an insanely high BABIP. In 2012 his BABIP was .354 and in 94 games with the Astros in 2010 he carried a BABIP of .387. So maybe there is something that Johnson does that leads to him having a really high BABIP. Even if Johnson regresses to what he hit in 2012, .281/.326/.451, that would still be more than enough in a Braves lineup where he's not counted on to carry the load.

Freddie Freeman took a major step forward in 2013 by hitting .319/.396/.501 and finishing 5th in the NL MVP voting. Freeman, at age 24 and entering his 4th full MLB season, looks primed to continue to improve and anchor what should again be a strong Braves offense in 2013.

The Braves won 96 games in 2013 and finished 10 games ahead of the Nationals who needed 15-7 run down the stretch just to get to 86 wins and close the gap on the Braves to 10 games in the final standings.

Even with all the problems that David Schoenfield mentioned or failed to mention the Braves won those 96 games, ranked 1st in the majors in allowing just 548 runs and ranked 13th in the majors (4th in NL) in runs scored with 688. Even if the Braves pitching staff regresses by 50 or more runs like Schoenfield is expecting the offense could easily improve by 50 or more runs even with the loss of Brian McCann. So you're looking at a wash there.

And one last point I want to make about ESPN and their bias. Schoenfield could have picked any player on either team to list as a breakout candidate in 2014, but who did he pick? He picked Bryce Harper. Really? If you read the blog post he wrote it with the mindset that everything that could go wrong will go wrong for the Braves in 2014 and everything that can go right will go right in 2014 for the Nationals and topped off his extremely biased article by naming Bryce Harper as his breakout candidate.

It's a crying shame that this type of journalism, or lack there of is promoted by a network as big as ESPN. But apparently ESPN is ok with this type of bias and if you ever need to confirm that just spend 5 minutes watching SportsCenter or any other ESPN program.