The austere face of Freddie Freeman; the resounding crack of Dansby Swanson’s bat; Ozzie Albies brimming smile – these are the surprising Atlanta Braves whose description is no longer surprising, but partial to a definitive fun run through the National League East. The Braves are baseball joy with a mix of relaxed confidence, even brimming optimism. A brimming optimism that has little been partial to any of the Braves players in the past.

A sort of confidence is sweeping the organization as every player is contributing, allowing each player to be distinctly themselves. No longer does Swanson have to turn himself into an all-star, slugger defined hitter, but a second-year player still learning. Nick Markakis can take time to become more confident in a refinement of his mechanics.

The simple undertone is two-fold; the Braves batting lineup is simultaneously playing at a career high, which has allowed the Braves batting lineup to refine their optimal batting throughout the first half of the season. The dominoes fell right, and the Braves learned how to optimize, cutting their progression time in half through analytical chemistry. Second, the one point that defined their functional progression: they have no fear of swinging, second highest in the MLB at 48.6 percent combined with the third highest contact percentage at 79.6 percent.

The odd perception is that swinging this high would lead to inappropriate risk. And for most developing teams, it has. The Detroit Tigers, Kansas City Royals, Chicago White Sox, and Baltimore Orioles round out the top five in swinging percentage, each with a resulting high swinging-strike rate. The Braves, however, have a 9.9 percent swinging-strike rate, eighth best in the MLB. The magic is not accidental due to a combination of veterans who are more patient and, young, power hitters whose slugging means swinging more is appropriate. Nick Markakis has a 4.8 percent swinging-strike rate and Kurt Suzuki is at a mere 7.5. This does not excuse Swanson or Freeman posting 11.7 and 11 percent swinging-strike percentage, respectively, but it allows them to take those extra risks to optimize slugging opportunity.

Suzuki has been an enigma for the Braves, but one of the most important supporting pieces to their run creation. After going his entire career with only one season at a wRC+ over 100 (Minnesota Twins, 2014, 106), Suzuki is now on pace to break his 129 wRC+ and tie his 2.7 WAR from last season. There might not be a coincidence that these two seasons have also seen him break the 50-percent swing margin (52.8 and 53.6 percent) while maintaining a high contact rate, specifically in the zone (93.5 percent this season).

Suzuki’s resolution has come on the backward notion to stop attempts to hit the ball opposite (below 20 percent of hits) instead opting to pull the simply pull hits for apt run creation. His placement map dictates he is better at hitting sharp, pulling balls, and his hits to opposite field were traditionally drab and futile with long hang-time. Hence, an allowance to be better at playing Suzuki baseball and not a league meta-style.

While Suzuki has added value by changing his batting style, there is Nick Markakis who is playing the exact same baseball, just with better contact and providing better leverage. He is hitting well above his career average in ISO at .160 while striking out remarkably lower at only 10.2 percent of pitches. His batted ball profile remains the same, making Markakis a player benefitting from the simple adage of relaxed baseball and improving at tearing pitchers apart in high-leverage situations.

Ozzie Albies, in his second season for the Braves, has already blown away a good first season, posting a 2.4 WAR with a 118 wRC+ (1.9, 112 in 2017). Much like Markakis, Albies has been a run creating machine with high-leverage situation hitting. He doubles down on chaos creation by forcing pitchers to throw uncomfortably away from the zone, less he turns a pitch for a deep slug shot. Albies has refined his slap-shot hitting by achieving his best slugging percentage in the bottom of the zone; thus as pitchers throw breaking-balls and off-speed pitches to derive poor contact, and those pitches drift, Albies is not only able to make contact, but make derisive contact.

The macro change has come with a micro improvement on finding the changeup. He has starkly increased his contact percentage, now above 85 percent in all but two zones. Last season he was above 80 percent in only four of nine zones. Albies is sending more of that contact higher into the air, a bit of a downside to the slugging revolution, but at the same time, is expanding his placement map. He has placed more balls sharply under three seconds of hang time, specifically under 1.5 seconds, implicating an ability to send even soft contact for hits. The career-trajectory implication is Albies is developing an ability to be a rounded hitter, known for more than homeruns.

That then is how the Braves have become a team still fighting into the July trade deadline; a buyer and not a depressed seller. The sudden power from the veterans meant the younger players had time to relax and optimize their best ability, creating a waterfall effect. The Braves have the best high-leverage analytics in the MLB because they find ways to creatively get on base, and those veterans now have players to send home.

(Editor’s note: this post was submitted prior to the start of the season but it seems rather timely now)

I can’t shake myself from latching onto spring training hype trains. Even after all we’re taught about small sample sizes, I find myself watching games and wondering whether this could be the year for any number of players.

Watching the Braves and the Nationals last weekend, something about Dansby Swanson seemed different. I started digging and emerged on the other end of a rabbit hole that brought me from hitting guru Jason Ochart (@Jason_cOchart) to Coach Bobby Stevens Jr. (@StevieBobbins, BattersBoxChicago.com, GoWindyCityBaseball.com) to gif-ing up everything and more.

I’ll admit, I forgot Dansby Swanson was sent to the minor leagues in late July. The former number one pick relinquished his major league role after mustering only a .287 OBP in just under 400 plate appearances. Two weeks later he was recalled with little more than generalities to sift through in hopes of unearthing what the Braves wanted to change mechanically if anything at all.

After Swanson’s return to the major leagues tinkering began.

Video via MLB.com – 1, 2

It’s a relatively simple adjustment, but the ramifications and reasoning behind the alteration bubbles numerous points to the surface.

“Getting [your front foot] down too early can mess up timing and alter the kinematic sequencing of the swing.” Jason Ochart quickly summed up via Twitter what I speculated might be true.

For almost all of Swanson’s 2017, before his change in late August, his front foot was down earlier than your standard hitter (in the video on the left above).

“For most hitters, the pressure shifting onto the front foot is what initiates their swing. Force plate data shows that the forceful heel drop works as the trigger of the swing and works as a brake to send energy upward through the body… to accelerate the bat late in the swing arc, as all the best hitters do.”

Breaking down Orchart’s points make a complex explanation simple. A hitter’s front foot is used to initiate their swing. When this foot plants, it helps transfer energy from one’s lower body to upper body. Eventually, that energy affects a hitter’s bat.

“Force plate data” sounds complex, but it’s nothing more than a plate on the ground that measures exerted force. In this case, the force from a hitter’s front foot. (YouTube is always here to help as well).

Ochart went on to state research shows that shorter time between the peak of one’s front-foot force and contact with the baseball can lead to greater exit velocity. If your front foot peaks early, as a hitter’s might if they’re planting as early as Swanson was, the effects could be detrimental on the one variable most hitters are focused on.

Stats, however, have a tough time backing up a substantial performance boost solely through the hovering of Swanson’s front foot.

Upon Swanson’s return to the majors in August, there was a strong uptick productivity that lasted until the beginning of September. This correlates nicely with his front-foot alteration but doesn’t sustain through the end of the season, as one would hope a material adjustment would. A variety of other factors could counter the change: production uptick being artificial, fatigue, comfort with the new approach, etc.

But what about other components of Swanson’s swing that might have been affected by this change?

“Hitting is controlled all through the back hip in relation to controlling your weight and ‘staying back’ on pitches. The issue is in the explanation of ‘stay back’. Stay back in what position? With your foot off of the ground? With your front foot on the ground? In your stance? That is where understanding is lost in my opinion.” Stevens took a different route to a similar conclusion that buoys the case Swanson had beneficial intentions, even if stats cloud improvement.

“A hitter must ‘stay back’ in their hip with their foot off the ground or hovering. This does not mean that you lift the front foot off the ground and balance on your back leg, though. It means that we load or coil into our back hip, then as our lead leg begins to stride out towards the pitcher, we want to ‘stretch’, or use our back muscles, to hold our weight back until we decide it is time to launch the swing.”

Stevens’ broadening of terminology related to “staying back” unearths numerous other factors related to what Swanson did. Each of his points made me consider other aspects of Swanson’s kinetic chain, particularly how the most visible change – foot down early to hover – could be covering up other, more important changes to help the former college star, acting as the low-hanging fruit.

So why bring this front-foot change up now, six months late? Because Swanson’s lower body alteration was actually the second thing I noticed, behind another change that caught my eye on his long home run off Max Scherzer in spring’s first weekend of action.

Video via MLB.com – 1, 2

First his lower body, now his upper body. While the above camera perspective when comparing is slightly askew thanks to spring training parks and their uniqueness, Swanson is starting his hands lower and bringing them up into his load. In 2017, he started his hands higher and kept them there for the duration of his pre-swing rhythm. Now, his momentum is built up into the hitting position, yet the path and aesthetic of his swing after his load are nearly identical to the naked eye. This feels like a conscious attempt at relaxation in the box, with the foresight to alter the path to his load as opposed to how exactly he is loading. What could be invisible, however, to my untrained scouting eyes are the concepts Stevens talked about above relating to a hitter’s back hip and launch into his swing.

Swanson’s adjustment is similar in direction to Zack Cozart’s alteration from 2016 to 2017, one that brought Cozart a substantial uptick in power. Some might say Billy Eppler’s new third baseman’s breakout came demonstrably because of health, but Cozart admitted last Spring he wanted to start his bat on his shoulder to relax himself at the plate and come up into the hitting position. What Swanson is doing above mimics that concept – coming up into his load – even if the point at which the process begins is different. Swanson’s relaxation also reminds me of Anthony Rendon’s gradual adjustment, as the All-Star began to push his hands further south when comparing his swing at Rice University to that of later in his career.

Most relevant to my gracious sources, Ochart and Stevens, Swanson retains his front-foot hover from late in 2017 in the gif above.

While the stats seem doubtful a tangible change in the Braves shortstop, numbers can often be blind to progression mechanically that hasn’t manifested on the spectrum of production. My confidence in an improved Swanson is driven by the theory around adjustments he seems to have made, starting with the hover of his front foot to the repositioning of his hands preload. Add him to the list of players I’ll be watching closely in one month’s time.

A version of this column can be found on BigThreeSports.com.

You should do that thing where you follow me on Twitter – @LanceBrozdow.

Who got the most out of the Shelby Miller trade?

At the moment, based on present values of prospects, players and wins? It’s the Braves. Based on the industry consensus? It’s the Braves. Based on which team will be better next season? Maybe still the Braves. How did Arizona get so comprehensively fleeced in this deal? There have been some great articles written on FanGraphs these past two weeks about the GM of the Arizona Diamondbacks. Dave Stewart seems to want to do things differently from all other teams, going with his gut when building a roster. Gut decisions can work. His gut identified Shelby Miller as a good player and so wanted him on his team. But wow did this gut decision miss something. How much something? How about 225 million dollars?

That’s right, I am suggesting that, with present values of prospects, players and wins, Dave Stewart, GM, gave away $225M more value in this trade than he got back. See below for how I got to that number.

FanGraphs’ staff have been using a great contract tool recently to estimate the value of major-league free agents. It estimates that players get better each year until aged 27 then worse each year after reaching 31. I’ll be following their method, which estimates an aging curve using WAR where players improve by 0.25 WAR each year in their 18-27 age years, keep steady WAR in their 28-30 age years and get worse by 0.5 WAR each year in their 31-37 age years. It also includes an inflation increase in the market value for each WAR, starting at $8.0M in 2016 and increasing by 5% each year going forwards.  We end up with an estimated value for players over the lifespan of their contract.

I’m going to use last season’s FanGraphs WAR as the starting value for any major-league players (I’ll discuss the minor-league prospects later). I realise I could use ZiPS or many other predictors of players performance (which offer much lower WAR values), but it seems fair as both major-league players in the deal have some issues with their peripheral numbers that seem to balance out. The tool is an estimator based on current performance, so it seems fair we start with what they achieved this last year. Anyway, let’s get started.

The Major Leaguers

Shelby Miller (worth $98.48 M) – to Arizona

Ender Inciarte (worth $172.91 M) – to Atlanta

Holy cow! Not looking good for Arizona already. Shocked how much Inciarte is worth by this model? Me too. Those wins get expensive. He’ll do well to keep his performance at this level, but I’d argue that Miller has the same issue.

The Minor Leaguers

This isn’t quite as simple to work out. Minor-league players have a habit of not making it to the majors (an average 70% bust rate of ranked players not making a significant contribution to the major league team, according to this excellent article by Scott McKinney). I have used the valuations on ranked MLB prospects from Kevin Creagh and Steve DiMiceli with a couple of modifications.

Summarised, using historical prospect rankings, they took prospects ranked between 1-100 in the top prospect rankings each year and found the average WAR produced over their first six major league seasons at different rankings. These values are in the table below:

Creagh and DiMiceli were looking at surplus value produced by a prospect. I’m more interested in total value. For each ranked prospect (Blair and Swanson) I found the average WAR produced by historical players with a similar prospect ranking (potentially flawed; I’d probably prefer median WAR for each group), then used an inflation model (again 5% per year starting at $8.0M/WAR in 2016) and an assumption that 2/3 of a prospect’s value is accrued during years 4-6 in the majors to find an estimate for total value.

Finally, some minor-league prospects don’t improve enough to reach the majors (they “bust”) so they aren’t as valuable as major-league players. This reduces the value of the prospect. Lower-ranked players are more likely to bust than higher ones so they should have a greater reduction in their value. The historical likelihoods of a prospect bust are shown in the table above (Bust % Zero WAR or less) for different ranks of prospect (again from Creagh and DiMiceli).  To account for the chance of a prospect bust I reduce their value by a factor of the bust percentage, taken from the table above (% Zero WAR or less). It isn’t perfect, but seems reasonable, I’m happy to discuss in the comments.

Dansby Swanson (worth $137.2M) – to Atlanta

• #10 prospect currently (on MLB.com)
• Hitter
• Worth 15.6 WAR on average in years 0-6
• Arrives in majors in 2017
• 33% of value in years 0-3 (at 2018 cost per WAR) – 5.2 WAR – $45.76M
• 67% of value in years 4-6 (at 2021 cost per WAR) – 10.4 WAR – $105.04M
• Bust chance of #10 hitting prospect – 9%
• Estimated total value – $137.2M

Aaron Blair (worth $14.85M) – to Atlanta

• #61 prospect currently (on MLB.com)
• Pitcher
• Worth 3.4 WAR on average in years 0-6
• Arrives in majors in 2016
• Assume only lasts 3 years in majors (due to low WAR total)
• 100% of value in years 0-3 (at 2017 cost per WAR) – 3.4 WAR – $28.56M
• Bust chance of #61 pitching prospect – 48%
• Estimated total value – $14.85M

Gabe Speier (worth $negligible) – sorry Gabe – this trade wasn’t about you.

Final value totals

Arizona:

• Shelby Miller – $98.5M

Atlanta:

• Ender Inciarte – $172.9M
• Aaron Blair – $14.9M
• Dansby Swanson – $137.2M
• TOTAL – $325M

DIFFERENCE IN VALUE – $226.5M

There are a number of obvious caveats here. Miller could be better than this, Inciarte may not be that good, Swanson may never make it, Blair may never make it. However, at this moment, these are some of the values that you could reasonably ascribe to these assets. This is a staggering loss for Arizona. In what business can you lose $225M dollars in one transaction and keep your job? By this rather flawed measure, the Braves have just increased the value of their organisation by $225M. That pays for half a new stadium. Or Jason Heyward’s recent contract. Or the next 3 years of performance of Mike Trout (Trout is seriously valuable). I realise that the money can’t be accessed like that, but still, wow. Dave Stewart might be using his gut feeling when making deals, but he’d better start listening more to his analytics department or he’s liable to get robbed again.

A lot of the inspiration (it wasn’t plagiarism, honest) for this article came from Craig Edwards and his piece on “Attempting to rationalise the Shelby Miller Trade”. I just took it a different way. Thanks to Craig though! You should read it – http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/attempting-to-rationalize-the-shelby-miller-trade/