Identifying the Braves’ MVP takes as long as that player requires to make an impact on every game, meaning two seconds. Ronald Acuña Jr. could have a 10-WAR year. (He’s at 5.0.) Over the past three full seasons, there has been one 10-WAR year by a non-pitcher – Aaron Judge’s 10.6 in 2022.
Mike Trout, WAR king of the 21st Century? Two 10-WAR seasons. Mookie Betts, great all-around player? One 10-WAR season. Juan Soto, splendid hitter? No 10-WAR seasons.
Enough about Acuña. (Though can we ever say too much about Acuña?) Today’s exercise: Who’s the second-most valuable among Braves?
There’s a cavalcade of candidates. Matt Olson leads the National League in homers and RBIs. Spencer Strider leads the majors in strikeouts. Olson, Sean Murphy and Ozzie Albies are second, fourth and 10th among NL hitters in slugging percentage. (Three guesses who’s first.) Murphy could win both a Gold Glove and a Silver Slugger. Orlando Arcia replaced All-Star Dansby Swanson and became an All-Star himself.
There is, however, one Brave who stands second only to Acuña – Bryce Elder.
This rotation figured to include Max Fried, second in last year’s Cy Young voting; Kyle Wright, 21-game winner; Strider, second to Michael Harris for 2022 rookie of the year; Charlie Morton, high-salaried Veteran Presence, and … somebody else. Maybe Ian Anderson. Or Michael Soroka, coming off two tears of one Achilles tendon. Possibly Kolby Allard, reacquired over the offseason.
Each fell from contention due to health. Wright’s shoulder began to bark. Jared Shuster and Dylan Dodd wound up starting this season’s third and fifth games.
Elder started Game No. 6, having been summoned from Gwinnett after Fried strained a hamstring on Opening Day. On April 5, Elder went six scoreless innings against St. Louis. He has taken every turn since. He leads the majors in ERA. He made the All-Star team. Were he not scheduled to pitch Sunday, he might have been the league’s All-Star starter.
He was a Round 5 draftee in the 2020 draft, which had only five rounds. (Shuster and Strider were taken in Rounds 1 and 4.) Elder zoomed from High-A to Double-A to Triple-A in 2021. He made nine big-league starts last season – four in April, Morton needing time to rehab the broken leg suffered in the World Series, four more in September.
Those nine starts were impressive – Elder yielded more than three earned runs only in the last one – but not so impressive as to book a spot in this year’s tentative rotation. He was assigned to Gwinnett in mid-March. He started the Stripers’ opener. Three months later, he’s the chief reason the Braves have won 58 games despite getting only 10 starts from Fried and Wright.
The Braves are tied for 15th among MLB staffs in quality starts. That’s a low number. Here’s why: Only Elder (11), Strider (10) and Morton (6) have more than a single quality start. Remove Elder from this rotation and you’ve got a mess. With him working every five days, the Braves’ starters lead the NL in ERA.
(The Braves’ relievers also lead the league in ERA. We say again: This is a heck of a team.)
Elder has dominated without dabbling in the usual sort of domination, which is to strike out everybody, Strider-like. The MLB average for strikeout percentage is 19.8; Elder’s is 19.3. The average for hard-hit balls is 38.6; he’s at 40.8. The average exit velocity is 89.2 mph; he’s at 89.6.
In an era when every batter is obsessed with launch angle, Elder has a groundball percentage of 55.5. His four-seam fastball averages 90.6 mph, pedestrian by 2023 standards. That’s why he uses it so seldom. He has thrown either his sinker (89.4 mph) and slider (82.4) three-fourths of the time. Both rank above the MLB average in inches of drop. Ergo, groundballs.
The sabermetric set will view such numbers and wonder if success is sustainable. That’s not an unreasonable question. There’s a reason Elder was available in Round 5. It’s the same reason he didn’t rank among MLB’s top 100 prospects. He doesn’t throw hard.
But let’s leave tomorrow to tomorrow. Today’s bottom line: On the eve of the All-Star break, Elder has been the non-Acuna MVP of MLB’s best team. I didn’t see that coming. Neither did you.
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