Tomahawk Take

Going into the Baseball Hall of Fame announcement on Tuesday evening, it did not look great for any other Atlanta Braves were going to be joining Fred McGriff in this year’s Hall of Fame class. A cursory look at Ryan Thibodaux’s fantastic Hall of Fame Ballot tracker showed that Andruw Jones had appeared on below 70% of Hall of Fame ballots and Billy Wagner at just above the mark on public ballots. Gary Sheffield was below 63% and no other former Braves were close after that.

Every year for more than a decade, FanGraphs writer, Dan Szymborski, releases ZiPS Projections for every team. Today, the 2023 Atlanta Braves ZiPS Projections have been released. We’ll be breaking down the projections, from whether or not Spencer Strider is projected to strike out 300 batters to whether ZiPS believes Vaughn Grissom can replace Dansby Swanson at SS or not. What are ZiPS Projections?

With the recent departure of Chip Caray to the St. Louis Cardinals, the Atlanta Braves now find themselves in need of a new play by play broadcaster. Many names are getting thrown around, and with how exciting this Braves team is to watch, the job figures to be highly coveted. According to Braves beat writer, Mark Bowman, the names to watch in the early going are Ben Ingram and Tom Hart.

While we can reasonably expect the Atlanta Braves, on the whole, to be a very good baseball team in 2023, it would be foolish to try to predict exactly what happens next season. No one saw Michael Harris II or Vaughn Grissom having the impact they did last year nor did we expect Ozzie Albies and Ronald Acuna Jr. to struggle as much as they did with injuries. Baseball, in the end, is delightfully unpredictable in a lot of ways.

While the Atlanta Braves didn’t make any moves yesterday, it was still a pretty consequential day for Braves fans that watching the Braves on TV with any amount of regularity. Chip Caray has been a mainstay on Braves broadcasts for years and it is fair to say that he has been….a polarizing figure to say the least. Some fans love him for his family’s legacy, folksy charm, and there are times when he just nails a call.

The Atlanta Braves are set to have a loaded lineup going into the 2023. There are around half a dozen guys in the field that could end up being All-Stars next season including several guys who could end up winning the National League MVP. That is a good place to be. The question, then, is which Braves position player will end up having the MOST value. For our purposes, I asked this question to the team here in terms of WAR just so there is a subjective baseline for everyone.

Surprising news emerged earlier today that Chip Caray was a leading candidate to take the St Louis Cardinals play by play job. We now have confirmation that Caray will indeed be leaving the Atlanta Braves and heading to St Louis. Chip Caray has been with the Braves since 2005. He previously worked with the Seattle Mariners from 1993 to 1995. Caray then serve as the MLB on Fox Studio host from 1996-1998.

If you have watched Atlanta Braves games for the past decade plus, you have likely become very familiar with the voice of Chip Caray on the local broadcasts. From his propensity to think every fly ball that clears the infield is going to be a home run to , Chip has become a mainstay on gameday coverage for the Braves.

The Atlanta Braves team that opened the 2016 season were pretenders instead of contenders. After opening the campaign with a 9-28 record, they handed their manager his last paycheck and called up old-faithful. The Atlanta Braves signed Brian Snitker in 1977, and he’s been with the club since then. At least, that’s the headline we hear repeated every time Snit’s team does something special, but it wasn’t that easy.

It was a reasonably eventful day when it comes to our Atlanta Braves on Saturday as we got some clarity on how Ronald Acuna Jr. is doing and we also got some more intrigue regarding the fate of the Braves’ scouting director, Dana Brown. We’ll deal with the latter first. Dana Brown has long been rumored to have his eyes on moving into a high profile leadership role in a front office. Earlier this offseason, he was already connected to the Tigers’ open GM position.