May 20, 2024

Eddie Mathews Has been fired from Atlanta for the due to medical…

The best stat to determine a player’s worth is WAR–wins above replacement–an analytical metric that was not available until relatively recently. The formula for WAR differs for position players and pitchers, and I’ll lay it out in layman’s terms. WAR uses every aspect of the game– batting, baserunning, and fielding, factors in position and ballpark and determines how many wins better than a league average player an individual player might be. Using WAR to help us rank them, let’s look at the top 24 players in the history of the Atlanta Braves franchise, which has seen them call places like Boston and Milwaukee home before landing in Georgia for good.

Hank Aaron was a Brave when they still played their home games in Milwaukee, and partly as a result of playing 21 seasons for the organization, he owns most of their prominent offensive records. But only partly. Because let’s not discount for a second the absolute force “Hammering Hank” was in the batter’s box. In almost 3100 games for the Braves Aaron slashed .310/.377/.567 with 733 homers and 2202 RBI. To this day, he holds the Major League record for both RBI and total bases. With the Braves, Aaron was selected to the all-star team in 20 consecutive years, was the NL MVP in 1957, earned three Gold Glove awards, and won two batting titles. He earned a World Series championship ring in the same season he won MVP and was a shoo-in for the Hall-of-Fame in 1982. Atlanta made the easy decision to retire his number 44 in 1977.

While a lot of the Braves that will follow on this list and pretty well-known names, here’s one that is probably not. Righty Kid Nichols pitched for this organization when they were still known as the Boston Beaneaters long before any of us were born. Nichols spent 12 seasons with Beaneaters, and won 330 games with a stellar 3.00 ERA. He led the Majors in wins for three consecutive years from 1896-1898, completed 476 of the 502 starts he made for this franchise, and was voted into the Hall-of-Fame by the Old Timers Committee in 1947.

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