With his career WAR at 26.6 (per Baseball Reference), a strong case can be made that Freddie Freeman is the greatest first baseman in Atlanta Braves’ history. In the Atlanta era, no one can really rival him as a primary first baseman. The greatest player to play first base for Atlanta was undoubtedly Hammerin’ Hank Aaron, who manned the position for two years (1971-1972) totalling 11.2 WAR in that short space. Those two years by Aaron included the highest single-season 1B WAR in franchise history (7.25) in 1971. Even that year, however, Aaron played nearly as many games in right (60) as he did at first (71). Regardless, that was not Aaron’s primary position as a Brave. It is Freddie's.
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| Freddie Freeman (Wiki Commons) |
Freddie Freeman has played 7 years as the Braves' primary first baseman; that is already tied for third in first base longevity for the franchise. Add to this, that only Fred Tenney (1897-1909, 1911) with 39.1 WAR in 12 years primarily at first and Joe Adcock (1953-1962) with 26.6 WAR over 10 years in that role have as great a WAR as Freeman as Braves’ first basemen, and Freeman’s significance at the franchise level begins to become clearer. Other than Tenney and Adcock, only Earl Torgeson (1947-1952) with 18.6 WAR in six years can even really be part of the first base "greatest" conversation for the Braves’ franchise.
These other three contenders for the title of ‘greatest Braves’ first baseman’ all played prior to the move to Atlanta in 1966. Since then, no one has put together a sustained run of production at first for the Braves. Historically, this has not been a position of particularly prolific production for the Braves. So, let's look at Freeman's numbers in his first eight years. Per Baseball Reference, no other primary first baseman beats Freddie in these categories during the Atlanta era:
- Freeman is 16th in Braves' career WAR (in 8 years!)
- He is 5th in Win Probability Added.
- He is between 10th and 22nd in
+ HRs (12th)
+ RBIs (18th)
+ OBP (15th)
+ SLG (14th),
+ OPS (11th)
+ walks (tied for 13th)
+ doubles (11th)
+ extra base hits (10th)
+ total bases (17th)
+ runs (21st)
+ hits (22nd)
Freeman is prominent in numerous other less well-known offensive production categories as well.
At the single season level, other than Aaron's 7.25 WAR in 1971, Freeman's 6.45 WAR in 2016 is the highest WAR in franchise history at first base. Plus, his 5.67 WAR (2013) would be the sixth highest after Alou 6.29 WAR (1966), Brouthers 6.23 WAR (1889), and Torgeson 5.96 WAR (1950).
During the Atlanta era, other than Freeman, only Fred McGriff and Hank Aaron* have as much of 11 WAR while primarily playing first base. Freddie has over 26 WAR. On the basis of all this, I believe Freddie Freeman is easily the greatest Atlanta Braves' first baseman.
Joe Adcock and Fred Tenney deserve a bit of additional attention here. Having both played before the move to Atlanta, they are the significant competition that Freeman faces in terms of becoming the greatest Braves' franchise first baseman. In the categories listed above, one or both of them were often listed before Freeman. With multiple years of his normal production as he enters his age-28 season, Freeman can be expected to reach and surpass these two in most of those areas in the natural course of events. This, of course, presumes that he continues with the franchise, but why would fans anticipate anything else?
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| Freeman (2014) (WikiCommons) |
Maybe most significantly for the franchise, Freeman is signed for 4 more years! He should get a meaningful chance to become the greatest Braves' first baseman in franchise history, in addition to already being the greatest Atlanta Braves' first baseman.
Notes and Tidbits:
* Hank Aaron played a total of 210 games at first.
- Freeman is 6th in franchise striketouts.
- Freeman has three years with over 4 WAR (same as Tenney), four years with over 3 WAR (same as Torgeson; Adcock had 5 years like that; Tenney had 7 years like that). (Source)
- Joe Adcock has a fascinating career filled with colorful stories. He broke up baseball's longest perfect game. He apparently holds the NL record for most consecutive games with a HR against an opponent (9 straight in 1956) (source). He also had a 4-homer, 18-base 9-inning game. He won the World Series in 1957, and he could have became a professional basketball player. (a very interesting bio with anecdotes) Besides his seven years as the Milwaukee Braves' primary first baseman, Adcock also had 3 years with between 56 and 78 games in which he played the second most games at first, due either to injury or platooning. (detailed history)
- Sixty-one different players have led the Braves’ franchise in 1B WAR during their 142-year history.
