Atlanta Braves Retired Numbers: Who's Next? | News, Scores, Highlights, Stats, and Rumors

Among these players are: Fred Tenney (36.5 bWAR, 44 fWAR), Wally Berger (34.9 bWAR, 39 fWAR), Tommy Holmes (33.4 bWAR, 39 fWAR), Herman Long (32.3 bWAR, 36 fWAR), Johnny Logan (30.4 bWAR, 38 fWAR), Rabbit Maranville (27.1 bWAR, 35 fWAR), Hugh Duffy (26.6 bWAR, 30 fWAR), Billy Nash (26.6 bWAR, 29 fWAR), Bob Elliott (24.9 bWAR, 28 fWAR), Del Crandall (24.5 bWAR, 33 fWAR), and Joe Adcock (24.3 bWAR, 32 fWAR). The only two with an even slight advantage are Maranville and Duffy, who can at least say they’re Hall of Famers.

Even then, though, they’re both considered on the lower end of the Hall’s standards. So, the Atlanta Braves are unique from other teams in this sense. Most of the time, I can scan the WAR leader boards and the top few will be the best choices. I’ll need to skip around more for the Braves, as outside of the Joneses, there’s really only one player at the top of their WAR leaders who stands out.

Joe Torre played in an era with much more movement, so his totals with the Braves might not look as impressive (31.5 bWAR, 39 fWAR). However, there are two mitigating factors. First, as a catcher, his numbers take a bit of a hit due to lower playing time associated with the position. Second, due to a trade mid-career, Torre has fewer plate appearances with the franchise than any player around him in the rankings.

Despite only 4099 plate appearances (across eight full seasons) as a Brave, he still wound up 10th in bWAR and eighth in fWAR. Torre has been rather underrated as a player, however. If he makes the Hall as a manager, he might get enough attention that the Braves are inspired to retire his number (over three decades since he retired, too). As is, though, his underratedness and the length of time since his retirement work against him.

My normal approach is thrown off, so I’ll be jumping around more than usual looking at candidates. David Justice might get support as a member of the 1990s Braves. And he was good in that time (23.1 bWAR, 26 fWAR). However, he was only with the Braves for eight seasons, an even shorter time span than Torre. If you want to give him extra credit for his role on those teams, that’s more or less the only way he stands a chance.