Earlier today, the Atlanta Braves finally cut ties with the monumentally underachieving Dan Uggla, days after the second baseman served a one-game suspension for what was deemed “an internal matter”. The decision to kick Uggla to the curb arrives shortly after Talking Chop’s Dan Simpson — careful to call the veteran second baseman, “a really nice guy and good teammate who has handled his benching in stride,” argued this was a wasted roster spot.
After much consternation from virtually every fan in Braves nation, Dan Uggla was finally pulled from the starting lineup for good when Tommy La Stella was called up at the end of May. Since that time, Uggla has only appeared in 7 games, 6 of which came as a pinch hitter. In those 7 games, he has gone 0-9 with 0 walks and 2 strikeouts. In each game, he posted a non-positive WPA, which means he didn’t help the team’s chance of winning in any game he played in.
The Braves finally realized they were only hurting the team by letting Dan Uggla start. So when will they realize that they are only hurting the team by letting him hang around? This isn’t a criticism of his statistics alone since his benching. After all, we all know that 9 plate appearances is a very small sample size. But Uggla is hitting .164/.237/.238 on the year, so it’s not like we’d expect him to show marked improvement on those 0-9 numbers in limited playing time off the bench.
This is all just a flowery and statistical way of pointing out what all of us already know: Dan Uggla sucks. He can’t hit and he can’t field.