Kelly Johnson, 2B, Atlanta Braves

May 2, 2007 @ 16:00:00

By Joe Loncarich
Edited by Ryan Dodson

Atlanta Braves second baseman Kelly Johnson has gotten off to a great start to the season. He is currently hitting .326/.474/.596 with five home runs, 15 runs batted in and 25 runs scored. The real question is whether or not he can sustain this level of performance.

Johnson's minor league track record showed the Braves that he was a good enough hitter to get part-time duty at a corner outfield spot in 2005. Now that he is at second base, his bat should likely have a large impact on the pennant race for Atlanta. 

Johnson has a batting average for balls in play (BABIP) of .354 so far this season, which should usually worry fantasy owners about whether the batting average is a fluke. This is not the case for Johnson, as he also has an extremely high line drive percentage of 25.7 percent. He should be able to keep this up since in 2005, his line drive percentage was 25.6 percent. 

Many expected Johnson to struggle this season as he is coming off of Tommy John surgery last year. Plus, he hit only .241 in 290 at-bats in 2005. The .241 average can mostly be attributed to bad luck as his BABIP should have been much higher. In the minors, he only had one season where his average was below .280 for the season. That was in Myrtle Beach of the Florida State League, which is a notoriously tough park for hitters in a league that is also extremely hard on hitters. 

Johnson is also learning a new position as it is his first time at the keystone, which many expected would also hurt his chances of success this season. This is not his first experience in the middle infield though. After spending his first four minor league seasons at shortstop, the Braves moved him to the outfield instead of second base as they already had Marcus Giles at the position. Due to his experience at shortstop, the transition to second base has not been nearly the problem that some expected it to be, as he has made only one error on the season. 

The one thing that might be worrisome about Johnson's hitting abilities is that he does have a history of high strikeout numbers in his past. He is currently striking out 14 percent of the time, while in 2005; he struck out 24 percent of the time. Of course, this was his first exposure to major league pitching, so it should not be that bad in 2007. We expect him to be in between these two, so expect around a 20 percent strikeout rate. Even if it goes to 2005 levels, his line drive stroke should still be able to keep him in the .280-.300 batting average range. 

We do not expect him to quite keep up his current rate of hitting, but it would not at all be surprising if he was able to hit near .300, while hitting around 20 to 25 home runs. He should score over 100 runs since he bats leadoff for a very dangerous Braves lineup. It may be tough for him to drive in runs, but he should still be in the 70-to-80 range due to his power. We don't expect a high stolen base count as he has not been successful in stealing bases since 2001 when he was in low-A. 

Due to all of this, we expect him to be one of the top five fantasy second basemen in 2007. If he is on your team, keep him. If he is not on your team, now is the time to trade for him. Some owners might feel that he is likely to fizzle out, and the more games he plays, the less likely owners are to trade him. There aren't many second basemen we'd rather have than Johnson.

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Joe Loncarich
Joe has been a contributor to KFFL since 2007.

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