Carty, Tenney to enter Braves Hall of Fame

This story was excerpted from Mark Bowman’s Braves Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

This will be a special weekend for Rico Carty, who was one of the most talented hitters the Braves had during their first years in Atlanta.

Carty and Fred Tenney will be inducted into the Braves’ Hall of Fame during a pregame ceremony before Saturday night’s game against the Giants. This will be part of the Alumni Weekend activities that will begin tonight with a pregame parade through The Battery.

Carty’s injury-plagued tenure with the Braves spanned from 1963-72. He ranks first among Braves left fielders in Fangraphs’ Wins Above Replacement Model (25.1) and Baseball Reference’s Wins Above Replacement Model (23.2).

Still, when you argue whether he was the best Braves’ left fielder of all-time, you must account for his below-average defensive reputation.

How good was Carty offensively? The 147 wRC+ he produced from 1964-71 ranked second among MLB left fielders with min. 2,500 PAs, trailing only Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski (149). The talented outfielder finished second in balloting for the '64 National League Rookie of the Year Award and established himself as one of the game’s best hitters before missing all of 1968 because of tuberculosis.

Carty finished 13th in balloting for the 1969 NL MVP Award and 10th after winning a batting title with the .366 average he produced for the 1970 Braves. He earned a place in the NL’s starting lineup via write-in All-Star votes that year.

Carty’s career-best 171 OPS+ from the 1970 season is the third-highest mark ever constructed by a Braves player over at least 130 games during the Atlanta era. Hank Aaron trumped this total four times in his career, including twice ('69 and '71) after the club moved from Milwaukee.

Unfortunately, Carty’s tenure was tarnished by a clubhouse fight he had with Ron Reed and the punches he exchanged with Aaron on a team flight in 1967. But you can’t deny the production he provided, despite dealing with multiple ailments during his days with the Braves. He missed '71 with a fractured kneecap, and he was labeled by some to be a headache by the time the Braves traded him after the '72 season.

As for Tenney, he played 15 seasons while the club was in Boston. He ranks fifth in franchise history in runs (1,134), fourth in franchise history in hits (1,994), and fifth in franchise history in stolen bases (260).

His Wikipedia page says he was “one of the best defensive first basemen of all-time.” His final season was 1911.