Originally Posted by
nsacpi
With respect to Kemp and Markakis, I hope the Braves realize that time is actually on their side in this situation and avoid acting out of a sense of urgency. With someone like Freeman, time is not on your side because you are squandering his prime years on a team friendly contract while going through losing seasons. With a contract that carries negative expected surplus value, time works the other way. By mid-season, the amount of money we will have to eat in a deal involving Kemp or Markakis will be less. The best case scenario is that one of them gets hot in the first half of 2018 and we are able to cut our losses.
Although the front office does not appear to give much if any weight to service time considerations, I am hoping we hold on to Kemp and Markakis this off-season and that this will result in Acuna being sent down for a few weeks.
Finally, my mantra with respect to all trades is I want to win the trade. This applies to trades involving players whose contracts are under water. If some team is willing to overpay (in the sense of asking us to cover less of the contract than would be justified) we do the deal whenever the opportunity presents itself.