Originally Posted by
Horsehide Harry
The Braves won't be competitive in 2018. It may look like they will for a while because the schedule is extremely easy early, so if they go into the All-Star break under .500 look out, but the offense is awful, likely worse than last year, the pen is completely untested and the SP is made up of uncertain youngsters and veterans held together with pins and tape. Yes, there are individual areas for excitement: the development of Albies, Acuna and Swanson, hopefully some of the young pitching, etc. But it isn't a good TEAM.
So the hope is they begin to gel a bit in 2019. Freeman will supply about 5 WAR for that season. If you can get 2.5 WAR out of the players you received in trade and 2.5 WAR out of the money that you saved by trading Freeman, then you have covered what you would have gotten out of Freeman. Of course it's not that simple unless the players that you get your WAR out of are replacing players where you got 0 WAR the previous year, like for instance playing Tucker in place of Lane Adams or Markakis and Donaldson in place of Camargo, plus whoever plays 1B adds WAR as well in theory.
Or you could KEEP Freeman and his 5 WAR, add Donaldson and his 5 WAR, eating up the majority of the money that you have to use, try to limp by with a replacement level OF next to Inciarte and Acuna and a catcher replacing Flowers and Suzuki, hope for a WC and watch the team get old and expensive by the end of 2021.