"For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal."
Ventura's Stolen Bases
GovClintonTyree (11-21-2017)
Has there EVER been a statement and question a certain someone should absolutely never have made and asked publicly more than...
Kinda pathetic to see yourself as a message board knight in shining armor. How impotent does someone have to be in real life to resort to playing hero on a message board?
The problem is we don't have that much talent to trade. We could do the extreme re-build that Horsehide Harry has suggested and move Freeman, but a team only gets value back when it's willing buyer-willing seller scenario. If the Braves go full re-build, everyone will know they are a motivated seller and you don't get value back in that instance. To get more than value back, you have to have motivated buyer. I just see a bunch of low-ball offers for Freeman and Inciarte.
"For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely looking cannibal."
The fact that several other scouts said most other teams are doing this is why we need either an integrated draft with US born players or a separate international draft. This foolishness needs to stop.
50PoundHead (11-21-2017)
There in lies the rub.
Though I personally think that Freeman should be traded, he deserves a chance to play for a winner. Yankees need a 1B pretty badly if we could get Torres and a few other top prospects that's probably all we can hope for right now. We'll probably see a slight uptick in talent next year and may even contend in the next year and and the year after but might as well blow it up and prepare to be good when Acuna, Albies, etc. are ready. No reason to rush anyone. No veteran pitchers just have young guys who if they do well we trade them.
Not to be the ultimate pessimist but we lost the best asset to bring in young talent. We may not feel this sting for 5-7 years but we'll feel it incredibly hard without going full rebuild.
That or go the other way and guy the farm and make a run. Try to flip the bird at the commissioner and spend big in free agency and then later sell thema ll off and rebuild Marlins style.
Stockholm, more densely populated than NYC - sturg
jpx7 (11-21-2017)
I have no idea whether it was a serious offer or not, but the Braves are damn lucky Coppy didn't actually buy Waters that car.
So who wins the guess the penalty contest? Who had "prison gang raped by Bruno the wonder dick and his band of 40?"
50PoundHead (11-21-2017), DaneHill (11-21-2017), Garmel (11-21-2017), zedsdead (11-21-2017)
I can't say I expected it to be this bad. But I expected scorched earth to an extent. We got scorched earth, then salting of the grounds and poisoning of the wells .
Sure MLB saw a chance to stick it in a team a. not a sacred cow (Boston, NY teams, LAD, Cubs, Cards, etc.) and b. not a team so small they put them in danger of folding altogether (Tampa, Minnesota, Marlins, etc.). The Braves were just right - mid market team without a lot of national media support, in the hated south, smug from the whole 1990's success, with disinterested owners and upper management more interested in legacy than future success.
But, anybody with any intelligence should know that the Braves have long sat in that position of vulnerability. It's not like it's new.
MLB went way overboard because they could.
But it's the Braves FO management that let them by believing in their own infallibility.
This whole episode stems from the idea that the Braves had that they were smarter than everyone else, not only in baseball, but virtually any sport ever conceived. They thought they could rebuild and compete while doing it all while doing it on a mid to small size budget.
And it didn't work and now they are caught and paying the price.
The short term window isn't much changed by the losses incurred. They still have an outside chance at producing a marginally talented team in the next 2-3 years given the current and expected budget. Will it be a WS type team? No, of course not. Not enough talent to grow from within and now not enough talent to add from outside and not enough money to buy through mistakes.
Best bet is to burn it all down and build again. The right way this time.
Braves cannot give a bonus greater than $10,000 in the 2019-2020 signing year. I hear they are scouting this guy because that's about all they will be able to afford.
This makes the margin of error much smaller with attempting to compete...it makes it really just 2019-2022, maybe even just 2021. Everything would have to come together perfectly for it to work and it really may not be worth it.
I might just blow it up to smithereens to stick it to MLB if I was in the Braves shoes. It might not be worth it to deal with a small margin of error for a few playoff appearances. Trade everyone outside of the youngest side of the team, fill in with filler, and tank hard for 2018 and 2019. Prepare for when Ozzie Albies and Ronald Acuna are really going to be in their prime.
Aggression with prospects is fine, but being stupid is not. There should be a way to find a happy medium between a Pirates like idea of being overly cautious with prospects and going stupidly fast with prospects.
FreemanFan (11-22-2017), Horsehide Harry (11-21-2017)