Braves sign Drew Smyly

[Freshmaker]

1/11 - rotation officially upgraded

[thethe]

Looked great for giants last year.

Love the type of moves AA makes.

[UNCBlue012]

Meh. Not bad, not great... fine with me tbh.

[bravesfanforlife88]

Presumably that is a large chunk of payroll. Decent ERA and n a pitcher friendly park. What were his peripherals?

[MadduxFanII]

A lot of weight placed on 2020 performance -- he was pretty horrifyingly bad in 2019. I don't, in isolation, mind the idea of adding Drew Smyly, but $11 million...well, maybe it means the budget crunch won't be so severe?

[zbhargrove]

Out of the box option. Depending on how much money is left could be a high risk high reward deal. Injury plagued career.

[NYCBrave]

1/11 - rotation officially upgraded

$11 million?? That doesn't seem accurate. What is really the upside here? Seems we could have got equal upside at a much lower price if we had let this market play out.

[Buzzworm]

Ya I echo the fact that until we know how much payroll we have to spend, I can’t really say how I feel about this signing.
Either we are not going to cut payroll like we’ve been led to believe or AA just believes this is our best shot to improve the rotation.

[SidSlid92]

We don’t desire to win in October. $11 million for Smyly???

[chop2chip]

Did not have him on my radar, but could be a good upside play. He also might only pitch 40 innings next year. He’a always injured.

Assuming a payroll reduction, I really don’t discern the difference between this and the Hamels signing.

[Chico]

AA and Farhan Zaidi are good friends. I assume AA put his due diligence in here and got a good report on Smyly.

[SidSlid92]

Brad Hand not worth $10m but Smyly worth $11m. Makes perfect sense.

[Super]

$11M seems like a lot, even for the best-case scenario with Smyly.

[PawPawMaxwell]

If AA has $11M to spend on a back end starter says a lot IMO. With crucial void in the OF and C and DH still an unknown coupled with the possible need of 3d upgrade.....................

[50PoundHead]

I don't mind the signing except for the money. $11 million? I thought this off-season was going to see more judicious spending across major league baseball. You wouldn't think that from this signing.

[Carp]

11 million? Really? Is there something I'm missing here? The last time he was good and pitched more 100 innings in the same year was 2014. In fact, he's pitched over 100 innings only three times total in 8 years.

Was AA drunk last night?

[Super]

i have to believe AA has more money to play with than we've assumed if he's dropping $11M on Drew Smyly at this point in the offseason.

[CyYoung31]

I’ve always liked Smyly.

11 million seems like a lot for a guy who hasn’t pitched much in the last few years, but considering he’s only a back of the rotation option, this gives me hope that payroll isn’t going to take a dive.

[PawPawMaxwell]

i have to believe AA has more money to play with than we've assumed if he's dropping $11M on Drew Smyly at this point in the offseason.

Two key words in your post: "we've assumed". Lazy me, but did Smyly not have TJ surgery recently (?)?

[50PoundHead]

A lot of weight placed on 2020 performance -- he was pretty horrifyingly bad in 2019. I don't, in isolation, mind the idea of adding Drew Smyly, but $11 million...well, maybe it means the budget crunch won't be so severe?

Horrifyingly bad in 2019 and didn't pitch at all in the majors in 2017 and 2018. Given that and the dicey nature of the 2020 season, it's been quite awhile since Smyly was remotely good and/or healthy.