Point taken, but with Francisco being more of a ? than Reed Johnson, I'm sure they tried Gattis at 3rd in winterball so that 80% of the time, we'd see Gattis at 3rd and Prado in LF rather than Reed in LF and Prado at 3rd.
Winterball is just a place where the Braves experiment with their players anyways. Gattis was hitting for sure, so they just experimented where they could put him. AT the same time I'm sure Wren knew he was going to make a strong push for Upton, so Gattis' versatility was just icing on the cake.
IIRC Upton came into the picture AFTER Arizona got Gregorious when they couldnt get Profar. Had already asked for Simmons and Wren backed away. Then when Prado (reportedly) wouldnt negotiate a long term deal and Arizona accepted Prado and DelGado and threw in Chris Johnson out of the blue.
It hasn't been emphasized, but re-signing McCann means we can trade Gattis for that young third baseman we all want.
Really? Chipper and Andruw didn't take discounts to stay with the Braves? Andruw Jones was 24-years old, had Scott Boras as his agent and was coming off 2 monster seasons and the Braves got him re-signed for 6-years $75M or an average of $12.5M a year. Andruw had his dad do the contract with the Braves instead of Boras because he wanted to say. Had Andruw hit the free agent market, he would have gotten $150M easily because of the deals A-Rod, Jeter and Helton had just gotten. And do I really need to say anything about Chipper? He kept restructuring his contract and deferring money to say with the Braves and to try to keep the Braves competitive.
Metaphysicist (07-12-2013)
I love Mac but I still don't re-sign him. We have his replacement and another option coming in Bethancourt. With a lot of our young talent that will need to be locked up soon, this is an easy spot to save. My ideal scenario is if Beachy comes back strong and Teheran continues to look like a top of the rotation starter, then let Hudson, Maholm, Mccann walk. Rotation is Minor, Beachy, Teheran, Medlen, Wood/others battle it out. Then spend our money on a big 3B.
Betancourt isn't a sure thing.
McCann is. You know what you're going to get out a healthy McCann, an 80% McCann, a 50% McCann.
Gattis may end up cooling down, you don't know that. You're underrating McCann's value. If McCann was injury free, this is a no-brainer but it also means his market value may fetch him a little less than what Mauer got.
The fact that he does have the injury ring flying above his head, gives us an advantage in negotiations IMO, unless a team like New York literally has money to throw at him at no risk.
Forever Fredi
He still according to several people (JS being one of them) signed a team friendly deal. He could have gone the Glavine rate and taken taop dollar.
Chipper signed a 6/90 deal pretty fresh of being NL MVP around the same time as Hampton signed 8/121 Giambi 7/120 Jeter 10/189 and A-Roids 10/252. After a great career and very good 05 Chipper signed what became a 4/48 contract and was awesome. The only deal we paid close to market value for Chipper on was his last 3/42
Mac signed the deal pre-arb and sure he could have choked like Failcouer did and it wouldn't have been so team friendly, but his contract he signed was (IIRC not gonna research it) less than the similar deals signed by Wright and Reyes by a healthy margin.
Hudson signed for a essentially a 4/36 contract the same offseason a bum like Randy Wolf signed a 3/28 and John Lackey signed a 5/82. The offseason before saw massive contracts to lesser pitchers like AJ Burnett and Derek Lowe and the year Huddy would have been a FA (2010) saw Jorge de La Rosa sign 2/22. Hudson's first extension with the Braves 4/47 was also way below market, you saw what guys like Barry Zito, Gil Meche and bad Jason Schmidt got as FA. Imagine what Huddy could have gotten. He wanted to play here and signed for less because of it.
And Andruw's first contract was a mega steal, he was super young and signed a very reasonable contract. In FA he would have easily been a 100M+ player.
Metaphysicist (07-12-2013)
Wed never be able to replace bmac as a catcher. I wouldnt go more thwn four years though.
I'm more concerned about losing Mac's presence behind the plate than I am his offensive ability. I think the Braves find a way to keep him with the club (Same for Hudson).
I love Mac but I think we let him walk and try to spend some money on an ace. It is a risky proposition either way.
aka RHT10/Cokeman
If you wanna keep McCann be ready to say goodbye to at least one of Freddie/jason. And Kimbrel. Not only do I not think he's back, I don't think the braves are all that cocerned w bringing him back...
I hinted at this in the gamethread today but this is what frustrates me with this organization. We are going to let a very good hitter walk because we spent money on BJ and Uggla. For an organization like ours we simply can't make those kind of mistakes and because we did we are going to suffer for it. We have to stop handing out bad contracts to bad players and keep the good ones we have developed on our own.
Braves1976 (07-13-2013)