My recollection is they spent a ton of money in free agency then had to tear it down because it wasn't sustainable and they didn't have the organization to keep it going... then did the same thing again a few years later, only to be forced to tear it down for the same reason.Originally Posted by nsacpi
My memory may be faulty, but that is how it is stuck in my brain.
It wasn't a strategy, but certainly more than lightning in a bottle. The '97 team was built to compete vs. the Braves...and did. The 2nd time was more fortuitous. Point is that those 2 World Championships are more impressive than just the one with the consecutive division wins.
Nevertheless, there is no set standard as to how long a rebuild *should* take. If there were, worst to first scenarios would not be possible, because supposedly the improvements would only be incremental.
I'm curious if you think there were elements to what the Marlins did to win in such a short turnaround that are applicable to other teams.
"I am a victim, I will tell you. I am a victim."
"I am your retribution."
Enscheff I dont think you understand what being a PosiBrave means. I am a PosiBrave wether I expect them to win 100 or lose 100. Being PosiBrave isnt a win loss prediction. If in 5 years we still suck then yeah you can say I was proven wrong. This team is going places in the next few years. Absolute worst thing we can do is put pressure on the front office to win now.
"Donald Trump will serve a second term as president of the United States.
It’s over."
Little Thethe Nov 19, 2020.
well the term posi Brave was coined to describe a certain subset of fans who post here...it really has nothing to do with whether we always root for the Braves or not...it has to do with seeing things through rose colored lenses
"I am a victim, I will tell you. I am a victim."
"I am your retribution."
I'd rather win 14 straight division titles and make five world series than win two WS and be a non-factor for the other seasons.
Also, as the mayor mentioned their rebuilds took a lot longer than three years so it is not particularly pertinent yet anyway.
The second Marlins team was pretty heavy on pitching with Beckett, Penny, and Burnett produced internally. They had two solid middle in fielders in Castillo and Gonzalez. Their two corners were basically internal in Lowell and Derek Lee.
From that core they supplemented with veterans by free agency and trade. Juan Pierre, Pudge Rodriguez, Carl Pavano, Mark Redman, Ugbeth Urbina, Jeff Conine.
My guess is their young core was nearing the end of their control and they went all in with them knowing that the team would not last two long. They hit the jackpot with it.
But big part of that was Dontrelle Willis and Cabrera coming up during the year too.
So you need a young core, supplemented by outside veterans with additional help from your system.
So it takes a couple of layers of prospects and some investment of cash.
The Braves don't yet have that proven core, but it's not impossible to think that they won't be in that position in 2020 when the payroll comes back up.
That would be the same five year build that the Marlins had between WS.
Finding four rotation pieces by then might be the hard part. I'm not sure who the Braves' Beckett and Brad Penny are. Maybe it will be Kyle Wright and Soroka.
The 1997 Marlins were much more built through free agency.
They produced Jeff Conine, Luis Castillo, Charles Johnson, Edgar Renteria, Livan Hernandez.
Kevin Brown, Al Leiter, Tony Fernandez, Bobby Bonilla, Gary Sheffield, Moises Alou, Devon White all free agents. Number of them just prior to 97 season. That was much more of a bought team. But it was also an unusual circumstance as they were an expansion team that had to fill out rosters and behaved early on like a team that would have some money to play with.
I don't get the apparent baseball nihilism I'm seeing here where nothing is real, everything is chance and the FO knows best even if the duck quacks.
I've never said that a "take it down to the paint" type rebuild would lead to a guaranteed WS title. I have said and will continue to say that given the circumstances of the Braves, (low minor league talent, limited money, ML talent in the window where they are young and valuable at the time of the rebuild but likely older and less valuable at the time of realistically competing again), then a complete committed rebuild would be far better in the long run and have a better chance of success than some half assed, appease the masses, create the illusion of competing, reload ever would.
If the Braves do in fact have plans to infuse about an extra $50M in payroll in the offseason, then their rebuild strategy might appear to have some minimal chance of success. Let's say they trade a package for Josh Donaldson (lets say it takes Allard, Riley and Pache) and extended him for 4 years $100M then signed a rotation anchor like Arrieta or Darvish for an AAV of $25M. You might then see a team of : CF Inciarte, 2B Albies, LF Acuna, 1B Freeman, 3B Donaldson, RF Kemp/Markakis, C Flowers/Suzuki, SS Swanson with a staff of SP: Arrieta, Teheran, Folty, Gohara, Newcomb/Sims and a RP of: Viz, Johnson, Freeman, Minter, Ramirez, Morris, plus can Snit and bring in a real ML manager, then you might have a team that could actually win enough to be exciting in September. And that might justify the strategy that they have followed since Markakis and Flowers cycle out after 2018, Kemp and Teheran after 2019 and presumably Freeman, Donaldson and Arrieta sometime after 2021/2022. That team would be risky since a lot would be on the shoulders of Donaldson, Arrieta and Freeman remaining healthy, happy and productive. It's not the way I would have gone. But, an argument can be made that something like that team would make sense.
However, it would only be possible IF the payroll rises enough to allow the possibility which doesn't appear to be in the cards.
Outside of making significant add moves like those, then the Braves main core reliance falls on the production of the good (Freeman and Inciarte - but how much more can they give?) and the bad/old (Markakis, Kemp, Flowers, Teheran, Folty and Dickey).
The young guys will help and the positions that they play will be better. But can they offset the likelihood of the decline in the positions that they don't play?
We will likely know the odds of the near term success of the rebuild/reload after this winter. If the Braves have spent money to improve then it's possible but not guaranteed that the near term rebuild will have a chance.
If they don't spend any money and add significant good ML ready star type (not necessarily superstar) talent, then the near term rebuild isn't going to work which means the long term rebuild is what you get and if you get that then it is almost certain that the better move would have been to tear it down to the paint and build up again from the foundation, taking the time needed to do it right.
Again, there is no reason why the Braves can't spend money in the short term to try and be decent while rebuilding for the long term.
People want to judge the rebuild a failure based on 2017 or 2018, but that would really only be the case if the actual strategy was focused on that. And to date, it hasn't been.
No amount of words can really change the actual transactions and the Braves have spent very few rebuild resources on winning at MLB level to this point.
The Braves are only in bad shape if you assume that the whole rebuild depends on them winning in 2018 and 2019.
If you don't make that a requirement all they are is an organization with several young prospects in the majors and the #1 system behind it with a relatively clear payroll beyond 2019.
Whether it works out is anyone's guess because there are a ton of unknowns but nothing looks particularly bad about their long term prospects.
And, again, I think you are overlooking or ignoring the fact that the FO: signed Markakis to a 4 year $44M deal heading into the rebuild; kept a pitcher in Teheran who would be winding down his contract in the years the team should be competitive again (assuming the plan all along was 2018/19 and not the "reload" timeframe) only to see him regress to the point of being essentially valueless and untradeable; traded young talent for a supposed win now 32 YO 3B disaster only to have that blow up in their face to be turned into a one dimensional, hampered, aging and costly Kemp to badly play LF during the non-competitive years; sign an aging veteran closer who's best days were long behind him in Johnson; sign or trade for three win-now, limited upside and value starters in Dickey, Colon and Garcia and rush almost every prospect to the major leagues who might look like they had even the remotest chance of providing an immediate spark without real concern for the move's future impact. That doesn't even take into consideration the firing of a manager that you have to pay anyway 2/3 of the way through a lost season to bring in a "system" manager only to have the system manager win the loyalty of the team and be painted into a corner for 2017.
The FO plan was obviously not a 5 year rebuild. You do very little if any of the above if the real goal is a five year rebuild. You might tell the masses that you intend to be competitive for attendance reasons but know that it's not really the goal. But, this FO said they intended to compete and their moves show they meant it, much the more frightening for it.
It may and likely WILL be 2019/2020 before we see the first glimmer of a competitive team. When it happens, the FO and most fans will take a victory lap and say "see we knew we could turn it around and we have." What won't be said is the cost of lost talent and talent years to the bungling along the way or the shortening of the competitive window that the bungling will likely have caused.
Folks are starting to lose their jobs. It's pretty obvious losing in 2017 was not an acceptable outcome.
Again, only those with their head in the sand can't see it.
Horsehide Harry (08-30-2017)
If the Braves are winning and contending in 2019/2020 they absolutely deserve to take a victory lap.
Who lost their job?
scoring a 70 on a Calculus I final may allow you to pass the class but it doesn't say much for your chances in Calculus II. Go celebrate if you like but be prepared for another quick rebuild.
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I honestly don't understand your reasoning there.
When you rebuild, if you do it well, you build waves of talent that arrive every so often over a number of years. Look at the Astros. They have graduated some of the very best talent in the game, have traded some of it and still have an excellent farm system and appear to not only be good today but prepared to be good for a number of years. They aren't obviously headed for decline or payroll bloat any time soon.
The Braves look like they are building a team that might get to the level of being competitive but not be able to establish any kind of staying power. The top end of the approach is the Royals, a team well past its high water mark and well on its way to it's next rebuild even if no one there seems to have noticed yet. The middle ground of this approach is the Pirates, a team that never really won anything but hung on looking good for a while and is now well on its way back to mediocrity.
The idea of a rebuild should be to build a foundation of long term success. The Braves haven't done that yet and don't appear to have any interest in doing so.
A different way to say it is that achieving short term mediocrity isn't really a successful rebuild. If you win a WS like the Royals then you probably are ok with another rebuild. If you just looked good for a while and weren't embarrassing like the Pirates, then the fans will probably (and should) feel unfulfilled.
Last edited by Horsehide Harry; 08-30-2017 at 11:08 PM.
I guess my question is why have you written off the prospects the Braves have at the lowest levels and written off all the players the Braves will draft and sign over the next few years?
Swanson is controlled through 2023.
Albies through 2024.
Acuana through 2024 or 2025.
Any pitcher promoted next season likely through 2025.
Any position player promoted controlled later.
To say the Braves don't have waves of talent coming is to write off the majority of the Braves system below Florida and to write off all the players they will draft and sign internationally over the next four or five years. They aren't going to stop accumulating players from here.
I'm not saying it is definitely going to work out. That's an open question. But to say they definitely will not be able to keep it going is based on information no one has.
The issue is that the Braves have had so many prospects bomb out so far. When we detonated the majors it was to rebuild and our farm did improve prospect wise a ton. Look at our top 10 according to sickels from then
1. Peraza - DUmpsack traded away for a bum
2. Folty - been an back of the rotation starter.
3. Sims - Just got promoted
4. Ruiz - Hasn't done much of anything above AA
5. Bethancourt - Traded away
6. Jenkins - Traded away for a reliever
7. Albies - Should be a star
8. Davidson - Development slowed after a successful stint in rookie ball.
9. Hursh - Just hit the majors
10. Jace - utility player.
WHat sucked is that we traded 2 star players and an interesting catcher and got back not that much aside from Shelby Miller. Which that was a great trade turning Miller into Inciarte, Blair and Swanson was brilliant even if they don't pan out quite as well as anticipated.
Stockholm, more densely populated than NYC - sturg
Why, at this point, would you assume the Braves won't be able to establish any staying power? We have already had one wave that so far looks pretty mediocre or worse that has begun arriving, we have another wave that is starting to get here and will be coming over the next year or so, then we have another wave after that one lined up. I'm just not sure what makes you look at our system and say you just basically see one wave of talent.
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