Heyman - Braves expected to shop veteran outfielders

Enscheff said:
Agreed.

We have seen what no-glove sluggers have signed for lately...about $10M total on 1 a year deal. Kemp is owed almost $40M. The math is easy.

I'm convinced Kemp can be productive if managed like a catcher and subbed for defensively at the end of games.

Markakis can hold down a spot for another year. Maybe dump him at the deadline for a nothing return.

Might as well keep both. There's no reason Acuna can't compile a few hundred more AAA PAs other than the FO trying to rush the competitive window and save their jobs.
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I agree.

Honestly I'd put them as a platoon in LF and just eat the money. I think it could be a decent platoon and having that bat off the bench would be solid. The money is spent, I don't care how it looks. Ideally you'd pay your 4th OF 500K and a multi WAR starter 10+ million. It's the same money, just in reverse if Acuna is in RF and Neck is on the bench. Braves always like spending money on vet clubhouse guys anyway. Better Neck at 11 million than Bonifacio. Acuna gives you a back up CF option so you don't have to have on of those.

IIRC if we just cut Olivera for the suckage and the criminal behavior we were out 30 million total ending in 2020. Now we owe Kemp 36 million ending in 19. I personally would feel victory for any deal that causes us to eat less than 30 million.

I know Kemp is bad. But it does seem reasonable that there would be an AL team who could use him at 2/12-15. If we would be willing (not sure we are) to admit the mistake we could dump him and eat 20-25 million. If that's the case we saved some money from Olivera and go it off the books a year early......SUCCESS.

It seems like Acuna is going to be RF early, if not opening day. I'd honestly prefer LF to be some combination/platoon of Lane Adams/Comargo/Neck/Dustin Peterson. Ship Kemp off and eat 25 million and let Neck be the club house guy and Eric Hinske PH. Neck is still a decent hitter who gets the bat on the ball and he'd be great to PH late when you have runners in scoring position. Honestly 11 million is that much, especially if you are paying the minimum at LF, RF, 3B, 2B and SS.
 
Still think Markakis back to the Orioles to keep them on the fringes of competitive for the last year they control Machado makes sense. Eating the money ($3 million) ought to make Markakis worth a 45 FV prospect and would make the trade salary-neutral for Baltimore since they'd be replacing Seth Smith with Markakis for roughly the same money - not to mention bringing back a fan-favorite. If we could get Jomar Reyes or D. J. Stewart back for him, I'd pounce - Stewart quietly regained "prospect instead of suspect" status this year IMO.

Platoon Kemp and Adams in LF and play Acuna if and only if you can unload Markakis and spend the savings on somebody like Cobb on a three year deal or start working on extensions for the kids.
 
MLBTR also agrees with how worthless these guys are:

Super braves fan
2:09 Who's more likely to go...... markakis or Kemp... what's the possible return

Jeffrey Todd
2:09 Hoo boy. Neither?
2:10 Call me crazy, but I don't really expect the Braves to clear room for Acuna over the winter. It's not like they can't just wait and do that whenever it seems advisable.
2:11 Clearly, ATL would be willing to offload either player. But there just isn't going to be much interest. And I think it would be silly to put Acuna on the opening day roster and burn up a year of control.
2:12 Return for Markakis or Kemp, btw, will be cost savings. Both contracts are under water.
 
Southcack77 said:
If the Braves had never traded for Oliveira they very well may still have agreed to let the Padres pay them some money to take on Kemp.

I really don't think those trades have a whole lot of cause and effect besides Oliveira not being able to fill a roster spot and that contributing to the Braves needing to find some pop to add to a lineup that was trapped in a wet paper bag and couldn't get out.
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Yes, the Braves could have still targeted Kemp if they never would have made the HO deal. And a deal like that would show the Braves owing Kemp something around ~10 million a year and while that's not great by any means it could be easily moved.
 
zitothebrave said:
The Kemp trade was done to get rid of Olivera cash. You may be right as we may have traded a different low value asset like Markakis, but we'd still be better off.
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I'm either looking at the Kemp trade really weird or everyone else is. I guess it is me, but I can't help it.

At the time of the trade

1) Kemp was a player the Padres were desperate to get rid of to the extent they would pay a team a ton of money to get him off their hands and

2) Oliveira wasn't a player or an asset, he was an obligation for a stream of payments through 2020.

If Oliveira never existed, the Padres would still have probably paid the Braves 30 million or whatever over the balance of his contract in return for a bag of practice balls.

As it was, they agreed to pay the Braves 30 million in the form of taking on the obligation for the stream of payments to Oliveira.

I just don't really like framing the Kemp trade as being about Oliveira. He really was irrelevant to the Padres. His relevance to the Braves was mostly that he hadn't solved any sort of offensive issue and the opportunity cost of trading for Oliveira prevented them from having done anything else to help the offense.

But for the sake of argument, if the Braves offense had been in the same place even if they had never traded for Oliveira, I still think they might have acquired Kemp.

Because they got Kemp for nothing except the willingness to pay most of his salary. And acquiring a power hitter who could slot into the lineup and provide some name recognition apparently seemed valuable to the Braves at the time. The most charitable way of looking at it for the front office is to look at it strictly as payroll reduction in 2020 that bore the possibility of improving the situation in 2017-2019 if things worked out.
 
thewupk said:
Yes, the Braves could have still targeted Kemp if they never would have made the HO deal. And a deal like that would show the Braves owing Kemp something around ~10 million a year and while that's not great by any means it could be easily moved.
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Yes, the Braves pay Kemp 18 million now. If no Oliveira, it probably would have been something like 10 million.

That's why the framing never made sense to me. I don't feel like they really ever shed Oliveira's contract except for what they owed in 2020.

I think it helped them tremendously PR wise to make it seem like they got something out of Oliveira. Even if it was something not so great like owing Kemp all the money and more they would have owed Oliveira. At least fans can see Kemp. And at least Kemp can hit a baseball when healthy.

I didn't like the trade. It could still turn out being a wash or slight victory for the Braves I guess, but seems like it was a bit of hassle.
 
clvclv said:
Still think Markakis back to the Orioles to keep them on the fringes of competitive for the last year they control Machado makes sense. Eating the money ($3 million) ought to make Markakis worth a 45 FV prospect and would make the trade salary-neutral for Baltimore since they'd be replacing Seth Smith with Markakis for roughly the same money - not to mention bringing back a fan-favorite. If we could get Jomar Reyes or D. J. Stewart back for him, I'd pounce - Stewart quietly regained "prospect instead of suspect" status this year IMO.

Platoon Kemp and Adams in LF and play Acuna if and only if you can unload Markakis and spend the savings on somebody like Cobb on a three year deal or start working on extensions for the kids.
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Would you rather pay Machado 30 million (?) or Freddie 22 million (expiring) in 2022? that's an thought experiment, though maybe not realistic.

I don't think the Orioles are giving away Machado. They should try to resign him. If not, he's still worth prospects at the deadline, I bet. Also if the Os give up on signing him unlikely the Braves have much of a chance.
 
Enscheff said:
MLBTR also agrees with how worthless these guys are:

Super braves fan
2:09 Who's more likely to go...... markakis or Kemp... what's the possible return

Jeffrey Todd
2:09 Hoo boy. Neither?
2:10 Call me crazy, but I don't really expect the Braves to clear room for Acuna over the winter. It's not like they can't just wait and do that whenever it seems advisable.
2:11 Clearly, ATL would be willing to offload either player. But there just isn't going to be much interest. And I think it would be silly to put Acuna on the opening day roster and burn up a year of control.
2:12 Return for Markakis or Kemp, btw, will be cost savings. Both contracts are under water.
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I agree with this.

I think the best move is to trade neither over the Winter.

Let Acuna start the season in the minors and force the issue after you have preserved the year of service time.

I don't see any reason to move Markakis. If you write off 2018 then who really cares if he is on the roster or not. He's a competent hitter who doesn't embarrass himself in the field. He's a one WAR dude and maybe that isn't a starter on a good club, but I guess it plays and you can have a worse reserve if it comes down to it.

Kemp is the guy that moving really opens things up for you. You aren't getting out of it without eating a bunch of 2019 salary, but you might find you feel good about the portion that you didn't eat.

So spend 8 million of your 2018 payroll on getting rid of Kemp. Then use 8 million of the expiring Markakis money to get rid of Kemp in 2019. That maybe preserves enough payroll space to go out and get something interesting in LF or a space holder somewhere for the open season in 2020.

The idea of getting anything other than a C- prospect out of Kemp/Markakis combined trade is probably not in anyone's mind barring something really unforeseen.
 
Organic growth should be the front office's mantra. It comes from two sources. The maturation of the young uns. And the rolling off of contracts that we are not getting much value from. Colon after this year. Markakis and Johnson after 2018. Kemp after 2019. The bar is very low when it comes to getting more production from those funds.
 
dak said:
The new Statcast metric of Outs Above Average for OF came out today, and the results square with what you'd expect. For the 118 OF with a minimum of 100 chances . . . Enciarte is 2nd, Markakis is 102nd, and Kemp is dead last at 118th.

https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/outs_above_average?type=player&year=2017&min=100
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Pretty cool. Kemp is as bad as Ender is good. Ender is elite despite not possessing plus speed.

I think Catch Percentage Added might be a better indicator of talent though because it isn't influenced by number of chances. By that measure Ender is #5, Markakis #91 and Kemp is still last.

Lower the requirements to 25 chances and there are 199 OFers:

Ender Inciarte 11
Danny Santana 56
Jace Peterson 89
Nick Markakis 138
Lane Adams 151
Matt Adams 194
Matt Kemp 196

Turns out Lane Adams isn't the amazing defensive sub I thought he was.
 
Enscheff said:
Pretty cool. Kemp is as bad as Ender is good. Ender is elite despite not possessing plus speed.

I think Catch Percentage Added might be a better indicator of talent though because it isn't influenced by number of chances. By that measure Ender is #5, Markakis #91 and Kemp is still last.

Lower the requirements to 25 chances and there are 199 OFers:

Ender Inciarte 11
Danny Santana 56
Jace Peterson 89
Nick Markakis 138
Lane Adams 151
Matt Adams 194
Matt Kemp 196

Turns out Lane Adams isn't the amazing defensive sub I thought he was.
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DRS and UZR are starting to bear that out as well
 
So probably move Nick 2018....and move Kemp 2019. I would say a team would take a chance on Kemp for one year as a DH. We can even eat half of his last year, and would have way less impact.

I think both having one year left on the their deals is key. Having Ender and Acuna also makes up for Kemp a bit next year.

I wonder if we could trade JJ and eat $3 million? He doesn't need to be on the roster.
 
Just for kicks and giggles, here is Danny Santana's fielding metrics in the OF:

CF: Rdrs/yr: -140 (!!)
RF: Rdrs/yr: 0
LF: Rdrs/yr: 14
 
I showed the other day how the Braves might get Stanton and trade Kemp. I won't go through it again here.

But, it's almost certain that Stanton WILL be traded in the offseason.

Any Team could have placed a claim for him when he recently passed through waivers, but no one did. No one wants to pay all that salary. They want Florida to eat some.

Not only does Florida want to trade Stanton, they need to eject a number of other high dollar contracts to get down to the $75M range and they have some dead money that can't be moved such as Volquez (TJ), Chen (horrible contract). They will have to be creative.

I doubt seriously that Jeter wants to trade with the Yankees. It would be horrible PR for him. He doesn't want to come out of this looking like the Yankees piggy bank b*tch.

I also doubt seriously Jeter will be in any big hurry to do any favors for the Red Sox.

So, the market for STanton is probably pretty limited and ANY team willing to take all his contract would have to be considered a leader to get him.

Sure, it's way outside the box. But the issue the Braves have is that they need to get rid of Kemp, they need to get better and they need to put fans in the seats.

I don't think there's much the Braves could do that would excite the casual fan more.
 
Enscheff said:
Pretty cool. Kemp is as bad as Ender is good. Ender is elite despite not possessing plus speed.

I think Catch Percentage Added might be a better indicator of talent though because it isn't influenced by number of chances. By that measure Ender is #5, Markakis #91 and Kemp is still last.

Lower the requirements to 25 chances and there are 199 OFers:

Ender Inciarte 11

Danny Santana 56

Jace Peterson 89

Nick Markakis 138

Lane Adams 151

Matt Adams 194

Matt Kemp 196

Turns out Lane Adams isn't the amazing defensive sub I thought he was.
Click to expand...

That's a super SSS though, I think Lane has had 15 plays this year and if you take away the CF and RF stats he looks a lot better
 
steveAKAslick said:
That's a super SSS though, I think Lane has had 15 plays this year and if you take away the CF and RF stats he looks a lot better
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If Lane is going to be the 4th OFer we won't be taking away his CF and RF stats.

But your first point is still valid. I should have added "so far" to my statement about Lane.
 
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