I am glad the faillies made this deal. They are now super thin at pitching. Not that Sixto could help them this year but it basically makes them thin for the foreseeable future. They will have to spend stupid money to keep guys in the rotation. Also will need to spend stupid money for catcher in two years when guys like Hoskins is hitting arb and Nola closing in on FA.
What I am mad about is the bull**** DD (his grade as gm) shoved down our throats. From his mouth “We have money and prospects to spend and major nedds at Cof and catcher.” What do we get. A buddy signing and old farts to push the can down the road for another year. We get to watch the most risky assets in the game try to build value and listen to more bull**** about how we can spend or trade with anyone. Hopefully there will be a trophy for best value spending because that is going to be the only trophy that DD will probably get.
We could have fielded a better team this year but DD Is probably in over his head going from money to a budget. Unfortunately we are stuck with this do nothing for many years because no in the org is going to care enough to see the truth. Oh well. Here is to all our pitchers hitting there projections.
Donaldson vs Harper WAR:
2013 7.2 v 4.1
2014 5.7 v 1.6
2015 8.7 v 9.3
2016 7.6 v 3.0
2017 5.1 v 4.8
2018 1.3 v 3.5
2019 4.1 v 4.9 (Projected - Steamer)
It's absolutely true that Donaldson is older and more recently injured, though Harper missed 20 games in 2012, 40 games in 2013, 60 games in 2014, and 50 games in 2017 so he is no model of health and consistency even though he is young.
It's absolutely true that you would not expect Harper to be in decline though and you could reasonably forecast that Donaldson could be on the downhill. But it's not especially likely he misses the season or is suddenly an average player. The projections tell you that even taking in account his missing a projected 40 games.
Donaldson will be about 10m cheaper in 2019 and the commitment is about 4-9 years less that what it would be to Harper, but I get the impression that people would rather have the young guy with the massive contract on the books than similar production right now for one year. I think that's bad reasoning.
Signing Donaldson isn't "bringing in his buddy" it's signing arguably the best hitter on the market to a relatively risk free deal, with multiple options in place to address the possibility of his injury or decline.
I get that people had it in their mind that the needs were positional and they don't like one year solutions, but the Braves dramatically upgraded the middle of their lineup for 2019. If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out, but the level of people who seem to be acting like the Braves signed Jose Bautista is ludicrous.
I personally would prefer that the front office was more aggressive and I don't think the best use of the Braves prospect capital in rotation arms is to sit on them, but I can't fault them tremendously for not just throwing them around recklessly because the Marlins have a catcher and the offseason shopping list included getting a catcher.
Or giving Pollock five years or McCutchen three just because they needed a cOF.
There are plenty of opportunities for the Braves to upgrade the roster in season. I certainly hope that they do something else this offseason, but in all honesty, I don't think they have that many glaring needs that they can't fiddle around with internally.
I'd much rather they save their capital and money for a good long term solution. I think what the Phillies did for 2 years of Realmuto was too much. I say that fully believing they've gotten a whole lot better this offseason.
