2019 Trade Deadline Thread:

[Enscheff]

Where do you put JS at

JS was the ultimate dinosaur in the time of dinosaurs when the Braves had a Top 2-3 payroll. Being the smartest and richest dinosaur was great during the paleolithic era of baseball.

He would be completely abused in the modern MLB landscape at the helm of a low payroll team. JS started to really struggle as soon as the Braves lost their payroll advantage, and the moves he made to compensate for lack of payroll directly contributed to the Braves terrible stretch while Wren tried to salvage what he could for as long as he could.

 

[Super]

How many gms other than John S have even won titles with two orgs?

Factor in ending two 100 year droughts that have totally turned around two large market franchises and I think he’s clearly getting in.

He’s not a dummy.

i don't think anyone is saying Theo is a dummy.

 

[Southcack77]

i don't think anyone is saying Theo is a dummy.

Sort of feels that way.

I think some dirt is being thrown on the Cubs that probably isn't quite deserved just yet. It looks like they will have some payroll room this offseason and their core will return once again. Not as well set up as the Astros, but maybe not all THAT different in their window longevity.

Not sure where Epstein leaving fit in Boston's timeline, but the Sox had a very brief setback before returning quickly back to the contender ranks. Wouldn't necessarily consign the Cubs to purgatory just yet. Though I do wonder what rule changes in international market are going to do to the big market's ability to dominate those ranks.

 

[cajunrevenge]

Well, he'll be 36, 37 and 38 in the next 3 years.

That's not exactly young. And his contract aint cheap. He could decline sharply at any moment, but the way Greinke pitches, i wouldnt bet against him.

And the Braves have added nearly 20-25 mil to payroll since Opening Day, so this isnt near true. And added some money to next years payroll in Greene and Melancon.

Lastly, i said before, Braves and Astros are at different points of their windows. Astros are in the middle of their window, and Miley/Cole are FA's after the year, Brantley next year, Correa in 2 years. They gotta go for it while they got this team. Verlander is still pitching well but who knows when he'll decline. Braves arent quite at that point now.

Greinke is a special talent in the mold of a Glavine or Maddux. He is worth the premium just to have around our young pitchers.

 

[zbhargrove]

Greinke is a special talent in the mold of a Glavine or Maddux. He is worth the premium just to have around our young pitchers.

He is not worth the premium.

 

[smootness]

Who could have possibly predicted it would be a bad idea to give CK 2.5 years?

Who could have possibly guessed it would be the Cubs who overpaid for pitching?

They kind of put themselves in the position of having to overpay for pitching at times because their entire rebuild was built on attaining solely position player prospects. Which is not a bad strategy in terms of value, but it can paint you into corners at times.

 

[50PoundHead]

JS was the ultimate dinosaur in the time of dinosaurs when the Braves had a Top 2-3 payroll. Being the smartest and richest dinosaur was great during the paleolithic era of baseball.

He would be completely abused in the modern MLB landscape at the helm of a low payroll team. JS started to really struggle as soon as the Braves lost their payroll advantage, and the moves he made to compensate for lack of payroll directly contributed to the Braves terrible stretch while Wren tried to salvage what he could for as long as he could.

Well put. I laughed steady for a week when Schuerholz uttered "the economics of baseball stink" during the whole trading of Millwood/offering Maddux arbitration episode. Schuerholz came up in the Orioles system and outside of fashioning a team in Kansas City that wasn't in that mold, he was a big believer in the combination of strong starting pitching and power. No real rocket science there. As the new era in baseball economics and analytics dawned (almost simultaneously), Schuerholz and Cox were simply men disconnected to the present. Cox used platoon advantages very well, but he wasn't someone who was going to embrace a lot of the new thinking.

I never thought Wren was really up to the task in that he didn't have a long term vision, although he probably felt a ton of pressure with Schuerholz looking over his shoulder along with an ever-tightening payroll.

I don't think Theo is a dummy by any means, but he's sitting on a fat wallet and there was a lot of pressure on him to break the curse.

 

[MadduxFanII]

I never thought Wren was really up to the task in that he didn't have a long term vision, although he probably felt a ton of pressure with Schuerholz looking over his shoulder along with an ever-tightening payroll.

I think the harshest appraisal of Wren you could offer while still being fair to him (as opposed to the "Wren was a blithering idiot and horrible person" spin that got thrown out after he was fired) was that he was pretty good at putting together the big league roster and bad at just about every other aspect of running an organization. You're right about the long-term vision thing - actually, I think Wren was a lot like Schuerholz toward the end of his tenure, in that both of them were sort of perpetually scrambling around trying to assemble a good Major League team without really having a long term plan for it. It's actually rather impressive that Schuerholz was able to win the division from 2001-2005, when we had lost our financial advantage, we were sharing the division with some aggressive, big-spending clubs and the core of the 90's dynasty had basically degraded. But it was just a year-to-year project at that point, and eventually the bill came due.

Once the house starts falling apart, it doesn't matter how skillfully you plug the holes in the roof or shore up a crumbling wall - eventually the thing is going to come down.

 

[50PoundHead]

I think a case can be made that the Braves should have held things together for one more year under Wren and then doing a tear down. There wouldn't have been much pitching on that team and maybe they could have slugged their way into contention before letting everybody walk. I also agree that there wasn't much difference between a financially-constrained Schuerholz and Wren. Both had limited options and not much wiggle room.

 

[CyYoung31]

I think a case can be made that the Braves should have held things together for one more year under Wren and then doing a tear down. There wouldn't have been much pitching on that team and maybe they could have slugged their way into contention before letting everybody walk. I also agree that there wasn't much difference between a financially-constrained Schuerholz and Wren. Both had limited options and not much wiggle room.

The offense was the issue in 2014, not the pitching. Unless they fixed the SVODs at 3B, CF, and 2B, they weren’t going to be slugging their way to anything in 2015.

 

[Carp]

The offense was the issue in 2014, not the pitching. Unless they fixed the SVODs at 3B, CF, and 2B, they weren’t going to be slugging their way to anything in 2015.

We also had to replace I believe 3/5 of the rotation from 2014 (Harang, Minor, and Santana). We simply didn't have the resources either financially or prospect wise to fill all the holes for the 2015 team.