Horsehide Harry
<B>Mr. Free Trade</B>
Will all three of Riley, Pache and Waters pan out. Would be nice. But I think realistically one or more might not. These "problems" have a way of sorting themselves out. With the window of contention open, I doubt the Braves operate on the assumption a path needs to be cleared for player X. Going forward, player X will have to kick the door down to force his way into the lineup. And that is as it should be.
They probably won't all three pan out. But, I'm thinking more along the lines of moving Inciarte and Duvall's money when they still have "some" value. If they Braves bring back Donaldson, which I would like to see given any kind of reasonable cost in terms of dollars and years, then you either play Riley in LF or you trade him. That really leaves one open spot in the OF. I don't see any way the Braves don't bring Muk back given his contract, $6M with $2M buyout, so he'll be there and will probably start if Snitker is still manager. Then you have an opportunity to bring back Joyce cheap, Hamilton relatively cheap, Culberson will return, possibly Camargo will return, etc.
I think Hamilton could be nearly as valuable to the Braves and their situation on a cheap contract as Inciarte would be on his current contract.
Of course, no guarantee that anyone would pay anything for either right now. I'm just speculating that you could get a couple of highly volatile, outside the top 100, arms and a lottery ticket OF while moving the contracts.