Discussion of Braves 2018 Offseason plans

sturg33 said:
I don't think I ever remember an off season without a single FA signing
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We'll sign people. Just no one important. Because of how weak this class is everyone is taking a patient approach.

I think Brett Anderson to a 1-2 year deal will be our big move.
 
TheBravos said:
Hard pass on Realmuto. Catcher is not a worry even next year unless Flowers really falls off for some reason. We could sign him back pretty reasonably I’d say.
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I'd pass on Realmuto as well. I think Grandal is a great fit and Flowers is a nice fallback option.
 
Horsehide Harry said:
Just to be clear I AM NOT advocating trading for Realmuto. I think everyone by now knows where I stand so that's no surprise.

I was however curious as to what people would deem an appropriate return. Fedde and Kieboom (2 former 1st rounders) are the gNats #3 and #4 prospects and would likely correlate to the end of most top 100 lists (or just off) which would put them in the area of Riley and Fried (or Wentz).

BTW, I think Fedde should change the spelling of his name to Fidde.
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I might trade flowers for Keiboom. Just sign Flowers next year.

Nats are throwing a lot of resources at catcher.

Heck if we took Weiters back we might be able to get that package from the Nats. Get it done.
 
Russ2dollas said:
I might trade flowers for Keiboom. Just sign Flowers next year.

Nats are throwing a lot of resources at catcher.

Heck if we took Weiters back we might be able to get that package from the Nats. Get it done.
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Depends on how much time they expect the young guys to be up. If they are going young in the rotation (Gohara, Fried, Sims, Allard-Soroka-Wright at some point) then they need a guy who handles pitching above all else.

If they are gong primarily with McCarthy, Teheran, Kazmir, Folty, maybe another FA signee or two then Flowers' value is probably mostly wasted.
 
AerchAngel said:
Why? Is he really needed?
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Just can't imagine AA would go near Anderson (10 foot pole and all) personally. With the vets (Teheran, McCarthy, Folty, potentially Kazmir) and Gohara and Newcomb already here that still leaves you Fried and Sims as fallbacks already on the 40-Man Roster plus Soroka, Allard, and potentially Wright pushing for a look during the second half. I could picture him signing a Chris Tillman/Jaime Garcia/John Lackey/Jeremy Hellickson type if they came cheap and he wanted someone to legitimately compete in the rotation and allow him to keep two of Gohara/Newcomb/Fried tucked away in Gwinnett to work on things early on, but there's really no need to take on a huge injury-risk at this point.

With KC still trying to ditch salaries to fit Hosmer in, I do wonder if he might work something out to land Kelvin Herrera to make the pen that much deeper. If there really is ~$15 million remaining and you could get Nunez for $7 million to play 3B and Herrera for $8 million to close, you could live with an Adams/Tucker platoon in LF for two weeks while you gamed Acuna's clock (maybe he could even get DMGM to toss in a little money).

That'd give you

Ender, Albies, Freeman, Flowers/Suzuki, Markakis, Nunez, Adams/Tucker, Swanson (Suzuki/Flowers, Tucker/Adams, Camargo, Culberson)

Teheran, McCarthy, Gohara, Folty, Newcomb

Herrera, Vizcaino, Minter, Ramirez, Freeman, Winkler, Ravin, Gomez

until Acuna comes up and Markakis moves to LF in mid-April.
 
Interesting article trying to project HR rate decliners in 2018 has Domingo Santana as a prime candidate: https://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/10-2018-hr-fb-rate-decliners/

I haven't reallly looked into this guy's methodology, but a quick check shows Santana has HR/FB rates of 27.6%, 27.5%, and 30.9% in his 3 seasons (keep in mind the first 2 are partial seasons).

Lowering his HR rate to 21% for his 2017 numbers puts his season total at 21, and probably lowers his OPS to around his projected 2018 value of .825. This might be why the Brewers are having a hard time finding a trade partner for him, as other teams likely project him to be a ~2 win good hitter rather than a 3+ win middle of the order thumper...with guaranteed bad defense in either scenario.

The article also has a link to the projected HR rate surgers, where we see Camargo listed (along with Rio Ruiz and board favorite Yandy Diaz): https://www.fangraphs.com/fantasy/10-2018-hr-fb-rate-surgers-2/

The whole debate about Camargo is whether or not the power he flashed (.154 ISO in MLB, .174 ISO in AAA) is real. If this guy is right, Camargo's power spike is real, and he will easily outpace his .703 OPS projection that holds him down to ~1 WAR.

We've already discussed how Camargo was the 3rd luckiest Brave in 2017 according to xwOBA. The 2 guys ahead of him are consist of one guy who has demonstrated some sort of skill to constantly beat his xwOBA (Inciarte), and one guy who almost certainly just got lucky (Suzuki). Camargo isn't particularly fast, but he does spray the ball around a decent amount, and he bats LHed a lot of the time...so he has 2 of the 3 skills that tend to lead to guys consistently beating their xwOBA.

While Camargo was lucky, Ruiz was just as unlucky...bar far the unluckiest Brave in 2017. According to xwOBA and average exit velocity, he should have been a better offensive player than Camargo in 2017.

The correct answer at 3B is probably the simplist one: see what Camargo can do with 500 PAs, and maybe give Ruiz another look as well.
 
More on Braves rotation from MLBTR

The Braves plan to have a spirited Spring Training competition for rotation jobs, as manager Brian Snitker tells Gabriel Burns of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that as many as three starting spots could be up for grabs. Julio Teheran and Mike Foltynewicz have two slots spoken for, and the newly-acquired Brandon McCarthy will be a strong favorite for the third slot if healthy. That leaves the likes of Max Fried, Luiz Gohara, Lucas Sims, Sean Newcomb, and Mike Soroka battling for the remaining rotation spots, plus Scott Kazmir could also be a factor if he can recover from the injuries that sidelined him for all of the 2017 season. Atlanta is more likely to use the starters that don’t win jobs as relievers rather than again use a six-man rotation, Snitker said.
 
salmagundy said:
More on Braves rotation from MLBTR

The Braves plan to have a spirited Spring Training competition for rotation jobs, as manager Brian Snitker tells Gabriel Burns of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that as many as three starting spots could be up for grabs. Julio Teheran and Mike Foltynewicz have two slots spoken for, and the newly-acquired Brandon McCarthy will be a strong favorite for the third slot if healthy. That leaves the likes of Max Fried, Luiz Gohara, Lucas Sims, Sean Newcomb, and Mike Soroka battling for the remaining rotation spots, plus Scott Kazmir could also be a factor if he can recover from the injuries that sidelined him for all of the 2017 season. Atlanta is more likely to use the starters that don’t win jobs as relievers rather than again use a six-man rotation, Snitker said.
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The "spring competition" theme being pushed by Snitker and the Braves strikes me as being more a fake competition thing. The rotation spots belong to Teheran, Folty, McCarthy, Newcomb and Gohara. And are theirs to lose. Barring injury or massively disappointing performance, they will be our opening day rotation.

It is a truism that every player has to earn his way every year. But some players do not have to do much in spring training to hold on to their spots.
 
TWO WEEKS LEFT

Getting harder and harder to believe that AA's going to pass on Frazier at this point. While everybody's dancing around, just go offer him 2 years/$25 million and backload whatever you need to backload - I'm sure Freeman or Teheran will move money around if you tack on another year to their deals (and that wouldn't necessarily be a bad idea anyway).
 
I would still prefer Gohard to start in AAA. Won’t be devistated if he isn’t. But I don’t want Fried wasting away in pen because twitner doesn’t know how to use him.
 
clvclv said:
TWO WEEKS LEFT

Getting harder and harder to believe that AA's going to pass on Frazier at this point. While everybody's dancing around, just go offer him 2 years/$25 million and backload whatever you need to backload - I'm sure Freeman or Teheran will move money around if you tack on another year to their deals (and that wouldn't necessarily be a bad idea anyway).
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I think AA has correctly identified 2018 as a punt year so he isn't trying to make a big splash. We frontloaded all of our money onto this year for a reason. I think AA wants to have as much flexibility as possible next offseason and I also think he wants to have a season to evaluate our young pitchers and infielders like Camargo and Ruiz. We need to have as much information as possible regarding them. Frazier is counterproductive to both purposes. Stand pat this offseason, use this year to develop and evaluate our young MLB roster, and make more informed decisions next year with a maximum amount of financial flexibility. I believe this to be the correct path for 2018
 
BeanieAntics said:
I think Fried will either be in the rotation or AAA. I think putting him in the pen right now would be a mistake. He needs time to develop a better fastball
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He is moving away from his injury. He needs to build up 130+ Innings this year to see how he handles it.

Another guy I wonder if they would consider some spot starts is Winkler. He has a glass arm but good stuff.
 
clvclv said:
TWO WEEKS LEFT

Getting harder and harder to believe that AA's going to pass on Frazier at this point. While everybody's dancing around, just go offer him 2 years/$25 million and backload whatever you need to backload - I'm sure Freeman or Teheran will move money around if you tack on another year to their deals (and that wouldn't necessarily be a bad idea anyway).
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Don't see that at all. I think you will see the opposite if anything where players are going to become less likely to allow themselves to be contractually controlled into their 32 yo season. I think we will see the industry move more to contracts ending around the 30 YO season because players want a chance at another big payday before they are done and are seeing that you are more likely to get a 5-6 deal at a good AAV if you're 30 as opposed to when you are 32. For Freeman to agree to 1. take less money AAV and 2. add another year to his existing deal thereby jeopardizing his next and likely final contract seems very unlikely.

Teheran might be different since there is a good chance he is out of baseball at the end of his current deal.
 
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