How did we get here?

[Southcack77]

Wow.

 

[Horsehide Harry]

I think what he's doing is making is a case for trading Freeman and Inciarte for high ceiling far away from the majors talent. That would constitute the next wave. After all we have nothing to play for the next couple seasons. And Freeman and Inciarte will be getting old and expensive once we have a chance to be good. With the caveat of course that Freeman is a special face of the franchise player who is given an exemption to the above reasoning. Harry's points are not illogical. If you take it as your point of departure that 2018 and maybe 2019 are to be completely written off.

This is pretty much it. The reasons to logically keep Freeman, Inciarte and Teheran to begin with and not trade them was the hope of contending quicker. That didn't work. Teheran is probably not tradeable right now for anything of significance and maybe not at all.

But, if we are looking at 2019/2020 being the real target date as is now apparent to most, whether that was the original intent or not, then it's likely that Freeman and Inciarte are more valuable to the Braves hopes of contending long term than keeping them through their primes on the way to contention could be. This all assumes that the braves won't significantly add to payroll space and bring in the needed players to contend earlier. Sure the attendance would suffer. But, newsflash of 2017, stadiums don't bring fans and names don't bring fans past a certain novelty phase. Good play brings fans, especially your typical fickle Atlanta fans (this isn't Boston or the Cubs).

So, yeah, maybe you win 65 games in 2018 and 75 games in 2019. Would it be better to have Freeman and Inciarte and win 75 games in 2018 and 80 games in 2019, but forego the talent brought in through their trades and the higher quality talent brought in from better draft position?

Could you get an Eaton lite return for Inciarte and play Acuna in CF in 2018? (hopefully after Acuna begins the season in AAA for a few months)

Could you get a huge haul for Freeman and play Adams at 1B throughout 2018?

Then could you take the money saved from Freeman and Inciarte and utilize it on the robust 2018/2019 FA market?

These moves might slow the rebuild return by a year but would almost certainly (assuming the FO doesn't bungle the trades and they don't have terrible luck) be a better long term plan than what is now in place considering the expected economics.

 

[Horsehide Harry]

Does any team in baseball have a wave after that one at this point? Haha, how could you say we don't look like we're going to be able to sustain wave after wave because we don't have anyone lined up after all the 17-year-old kids we just signed?

Again, I'm sure he wants to add to that wave. That's a legitimate discussion. But it's a pretty stinking good wave as it stands today.

I think the wave of Maitan, Waters etc gets devastated by the need to get to competitive level to start with due to the mistakes already made. The Braves can either buy their way out of mistakes by signing FA which appears unlikely as of now OR trade their way out of the mistakes (and bad luck) by dipping into the future. I think the holes that are in the current team are very unlikely to be filled near term from within. You have two major holes in the OF with one realistic filler (Acuna). Peterson is a pipe dream and no one else is close within. You have a major hole at 3B. It appears unlikely that they will find a reasonable internal solution unless you really, really believe in Riley, which I don't. The fantastic years of Flowers/Suzuki appears to have misled everyone into thinking the catching isn't in terrible shape but in reality for competition can you even daydream those guys being part of the answer in 2019? No other catchers are realistic down at least to Low A ball. SS and 2B, expected to be reasonable checkmarks going forward have to at least be considered as current question marks.

The long term offense is not in great shape. But the pitching is probably in worse shape. I think you have to be completely reliant on pitchers who haven't pitched at the ML level so far to be considered the real answers in 2019. Teheran has regressed tremendously, is losing velocity and is not much better than an innings eater right now. Folty is an erratic enigma that can't be trusted by a contender. Newcomb needs to cuts his walks to about 3.5/9 before he can be really considered seriously. As others have shown it odds of him being anything with the kind of profile he has shown for the period of time he has shown it at his age is not good at all. Sims is a back inning filler guy because his stuff isn't there and regardless of what Don Sutton and others say, stuff is important in today's game.

The pen is too volatile to really predict for 2019 but I would expect that it will be full of failed starters.

The Braves have tied their cash to bad bets except for Freeman and Inciarte. On a limited budget, that's a killer.

 

[mfree80]

So what you are saying is that it is tough for a farm system to provide enough really good players all at the same for a competitive team, so the Braves will not be able to either.

... that only one or two prospects will pan out from the farm system, and that the Braves will only make bad trades in an effort to remain somewhat competitive.

I think that is the general rule for most teams, but one or two will have things turn out more positively than that. I hope the Braves will be one of them.

I am certainly more optimistic the future than you, but it makes for good discussion.

You can't keep kicking the can down the road year after year in hopes that you accidentally find a good team.

 

[Horsehide Harry]

So what you are saying is that it is tough for a farm system to provide enough really good players all at the same for a competitive team, so the Braves will not be able to either.

... that only one or two prospects will pan out from the farm system, and that the Braves will only make bad trades in an effort to remain somewhat competitive.

I think that is the general rule for most teams, but one or two will have things turn out more positively than that. I hope the Braves will be one of them.

I am certainly more optimistic the future than you, but it makes for good discussion.

You can't keep kicking the can down the road year after year in hopes that you accidentally find a good team.

Not really what I'm saying. I'm saying the Braves first wave of prospects, established as part of the ML talent divestment and the early draft and International results, has been mostly ineffective so far. If you count Folty as primarily a prospect, Wisler, Blair, even HO (prospect even though 30+), then you have to say that the Braves fell flat and mostly wasted some of its best time to collect top end talent. With that accepted, you have to then pretty much say the real returns of the rebuild will primarily be in the second wave (Acuna, Allard, Soroka, Fried, etc.) with the first wave being mostly represented by the somewhat underwhelming early contributions of the middle infield brothers as they were rushed up to play in lost seasons.

Because the Braves mostly wasted their first wave opportunity, it puts more pressure on the third wave to be useful and good (Maitan, Waters, Wentz, Wilson, Muller, etc.). The waves won't stop but the amplitude will be limited by continued better records, if they happen, as contention approaches. The third wave, the wave that will have to carry the rebuild from isolated event to sustained success, will have to be worthwhile and kept intact despite the expected need to use collateral to buy ML players to get better on an immediate basis.

The margin, because of the path chosen by the Braves, is very small. Anything going wrong jeopardizes the sustainability, even the initial viability, of the rebuild. So far lots has gone wrong. Some has been bad luck under no one's control or unforced errors. Some has been bad luck due to long shot bets that didn't pay off or controllable errors. Some has been outright lunacy.

 

[Enscheff]

Not really what I'm saying. I'm saying the Braves first wave of prospects, established as part of the ML talent divestment and the early draft and International results, has been mostly ineffective so far. If you count Folty as primarily a prospect, Wisler, Blair, even HO (prospect even though 30+), then you have to say that the Braves fell flat and mostly wasted some of its best time to collect top end talent. With that accepted, you have to then pretty much say the real returns of the rebuild will primarily be in the second wave (Acuna, Allard, Soroka, Fried, etc.) with the first wave being mostly represented by the somewhat underwhelming early contributions of the middle infield brothers as they were rushed up to play in lost seasons.

Because the Braves mostly wasted their first wave opportunity, it puts more pressure on the third wave to be useful and good (Maitan, Waters, Wentz, Wilson, Muller, etc.). The waves won't stop but the amplitude will be limited by continued better records, if they happen, as contention approaches. The third wave, the wave that will have to carry the rebuild from isolated event to sustained success, will have to be worthwhile and kept intact despite the expected need to use collateral to buy ML players to get better on an immediate basis.

The margin, because of the path chosen by the Braves, is very small. Anything going wrong jeopardizes the sustainability, even the initial viability, of the rebuild. So far lots has gone wrong. Some has been bad luck under no one's control or unforced errors. Some has been bad luck due to long shot bets that didn't pay off or controllable errors. Some has been outright lunacy.

It all hinges on Allard, Gohara, Soroka and Wright. If the Braves get 3 long term SPs that can consistently produce ~3 wins each, the Braves will be good enough to be legit play off contenders. If they get 2 SPs out of the group, and one of Folty, Newk, or Fried bloom late, they are still likely in great shape.

The Braves based the rebuild on risky pitching assets. If they pan out, all is well.

If they don't pan out...it will be time to rebuild while the Swanson/Albies/Freeman/Inciarte core still has enough value to jump start another rebuild.

 

[Knucksie]

I wouldn't say there was "NO WAY" the Braves wouldn't have passed the Expos in 94. It wasn't super likely as thy were super hot and playing great ball. But they were only 6 games back at the start of August, Greg Maddux was pitching out of his skin (271 ERA+, 54 FIP-, averaged over 8 IP per start) So basically every 5th game we had a virtual win as long as we could score 3 runs. We could have overtaken the Expos who were very lucky and if any number of players who could have gone cold (Fletcher, Cordero, Hill) did that gap would be overcome even faster.

Some homerism and cherrypicking there, as with others. Braves fans got too much sense of entitlement during that period, ignoring the fact of just how good the Expos were that year.

Their OF was the best in baseball: Moises Alou, Marquis Grissom (think we all know him!) and pre-colorado Larry Walker. Kenny Hill was a fine starter. They also had an elite starter to match up with just about any, by the name of Pedro Matinez. Leads were safe with John Wettleland. Braves org was still not totally confident in Wohlers, at beginning of '95, as Schuerholz tried to acquire Wetteland in post strike Expo fire sale . We'd get another reminder of him in '96 WS.

Montreal fans were very justified in feeling screwed, which would happen to them again with that forced relocation to a place that MLB had failed in twice previously.