Kimbrel/Melvin Trade Thread

Dalyn said:
Until he didn't.
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I mean... one year where 40% of your rotation was lost in spring training is kind of fluky. Over the last 5 years, I believe the Braves have the most wins in baseball (could be wrong, but they are at least top 3)
 
sturg33 said:
I mean... one year where 40% of your rotation was lost in spring training is kind of fluky. Over the last 5 years, I believe the Braves have the most wins in baseball (could be wrong, but they are at least top 3)
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Clearly he had a positive side, but let's not pretend he didn't have a negative side. Same with the current power.
 
The debate around Wren is, at its heart, about what you weigh most heavily in your evaluations. Schuerholz and the rest of the front office clearly believed that 2014 represented The One True Representation of Frank Wren and that anything that happened at the big league level before that was essentially irrelevant- a fluke, perhaps, or a lucky relic of Those Who Came Before. Those of us who didn't like seeing Wren fired believe that 2014 was one data point out of many, and that 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010 and 2009 are relevant too.

Personally, I would have been more on-board with firing Wren if we hadn't replaced him with a guy who hadn't accomplished anything in about 14 years, but at least Hart finally got around to full-assing the re-build.
 
MadduxFanII said:
The debate around Wren is, at its heart, about what you weigh most heavily in your evaluations. Schuerholz and the rest of the front office clearly believed that 2014 represented The One True Representation of Frank Wren and that anything that happened at the big league level before that was essentially irrelevant- a fluke, perhaps, or a lucky relic of Those Who Came Before. Those of us who didn't like seeing Wren fired believe that 2014 was one data point out of many, and that 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010 and 2009 are relevant too.

Personally, I would have been more on-board with firing Wren if we hadn't replaced him with a guy who hadn't accomplished anything in about 14 years, but at least Hart finally got around to full-assing the re-build.
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I have always been under the impression that Hart is here just to tear this thing down, so when Coppy takes the reigns afterwards he won't be viewed as "the guy who ruined 2015". Hence the reason Hart was so hesitant to even take the job. He is here just to be the bad guy and then he will be gone.
 
thethe said:
Primarily on the backs of Roy Clarks plyers.
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Really? Acquiring Bourn was a Roy Clark player? Bringing in Justin? Mike Minor? Simmons? Walden? Carpenter? Gattis?

You make it sound like Clark did everything and nothing happened afterwards. Hell you could even argue that Clark on his own didn't really add too much. Paul Snyder retired after 2007, everything Clark did after that was in conjunction with Wren. So maybe Clark's big successes were because he had Paul Snyder steering him? Looking at 2008 draft, wouldn't be hard to believe, as it only graduated 5 major league players, lower than the number graduated from the 2010 draft which was the first post clark.
 
Tapate50 said:
I have always been under the impression that Hart is here just to tear this thing down, so when Coppy takes the reigns afterwards he won't be viewed as "the guy who ruined 2015". Hence the reason Hart was so hesitant to even take the job. He is here just to be the bad guy and then he will be gone.
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He won't be gone. He'll "step down" to be a special advisor to the GM or president. Same puppeteers will be pulling the strings then too.
 
O'Brien is still acting oblivious about the Maybin acquisition:

They had read and heard about the team coming together, getting along and being confident with a prove-the-skeptics-wrong chip on their shoulder. They know about Jace Peterson, one of those prospects who came from the Padres in the Justin Upton trade, emerging as a better-than-expected second baseman ready to step in right now and fill a gaping hole at that position and in the 2-hole behind Eric Young Jr., who surpassed expectations this spring after moving to center and the top of the order when Melvin/B.J. got hurt the first day of full-squad workouts. With Young and Peterson, the Braves finally have a more prototypical 1-2 combo at the the top of their order, both with speed.

http://atlantabraves.blog.ajc.com/2015/04/06/timing-of-kimbrel-trade-made-it-even-worse/
 
thethe said:
I know he isn't popular around these parts but Bill Shanks has had made some strong remarks following this trade about how the organization was run recently. If true (and its the story I want to believe) then it really is a shame how things happened.
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Is it possible that Wisler was the "mystery player" Shanks was talking about in 2010?
 
Wait, so when we had Jason and Upton at 1/2 what were they tortoises?

I also just realized I don't know how to spell tortoise.
 
Hawk said:
O'Brien is still acting oblivious about the Maybin acquisition:

They had read and heard about the team coming together, getting along and being confident with a prove-the-skeptics-wrong chip on their shoulder. They know about Jace Peterson, one of those prospects who came from the Padres in the Justin Upton trade, emerging as a better-than-expected second baseman ready to step in right now and fill a gaping hole at that position and in the 2-hole behind Eric Young Jr., who surpassed expectations this spring after moving to center and the top of the order when Melvin/B.J. got hurt the first day of full-squad workouts. With Young and Peterson, the Braves finally have a more prototypical 1-2 combo at the the top of their order, both with speed.

http://atlantabraves.blog.ajc.com/2015/04/06/timing-of-kimbrel-trade-made-it-even-worse/
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DOB is clueless
 
FG blurb on our new OF prospect:

Two domestic position players at the lower levels may take a little longer to move the prospect needle, either due to a lower upside or some rawness to their game: RF Jordan Paroubeck (2013 2nd rounder out of NorCal high school that also produced Barry Bonds also gets hitting lessons from the HR king; he has above average run/power/throw tools with looseness and bat speed but is still raw in his approach at the plate), LF Nick Torres (2014 4th rounder from Cal Poly doesn’t have huge tools but they’re all around average and he looks like a potential platoon guy for now)
 
I don't know who to bless and who to blame, but Wren was sitting in the big chair and we need to face facts that the team was coming to a crossroads where the "fish or cut bait" decision was going to have to be made. Given Liberty's tight pursestrings, it appears we couldn't put together the kind of budget where we could pursue or retain talent in the way our competition was. And whoever made the decisions, the Uggla and Melvin Upton contracts really contributed to that.

I don't worship Billy Beane, but I think most people get his pattern wrong. The key to the Moneyball concept (at least to me) is that everything is always in motion and you can't get tied down with too many big long-term contracts, especially when you have budget constraints, which the Braves clearly have under Liberty at this juncture. We can talk about how Wren constructed the contract framework so that money would be there to invest when the younger set of guys hit free agency, but that doesn't excuse the fact that the contracts themselves were a heavy burden that prevented the kind of flexibility a mid-market team needs. Add that to a thinning minor league system and the journey to the crossroads accelerated to light speed.

You win with pitching and power (which is a blueprint that's been around since before Billy Beane--or me for that matter--was born). Most everything else is at the margins. You want a well-rounded team that can catch the ball and have solid, consistent ABs, but if you have a solid rotation 1-5 and have enough guys in the line-up who can go to the downs, you'll win more than you lose.

I'll grant Wren wasn't blessed with the best of luck. Losing Medlen and Beachy hurt a ton and I'll always give Wren a lot of credit for finding contributors late in the process (Varvaro, O'Flaherty, Harang) to fill out the roster, but when you're constantly putting patches on patches, sooner or later you'll hit a dip. We'll never know if 2014 was the aberration or a harbinger of decline. From my viewpoint, the team was somewhere in between. Maybe a slightly better than .500 team in 2015 if we go forward with the 2014 roster, but that would have required replacing 2/5 of the 2014 rotation for the entire year and 3/5 until Minor is ready to go and I think that would have prevented them from truly being a playoff contender in 2015.
 
Since Fredi isn't available until 2018, I think thethe should be our Opening Day thread starter.
 
Chip Caray
@kapaya1234
FWIW Last 4 years SD lost TOTAL of 9 games when leading after 8. Did deal keep CK from LA??? Hat tip Joe Simpson
 
50PoundHead said:
You win with pitching and power (which is a blueprint that's been around since before Billy Beane--or me for that matter--was born). Most everything else is at the margins. You want a well-rounded team that can catch the ball and have solid, consistent ABs, but if you have a solid rotation 1-5 and have enough guys in the line-up who can go to the downs, you'll win more than you lose.
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I agree completely. If you go look at the playoff teams and eventual WS winners for the last 30 years or so, almost every team has been league average or better hitting HR. Even last year, where power numbers were down across baseball this was true with the outlier being KC (who I think craters back to earth this year).

All the trades for pitching I understand as feeding the pitching part of the pitching/power equation. My wonder is where is the power going to come from? A team needs to be constructed like this imo:
1B- 30-40hr
2B- 10-20
SS- 5-15
3B- 20-30
RF- 20-30
LF- 20-30
CF- 5-15
C- 10-20
Bench-10-20

If you take the low end of that you end up with 130HR, the high end 220HR. 130HR would be likely the low end for typical league average in the NL (last year it was 135HR).

Right now, every position that the Braves have projects below the league minimum number that I gave above. So, unless someone goes all Brady Anderson OR the team pulls a KC, which is statistically very unlikely, then the Braves weren't going to win anything this year and probably not any time soon until they get some bats.

Now, I understand that HR aren't all there is to offense (part of the Braves problems in the near past have been that they have had power but way, way too many strike outs). But, I'm using it as a gauge of offensive potential and to compare to what historically good teams have done.
 
Maybin is very likely not going to contribute much. But since we're rebuilding we NEED to give him a legitimate shot in CF. He at least has some upside unlike EY. Might as well see what we have.
 
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