Lucas Sims

Southcack77 said:
My guess is that Coppy's three drafts probably are above average, with the caveat that they drafted high and occasionally had extra picks. the Kyle Wright draft seems light though.

I have a hard time remembering who Wren drafted and who he didn't draft.
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The Wren years featured some really solid picks (Kimbrel, Wood, Minor, and most notably Simmons, who most scouts thought wouldn't hit at all) and a lot of decent support level guys (LaStella, Gattis, Ahmed, and Caratini), but little pitching. Some guys still hanging around include Drury, Gilmartin, Gosselin, Hale, Weber, and Shreve. I think Wren's (and DeMacio's) tenure is better than it is advertised at times, but outside of Simmons, they never managed to get one more decent position player over seven or eight drafts.
 
50PoundHead said:
The Wren years featured some really solid picks (Kimbrel, Wood, Minor, and most notably Simmons, who most scouts thought wouldn't hit at all) and a lot of decent support level guys (LaStella, Gattis, Ahmed, and Caratini), but little pitching. Some guys still hanging around include Drury, Gilmartin, Gosselin, Hale, Weber, and Shreve. I think Wren's (and DeMacio's) tenure is better than it is advertised at times, but outside of Simmons, they never managed to get one more decent position player over seven or eight drafts.
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And a lot of people preferred Simmons to convert to pitcher. They got the development right on that one.
 
Tapate50 said:
And a lot of people preferred Simmons to convert to pitcher. They got the development right on that one.
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I do recall that. Braves were reportedly one of the only teams that was willing to give Simmons a shot at shortstop first and if that failed convert him to a relief pitcher. He did both at Western Oklahoma JC. Braves were pretty good over the years of finding the right position for multiple-position draftees. Many had Klesko as a pitcher and not a hitter. Arm problems contributed to his demise as a pitching prospect, but the Braves always had him as a hitter. Medlen was a JC shortstop/closer and the Braves always saw him as a pitcher.
 
50PoundHead said:
I do recall that. Braves were reportedly one of the only teams that was willing to give Simmons a shot at shortstop first and if that failed convert him to a relief pitcher. He did both at Western Oklahoma JC. Braves were pretty good over the years of finding the right position for multiple-position draftees. Many had Klesko as a pitcher and not a hitter. Arm problems contributed to his demise as a pitching prospect, but the Braves always had him as a hitter. Medlen was a JC shortstop/closer and the Braves always saw him as a pitcher.
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Didn't some have Freeman as a pitcher or am I misremembering?
 
50PoundHead said:
The Wren years featured some really solid picks (Kimbrel, Wood, Minor, and most notably Simmons, who most scouts thought wouldn't hit at all) and a lot of decent support level guys (LaStella, Gattis, Ahmed, and Caratini), but little pitching. Some guys still hanging around include Drury, Gilmartin, Gosselin, Hale, Weber, and Shreve. I think Wren's (and DeMacio's) tenure is better than it is advertised at times, but outside of Simmons, they never managed to get one more decent position player over seven or eight drafts.
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What people don't realize with Wren was the situation he inherited, because of JS blowing up the farm and not replacing talent as he was trying to win a owrld series before "retiring"he gutted the upper levels of the braves minor leagues, so the Braves were drafting a lot of guys who were AAAA players instead of riskier picks, because they had to.

That's not to give Wren a pass, his high school picks didn't pan out. Lipka, Davidson, Stovall, etc. and the fact that his return rate on them is essentially 0 points to an issue.

Coppy had some very high picks and lots of extra picks, and did pretty well. But I still consider him largely a failure, with Jason Heyward, Justin Upton, Craig Kimbrel, and Andrelton Simmons to trade, the best pieces we got back were Swanson, Fried, and Inciarte. Which isn't to say the wrong choices were made, what I'm saying was our value of return was bad. Kimbrel Trade got us nothing, yes the competitive balance pick got us Riley, but there's no guarantee that he wouldn't ahve been there at our next pick like 12 picks later in the second round. But the top talent from that was Wisler, who did nothing for us. To me what the wrong choice that was made was Coppy valuing pitchers who already had Tommy John surgery assuming that would mean they were relatively bullet proof, which is a bad logic jump. Just because they're not as likely to have that particular injury, doesn't mean they're not probable to have other pitching related injuries.
 
zitothebrave said:
Coppy had some very high picks and lots of extra picks, and did pretty well. But I still consider him largely a failure, with Jason Heyward, Justin Upton, Craig Kimbrel, and Andrelton Simmons to trade, the best pieces we got back were Swanson, Fried, and Inciarte. Which isn't to say the wrong choices were made, what I'm saying was our value of return was bad. Kimbrel Trade got us nothing, yes the competitive balance pick got us Riley, but there's no guarantee that he wouldn't ahve been there at our next pick like 12 picks later in the second round. But the top talent from that was Wisler, who did nothing for us. To me what the wrong choice that was made was Coppy valuing pitchers who already had Tommy John surgery assuming that would mean they were relatively bullet proof, which is a bad logic jump. Just because they're not as likely to have that particular injury, doesn't mean they're not probable to have other pitching related injuries.
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what did you expect to get for one year of Heyward, and one year of Upton?
it's insane to look back and say those trades were bad. truly insane.
for ONE YEAR of Jason Heyward, the Braves got a great year from Shelby Miller, and then got Inciarte and Swanson. how on earth is that not a slam dunk trade?

getting Mallex and Fried for Upton is also a very solid trade. the Braves were entering a rebuild. targeting someone like Fried, who has worked out and is still improving, was a good move. Upton was tied for 45th in fWAR among hitters in 2014 before being traded. not like the Braves were trading a top 10 player.
Mallex could've been useful, and in hindsight keeping him instead of trading for Gohara would've been better.

the Kimbrel trade could've been better. but that awful Melvin contract...just one of many signed by Wren...
 
Tapate50 said:
Do you think this is real ?
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No - with an asterisk. In this wacky season, any small sample size explosion/unexpected production from ANY part of your roster is going to make a much bigger difference than ever before. Through 12 games Ruiz is slashing .271/.333/.604 with 5 HRs while Riley and Camargo have combined to have a sub-.700 OPS with one more homer than Ruiz has hit. I'm not numbers-savvy enough to figure out just how much of a difference that would have made in our first 20 games, but there are plenty of people here that can - and I'm betting it's not insignificant.

Maybe he's finally turned into the player scouts saw him as years ago, I kinda doubt it but who knows? He wouldn't be the first late-bloomer the Braves cut loose. Chipper and Eduardo Perez had a long discussion about the fact that they believe the Orioles' hot start is because they're not trying to mold the group of nomads they've cobbled together over the last couple years into something they're not - "The O's Way". They know they're not complete, well-rounded players, and they're not going to mysteriously turn into them at the MLB level. Chipper talked about the fact that the organization has just gotten them to focus on what they do well and not worry so much about what they don't. He was careful to point out that they're all still working hard to get better in every area, but that they only ask them for full-effort and to "do what they do" during games, and it seems to be working quite well.
 
Super said:
what did you expect to get for one year of Heyward, and one year of Upton?
it's insane to look back and say those trades were bad. truly insane.
for ONE YEAR of Jason Heyward, the Braves got a great year from Shelby Miller, and then got Inciarte and Swanson. how on earth is that not a slam dunk trade?

getting Mallex and Fried for Upton is also a very solid trade. the Braves were entering a rebuild. targeting someone like Fried, who has worked out and is still improving, was a good move. Upton was tied for 45th in fWAR among hitters in 2014 before being traded. not like the Braves were trading a top 10 player.
Mallex could've been useful, and in hindsight keeping him instead of trading for Gohara would've been better.

the Kimbrel trade could've been better. but that awful Melvin contract...just one of many signed by Wren...
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I don't have an issue with those trades, as much. I would have liked more than Fried for Upton, because I wasn't high on him, though he's obviosuly proven me wrong and I'm content with that.

I'm talking about the other trades, Gattis, Simmons, and Kimbrel weren't on the last year of their contracts. INfact 2 of them just signed team friendly extensions. We traded Kimbrel to partially clear upton's salary, I say partially because we took on Salary the other way, we cleared probably about 30M, if my quick math is right, Upton had 45M left on his deal and we took on 15M in contracts. And that doesn't factor in Kimbrel's contract for savings of course, because unlike Upton, maybin, and Quentin his salary wasn't a negative.

Kimbrel a year later was traded for a better prospect quality haul. I wouldn't have hated that trade fi we also got Hedges or Renfroe. Granted in hindsight it doesn't matter, but that's hindsight.

And your valuation of Upton is ****. He was valued higher than Heyward because of the fact that he is a right handed power hitter. Everyone knows his defense sucks. But the fact that he's a right handed power hitter means he inherently has a higher value than someone with a similar WAR but has a significant defensive improvement at an offensive first position. I don't htink any GM would have rather had in 2014 Alex Gordon over Justin Upton.

Gattis I didn't think we'd get a big return for, and I'm not disappointed in the return for that reason, adn I really liked Ruiz.

But let's talk about the other trade you ignored

Simmons for Newcomb, Ellis, and Aybar. Aybar of course sucks. That's fine. Newcomb was the get. And it was a horrific trade. Simmons was great for Anaheim, Newcomb of course has been highly mediocre for Atlanta. How we didn't get a 5 star prospect is baffling.
 
Any one particular Coppy trade was defensible at the time. The issue was the overall valuation of pitching being too high, which skewed the returns too far to the pitching side.

Coppy being able to quote stats like wRC+ in front of the dinosaurs in the front office impressed them much like a 12 year old impresses his grandparents by programming the VCR. Since Coppy was a little twirp desperate for approval, of course he bought into the “Braves Way” of valuing pitching above all else blabbered by the dinosaurs he wanted to impress. Then he took the back room good old boys dealing a step too far, and got banned.

He was a disaster, and I stated as much as it was happening. I was constantly told “they get paid to do this, you don’t”. Well, now they don’t get paid to do it either.
 
We can go around and around about the rebuild all we want, but the reality is that that it got them winning division titles after three seasons and they are set up to continue contending far into the future.

It's not realistic to lose 3/5 of the rotation to health issues, have a fourth starter opt out of the season and a fifth one just not make any progress (even if that was predictable) and expect a team to be able to handle all of that with AAA depth.

Nor does it make sense to throw in the towel because they got shelled by the Yankees and Phillies.

So long as Liberty doesn't shut down their budget, the Braves are in just fine shape. It's been an entertaining and mercifully short rebuild and there figure to be good years ahead.
 
zitothebrave said:
But let's talk about the other trade you ignored

Simmons for Newcomb, Ellis, and Aybar. Aybar of course sucks. That's fine. Newcomb was the get. And it was a horrific trade. Simmons was great for Anaheim, Newcomb of course has been highly mediocre for Atlanta. How we didn't get a 5 star prospect is baffling.
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the Gattis trade was very solid as well. he put up a 4.6fWAR in 4 years with the Astros...only saved by one 3 fWAR year. getting Folty/Ruiz for him was good at the time, and in hindsight.

yes, the Simmons trade was and is awful. i tried to give it the benefit of the doubt at the time, but that's gone. just an absolutely terrible trade in every way.

what are you talking about on Gordon vs Upton? it seems like pure nonsense...who wouldn't want a 5.4WAR player over a 3.7WAR one? because Upton is right handed??? lol what? i didn't really provide a "valuation" of Upton. but the trade clearly worked out, and was easily defensible at the time. there's no issue with that trade. it was a good trade.
 
Of all the Coppolella trades, the only one that I thought didn't make sense was the Simmons deal. He was on a reasonable contract and while there were concerns about his hitting (and still are to some extent), the real kicker is that they took Aybar back because they felt they needed an everyday shortstop. I think Newcomb was a decent piece, but of the three guys coming back, he has the only one that made any kind of sense at all. If they would have taken back another legitimate prospect and then dumpster-dove for a shortstop, the logic falls together a bit better.
 
Lucas Sims is probably over the moon that there is a three page thread with his name on Chop Country.
 
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