We have one of the worst MLB teams right now

[Horsehide Harry]

I think a lot of people forget that the primary purpose of a major league baseball team is to sell tickets and provide a product to the fans.

They exist for no other reason.

They can exist for no other reason.

The primary purpose of a MLB team is to make money for ownership. That can be done in a number of different ways. Selling tickets and providing a product for fans are only components of a money making machine. The best way to sell tickets and provide an interesting product for fans is to put a good team on the field, especially in a city like Atlanta where the fanbase is fickle.

To say that the overall fanbase doesn't know what WAR and exit velocity are in one breath and suppose that the same fanbase has any idea at all who some minor league guy is in the next just doesn't make sense. Fans with enough interest in following the minor league box scores to see who the next big thing will be are generally going to be versed in the concepts of good baseball. The difference is marketing by the team. Swanson was marketed. Joe and Chip market guys like Albies and Acuna every night. But that only lasts for so long. If the marketed player comes up and flops he fades quickly. If it happens enough the fanbase gets jaded.

Like him or not George Stienbrenner showed how to make a ML team. He bought an undervalued and starved asset and made a huge investment every year to reap insane profits every year and turned the franchise into one of the most valuable in the world. Could his approach work for every ML team? Of course not. Location and history played a big part. No way Steinbrenner could have bought the Royals and turned them into the modern day Yankees. However, the Braves aren't the Royals. They are in a metro area of about 6 million people and are the only ML team sitting in a radius of about 400 miles that includes another 20 million people.

Yet Liberty has turned them into a lower middle class team with essentially the same payroll as 20 years ago. The TV/radio deals are poor (very important for a team whose fanbase consists of many who never go to games because of distance). They aren't investing in their business. They are using it as a tax write off.

 

[Enscheff]

The Braves traded Alex Wood because they didn't believe and felt like he would be injury prone. The year after they traded him he missed 2/3 of a season.

Granted, it is a little strange that a team that was trying to play both sides of the coin would trade a player with control through 2019, but I would imagine they felt he was an ok pitcher who would probably get injured and have a short prime. They may or may not be right about that, but a season like this, which is outside of all reasonable expectation, will tend to make you look bad.

Trading Alex Wood at peak value at the beginning of a rebuild was unquestionably the correct decision. They did the right thing trading Kimbrel for the exact same reason (the mistake was cratering the return by attaching BJ). The same decision should have been made with Teheran. The Braves had no business holding onto valuable pitchers for 3 years on a losing team.

The problem was trading Wood for another "win now" piece in HO. It got worse when HO couldn't hit anything but his wife. The killer was the fact that the Braves didn't even know HO couldn't play 3B.

It was a bad process, it was bad scouting, and it was a horrible result. They then compounded it by making another terrible trade for Kemp.

That single transaction sequence (trading Wood for HO, attaching BJ to Kimbrel, not trading Teheran, trading for Kemp) likely cost the Braves $150M-$200M in surplus value. It was a devastatingly bad series of moves/non-moves.

 

[Horsehide Harry]

Trading Alex Wood at peak value at the beginning of a rebuild was unquestionably the correct decision. The same decision should have been made with Teheran. They did the right thing trading Kimbrel for the exact same reason. The Braves had no business holding onto valuable pitchers for 3 years on a losing team.

The problem was trading Wood for another "win now" piece in HO. It got worse when HO couldn't hit anything but his wife. The killer was the fact that the Braves didn't even know HO couldn't play 3B.

It was a bad process, it was bad scouting, and it was a horrible result. They then compounded it by making another terrible trade for Kemp.

That single transaction sequence (trading Wood for HO, attaching BJ to Kimbrel, not trading Teheran, trading for Kemp) likely cost the Braves $150M-$200M in surplus value. It was a devastatingly bad series of moves/non-moves.

True.

I have a different scenario for you. Alex Wood for Cody Bellinger and Austin Barnes. At the time Bellinger was the 10th best prospect in the Dodgers system and not ranked in the top 100 and Barnes was 13th. The Braves might have been able to get the Dodgers to throw another low level guy in like #30 prospect Willie Calhoun.

You can't look at the trade from the perspective of those players performance today. Obviously the Dodgers wouldn't trade Bellinger for Wood straight up and probably not for anyone currently on the Braves team. But at the time of the trade, a return of those guys would have been about what the Braves should have expected in a trade for a ML starter to a team in need.

So, imagine if you will that they don't bite on HO. Bellinger would be in LF. Kemp would still be on the Padres. Barnes would be a back up catcher most likely.

Of course, it might have been Wood for Chris Anderson and Mitch Hansen. But even that would have been better than what happened. At least that would have been just giving Wood away without the associated damage of the HO/Kemp fiascos.

 

[Enscheff]

I won't get into hypothetical trades, but trading a "win now" piece for another "win now" piece is not how a rebuilding team should be operating.

It was a bad process from the start, and unfortunately yielded the worst results possible. Even if HO had been the 3 win guy and model citizen we hoped he was, it would have still been a bad trade because it added wins during a time the Braves were low on the win curve.

 

[Horsehide Harry]

I won't get into hypothetical trades, but trading a "win now" piece for another "win now" piece is not how a rebuilding team should be operating.

It was a bad process from the start, and unfortunately yielded the worst results possible. Even if HO had been the 3 win guy and model citizen we hoped he was, it would have still been a bad trade because it added wins during a time the Braves were low on the win curve.

No question. It's just a bad outcome from the FO's attempt at a half-assed reload instead of just saying "ok, we are going to be horrible for a few years but we have to rebuild. Being horrible is actually a plus to a rebuilding team. It hurts and we will likely lose some fans over it. Hopefully we can do a great job and win those fans back as well as attract new fans."

 

[Southcack77]

Trading Alex Wood at peak value at the beginning of a rebuild was unquestionably the correct decision. They did the right thing trading Kimbrel for the exact same reason (the mistake was cratering the return by attaching BJ). The same decision should have been made with Teheran. The Braves had no business holding onto valuable pitchers for 3 years on a losing team.

The problem was trading Wood for another "win now" piece in HO. It got worse when HO couldn't hit anything but his wife. The killer was the fact that the Braves didn't even know HO couldn't play 3B.

It was a bad process, it was bad scouting, and it was a horrible result. They then compounded it by making another terrible trade for Kemp.

That single transaction sequence (trading Wood for HO, attaching BJ to Kimbrel, not trading Teheran, trading for Kemp) likely cost the Braves $150M-$200M in surplus value. It was a devastatingly bad series of moves/non-moves.

The Wood trade was strange. But I think someone with the Braves really must have been in love with Oliveira and felt they were getting a steal. I don't like using the word clearly much (though I do), but clearly they were wrong about that.

If Oliveira had been good, he would have been an asset that could have been flipped or kept. But I agree it was weird and sure did blow up on them beyond the draft pick. Nothing else really worked out about that deal.

I don't know why they would not have traded Teheran except that they didn't want to sell him low at the time they traded Wood and then they felt they needed to sell higher than the market was offering when he rebounded.

 

[Southcack77]

The primary purpose of a MLB team is to make money for ownership. That can be done in a number of different ways. Selling tickets and providing a product for fans are only components of a money making machine. The best way to sell tickets and provide an interesting product for fans is to put a good team on the field, especially in a city like Atlanta where the fanbase is fickle.

To say that the overall fanbase doesn't know what WAR and exit velocity are in one breath and suppose that the same fanbase has any idea at all who some minor league guy is in the next just doesn't make sense. Fans with enough interest in following the minor league box scores to see who the next big thing will be are generally going to be versed in the concepts of good baseball. The difference is marketing by the team. Swanson was marketed. Joe and Chip market guys like Albies and Acuna every night. But that only lasts for so long. If the marketed player comes up and flops he fades quickly. If it happens enough the fanbase gets jaded.

Like him or not George Stienbrenner showed how to make a ML team. He bought an undervalued and starved asset and made a huge investment every year to reap insane profits every year and turned the franchise into one of the most valuable in the world. Could his approach work for every ML team? Of course not. Location and history played a big part. No way Steinbrenner could have bought the Royals and turned them into the modern day Yankees. However, the Braves aren't the Royals. They are in a metro area of about 6 million people and are the only ML team sitting in a radius of about 400 miles that includes another 20 million people.

Yet Liberty has turned them into a lower middle class team with essentially the same payroll as 20 years ago. The TV/radio deals are poor (very important for a team whose fanbase consists of many who never go to games because of distance). They aren't investing in their business. They are using it as a tax write off.

You are making all kinds of points here.

Yeah, Ted Turner screwed the Braves by signing a bad TV deal and that's the biggest limitation the team has overall right now. Atlanta is by all rights a bigger market team and they are completely hobbled by a deal that wasn't great at the time and then missed out on the explosion of baseball deals in general over the next few years.

Yeah, Liberty isn't George Steinbrenner throwing cash that a cash cow generated back at the team. It's not Ted Turner. But that isn't really a variable that can be controlled.

Making money is the object, but the primary place the Braves do that is with tickets or things that tend to go along with ticket sales. They are locked into TV contract. It's not a good sports town in general. The Braves as a product struggled even when they were winning after a point.

This is the reality that the business office has to consider when they make any moves. And the business office believes that they will do major damage to the business and not meet the owner's expectations if they don't make some effort to filed a semi-plausibly competing team.

Whether that is optimum baseball winning strategy or not, it is the handcuffs they have.

 

[TheBravos]

Why "did" Ted sell the team? You would think he would be the type of guy to keep a team in the family.