What's AA gonna do?

Nothing has changed in the short term.

The Braves are still a team projected to win ~80 games with little money to spend for improvements. The Braves are still a team that wasted the prime value of a few guys during the ramp up after a rebuild, which is completely unavoidable. The Braves still wasted 1 year of control over Swanson and Albies, which will hurt even more now that the young guys could have replaced them are gone.

However, the window of contention is still opening, even after the farm was gutted. The only difference now is how long the window is likely to remain open...5-6 years rather than 6+ years.

The plan is working, and it will still work. They need to stick with the plan.
 
cajunrevenge said:
Yes but you dont see any value from that investment for years. Spending it now on the ML team gets value now. A bird in your hand is worth 2 in the bush. Obviously the value is going to be lower over the long term 99 times out of 100 but you never know, that little bit of extra money now could lead to a move like the Astros getting Verlander that gets them a championship. Maybe we use that money to help sign Kimbrel next year.
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Yeah no. Signing 10 guys for $5M generates 10x that amount of value if only one of those guys makes it.

Getting $5M in value now from a BP arm is a foolish way to spend that money if you could have spent it on prospects.
 
nsacpi said:
Who do you have in mind?
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I don't have a good answer for this and it would take a lot of time for me to figure out something that would not be deservedly mocked.

But I guess the scenario that came to mind was Freeman for a Rockies OF with sweetener on the appropriate side and Braves going to free agency market next time and using Freeman, Markakis, kemp, Johnson money to really play ball. Maybe Arenado? i don't know.

Maybe that's the basic outline of a more realistic deal.

Trading Freeman for another organization's valuable surplus player. Whether that's the blocked guy or the established player that they have decided they can save money on.
 
Southcack77 said:
I don't have a good answer for this and it would take a lot of time for me to figure out something that would not be deservedly mocked.

But I guess the scenario that came to mind was Freeman for a Rockies OF with sweetener on the appropriate side and Braves going to free agency market next time and using Freeman, Markakis, kemp, Johnson money to really play ball. Maybe Arenado? i don't know.

Maybe that's the basic outline of a more realistic deal.

Trading Freeman for another organization's valuable surplus player. Whether that's the blocked guy or the established player that they have decided they can save money on.
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To me rule 1 of things to avoid doing is signing or extenting pitchers in their late 20s or 30s to big contracts priced at market. Rule 2 is the same but applies to position players.

If you stick to those rules as a mid or small market team, you have a much better chance of success.
 
nsacpi said:
To me rule 1 of things to avoid doing is signing or extenting pitchers in their late 20s or 30s to big contracts priced at market. Rule 2 is the same but applies to position players.

If you stick to those rules as a mid or small market team, you have a much better chance of success.
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Maybe rather than one big contract you could find two midsized or three reasonable ones. I just mean deploy Freeman's money in a different way. As you can tell, I haven't given it a ton of thought and I'm not particularly motivated to trade Freeman anyway.
 
Southcack77 said:
1. If you could trade Freeman for premium young talent and then go out and sign a premium young free agent with his money and Markakis' money then that could be a real good plan. No objection to trying that. Maybe you can trade Freeman for an All Star caliber player at another position and then spend his money on a second All Star. That might make sense.

2. I also don't think its the worst thing in the world to let him play out his contract through his prime years, maybe contend, and then make him a QO or sign him for another below market contract if he's willing. I don't think we have to be so scared of contracts running out without getting anything when the team has a chance to win.
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That's the huge part of the problem here IMO. Corporate ownership isn't going to change the way it works, and if you trade the biggest pieces left that actually put butts in the seats, the typical fan disappears for the short-term and leaves you far short of attendance/profit projections. The word is already out there that the Liberty braintrust is fuming over this mess already - does anyone seriously expect them to sign off on a pursuit of a Machado or Harper next winter after AA trades off the two stars the franchise has and the fans revolt??? I just can't see that happening. If you're dealing with an individual owner who you've sold on the strategy, maybe - not a corporate ownership Board who couldn't find SunTrust Park in an Uber.

Even if you act like a corporate ownership group is going to allow you to go down that road, you absolutely have to be a LEGITIMATE contender after next winter. You're still dealing with a short competitive window. Just for *hits and giggles, let's say you DO get Schwarber for Ender. He'll have over 3 years worth of service-time before you bid on Machado or Donaldson (who will be that 30+ year old guy that none of you want BTW), and he's not going to sign an extension. If you have to spend Freddie and Markakis' salaries to land Manny, what are you going to pay Schwarber with in 2022? Even if you got him for what Kemp's making, how are you going to pay Ozzie and Acuna anything close to what it might take to get them to hang around at that point.

Somebody mentioned Milwaukee. Does it take Julio AND Folty to get you Domingo Santana? If I'm them, one of them isn't enough. If you get him, he'll be at the same place Schwarber will - 3+ years of service-time before you get Machado or Donaldson.

All this cheap pitching's only going to be cheap enough to give you that 3 year window - seems to make sense that they loaded up on it.
 
Slow stretch for a few minutes this afternoon, so...

Waaaaaay off the reservation, but could you finish blowing everything up while trying to contend at the same time???

1.) Trade Ender for Schwarber.
2.) Trade Freeman for Ryan McMahon and David Dahl.
3.) Trade Teheran and Folty for Domingo Santana.
4.) Trade Allard, Pache, Riley, and a throw-in for Archer.
5.) Sign Michael Pineda to a cheap 2 year deal with an option and let him rehab with us.

That gives you...

2B- Albies, CF- Acuna, 1B- Schwarber, RF- Santana, 3B- McMahon, LF- Dahl, C-Flowers, SS- Swanson

SP- Archer, SP- Gohara, SP- Newcomb, SP- Sims, SP- Fried (with Soroka and Wright coming fast)

and you'd have Freeman, Julio, and Markakis' money to spend to try to extend guys next winter and Kemp and Johnson's money to do the same the following winter.
 
The sanctions stink, and I wish the Braves were interested at all in appealing (the abrogation of the Bae signing and the loss of the third-round pick, in particular, seem less rooted in the logic of ensuring the Braves don't benefit from their transgressions). However, it will be nice to start having a real off-season / real off-season news and discussions, now that the penalties are known and effected.
 
clvclv said:
Slow stretch for a few minutes this afternoon, so...

Waaaaaay off the reservation, but could you finish blowing everything up while trying to contend at the same time???

1.) Trade Ender for Schwarber.

2.) Trade Freeman for Ryan McMahon and David Dahl.

3.) Trade Teheran and Folty for Domingo Santana.

4.) Trade Allard, Pache, Riley, and a throw-in for Archer.

5.) Sign Michael Pineda to a cheap 2 year deal with an option and let him rehab with us.

That gives you...

2B- Albies, CF- Acuna, 1B- Schwarber, RF- Santana, 3B- McMahon, LF- Dahl, C-Flowers, SS- Swanson

SP- Archer, SP- Gohara, SP- Newcomb, SP- Sims, SP- Fried (with Soroka and Wright coming fast)

and you'd have Freeman, Julio, and Markakis' money to spend to try to extend guys next winter and Kemp and Johnson's money to do the same the following winter.
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Lol too much XM radio for you.

You clearly have no idea how valuable Archer is, or any player for that matter.
 
jpx7 said:
The sanctions stink, and I wish the Braves were interested at all in appealing (the abrogation of the Bae signing and the loss of the third-round pick, in particular, seems less rooted in the logic ensuring the Braves don't benefit from their transgressions). However, it will be nice to start having a real off-season / real off-season news and discussions, now that the penalties are known and effected.
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This.
 
nsacpi said:
Trade someone to reinforce the left side of the infield such as Prado, trade for veteran starting pitcher such as McCarthy, sign reliever maybe Moylan, trade away Adams.
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Depressing. Not particularly creative. You or I could do that. Time for some creative thinking.
 
Consider that the first two moves, albeit minor ones, by AA were involving players he knew over with the Dodgers. He knows them intimately, and he's still strong on the Blue Jays.
 
Heyward said:
I think he'll try to move Kemp, not sure if he was in the Jays FO when they moved Vernon Wells but similar situations there with Kemp.

And maybe try to sign some young guys (Albies, Swanson, Acuna) to an extension.
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1/2 for now hopefully.
 
nsacpi said:
Trade someone to reinforce the left side of the infield such as Prado, trade for veteran starting pitcher such as McCarthy, sign reliever maybe Moylan, trade away Adams.
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Didn't happen in exactly the way I imagined, but from the start of the off-season I've thought we could pry McCarthy from the Dodgers given their other starting pitching options. His option for 2019 is very attractively priced (5M).
 
nsacpi said:
Didn't happen in exactly the way I imagined, but from the start of the off-season I've thought we could pry McCarthy from the Dodgers given their other starting pitching options. His option for 2019 is very attractively priced (5M).
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Braves essentially got McCarthy by giving the Dodgers $18M in 2018 cap space.

Seems like a clear win for the Braves to me.
 
nsacpi said:
Didn't happen in exactly the way I imagined, but from the start of the off-season I've thought we could pry McCarthy from the Dodgers given their other starting pitching options. His option for 2019 is very attractively priced (5M).
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If you combine my idea to target Gonzalez and Kazmir in a Kemp swap, along with your idea to target McCarthy, you have the basic rough-edges of this deal—though neither of us apparently cared to entertain the Culberson angle.
 
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