My Take: the Evan Gattis Trade
Transitions
They have been several teams that have opted to take the “Fantasy Baseball” road this off-season, to one extent or another, shifting players around like so many packages during the Christmas season:
- BOSTON – Rebuild and Reload. In their case, they have the money to do pretty much anything they wanted. The contracts of Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval are probably questionable, plus they lost a big prize in Jon Lester, but they wanted to get back to the top now and have made major transactions (Cespedes, Porcello, et al) to make that happen.
- OAKLAND – Seemingly an aimless teardown. My own hunch is that they had some plans that didn’t pan out, and that had left them looking in from the outside while division rivals have bulked up.
- SEATTLE – they has been all about their outfield this off-season, and now have to rank as the division favorites in the AL West
- HOUSTON – If the Braves’ philosophy in 2012-2014 changed to “Hang the strikeouts! Give me more power!”, then the 2015 Astros have taken that idea and put it on steroi… let’s just say they amped it up a bit. They will now be thin on pitching, but after yesterday, there is no shortage of power in Houston.
- SAN DIEGO – the poster child for Fantasy Baseball this off-season, there are few trades that the Fathers haven’t embraced. The cost? About half of their farm system.
An then there’s Atlanta.
The Braves saw a lot of work that needed to be done when John I, John II, and John III (Schuerholtz, Hart, and Coppollela) took over. Here is what we’ve seen happen:
- A dramatic change in the farm system – Mark Bowman suggests going from a “Bottom 5” to “Top 5” ranking. In a twitter exchange, our Ryan Cothran disagrees that we’re that high, but I tend to accept Bowman’s assessment. Certainly, it’s at least close. This club went from 6-8 players with grades of B- to B+ in mid-2014 (no “A” grades) to over 20 in the “B” range with 3-to-5 now in the “A” range. That’s remarkable.
- Of the pitchers, acquired several are rated with front-of-the-rotation potential: Lucas Sims, Max Fried, Mike Foltynewicz, Tyrell Jenkins, and Manny Banuelos. Two others (Jason Hursh and Mauricio Cabrera) could also reach this plateau. Four of these names are brand new to the system.
- The Braves’ scouting department has been completely renewed, especially including the international scouting department. Several teenagers from the Caribbean and South America have already been signed, and the Braves have aggressively pursued international signing slots to support this effort.
- Kevin Seitzer was hired as hitting coach. The hitting philosophy is about to change 180 degrees from “more power” to “more base-runners”. The homer count will be way down (3 of the top 4 in Slugging% are gone), but so are over 350 strikeouts. The position player acqusitions this off-season have a common theme: OBP, hitting for average. When you flood the minor leagues with players like that, the philosophy should get spread around.
The Braves have made these changes with an obvious eye toward the future: they “sold high” on trade chips, grabbed players with high upsides (with some risks taken, yes), and loaded up on useful bullpen arms that have the potential for future returns as well (trade deadline bait). They have used trades to improve the farm and free agent signings to replace the major league holes.
Contrary to the plans of most of the teams mentioned above, this does not make the Braves a great team in 2015. That’s unfortunate, but I do think this club will be developing a scrappiness that fans will appreciate seeing while we wait for the new kids to join the fray.