Braves Off Season Outfield Options

Oct 31, 2015; New York City, NY, USA; New York Mets center fielder Yoenis Cespedes fields a ball hit by Kansas City Royals catcher Salvador Perez (not pictured) in the fifth inning in game four of the World Series at Citi Field. Mandatory Credit: Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports

Free Agents

I know a lot of folks would love to have Alex Gordon but he’s the best left fielder in the game having a great post season.  While Joel Sherman opines that “He will be hurt by having draft-pick compensation tied to him. Open bidding could get him to five years and north of $75 million,” MLBTR’s Steve Adams said that “while others at MLBTR are more bullish on Gordon than I am, I still think he’ll end up much closer to, if not north of $100MM as a free agent.” The Red Sox under new GM Dave Dombrowski are said to be after Gordon.

Dombrowski has a history of trading prospects for seasoned players  so even with Mookie Betts, Jackie Bradley and Rusney Castillo available they are certainly in the hunt. That makes me think Gordon gets at least a Melvin contract. That kind of competition added to the draft pick and his age make Gordon in Atlanta an extremely long shot.

Yoenis Cespedes will get well north of $100M and Atlanta doesn’t have a large enough spotlight for him to bask in as a hero so he’s not an option. Jason Heyward’s going to get a long contract with nine digits to the left of the decimal point and the first digit will be a two. Moving on towards reality there are a lot of okay players we’ve heard discussed like Alejandro De Aza, Gerardo Parra, Chris B. Young, and Steve Pearce and they are all worth consideration. I’m going to look at three who haven’t been mentioned yet and one that I was asked about  the other day.

Orient Express

Korea’s Lotte Giants will post outfielder Ah-seop Son on November first and someone asked if the Braves would pursue him so let’s take a look.

The twenty-eight year old outfielder from Busan South Korea isn’t exactly a giant in stature. At 5’9”, 187 pounds he’s a solidly built right fielder with good speed and impressive numbers in the KBO.

All statistics courtesy Baseball Reference.com

The KBO still uses the blind posting system where all 30 teams bid and his team picks a winner. There are a lot of teams interested in Son so the bidding could get a little high for the Braves tastes. Although Son’s .317 average makes him 15th in the KBO, he’s not a home run threat averaging just a dozen or so a year. He’s a line drive hitter who gets a lot of doubles and uses his speed on the bases. I see no reason why the Braves wouldn’t make a bid for Son who could slide into right field and allow Markakis to move to left, but I’m not sure how hard the Braves will chase him when the need is for some added pop.

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