Atlanta Braves Making Inquiries on Controllable Starters

Report:  Atlanta Braves making inquiries about controllable starters.  Is this a change of plan or a feint?

Over the past several days, we have reviewed a number of items as General Manager meetings were set to begin, particularly related to the messages coming from the Atlanta Braves regarding the acquisition of pitching:

• John Coppolella is looking for “2 to 3” starting pitchers, and not back-end talents.
• His priority is for free agents first, strongly preferring 1 year deals; 2 years for players they like a lot.
• If need be, he would be open to trades – again, for 1-2 year controlled starters.

However, it doesn’t take a baseball genius to recognize that the market is … soft … for fulfilling those plans.  It might even make one wonder if perhaps a slight change in those plans could improve the Braves’ rotation much more significantly.

Well, that’s part of the thinking that could be at work here:

Morosi also notes that the Rays will consider offers for Evan Longoria this winter… but while saying that, he isn’t saying that they are willing (yet) to move Chris Archer.

Let’s Read Between the Lines

There’s a lot being said in Morosi’s tweet… and a lot unsaid as well.

• “Spoken to” – That could be an innocent “do you think you might be inclined to trade him?” or something a lot more interesting like “I’d like to offer you X, Y, Z, and a couple of Greek letters for Archer”.  We don’t know which.
• “other controllable starters” – We don’t know if this means “other pitchers on the Tampa Bay Rays roster” (Alex Cobb, Drew Smyly) or other starters on other teams.  I would lean toward “Rays only” for right now.
• “other controllable starters” – We also don’t know if this means something in excess of the 1-2 years of control that Coppy wanted (Cobb and Smyly both fit this criterion) or more years (Archer, Odorizzi, Snell).  Generally, when that ‘controllable’ word is used, is means something more than 1-2 years.