Atlanta Braves Morning Chop: Walter’s New Ride
Braves Cautious About Blockbuster Moves
ATLANTA — There has certainly been reason for the Braves to do their due diligence by at least evaluating what it might take to acquire a controllable frontline starting pitcher like Chris Sale, Chris Archer or Sonny Gray.
At the same time, Atlanta has not lost sight of how one significant move could impact the potential value gained over the past two years via the massive rebuilding process that has transformed its farm system from one of the worst to one of the best.
“We’ve worked so hard these past two years to take our farm system from worst to first,” Braves general manager John Coppolella said. “The last thing we want to do is give away the farm to add one player. If we give up young players we like, it’s going to be for long-term value. We’re going to try to build it the right way.”
[Ed. note: Well, I guess that means that Atlanta has gotten nowhere in their pursuit of a frontline starter. Moreover, I believe this tells us that after a couple of weeks’ effort, no trade was even very close.
Were that not to be the case, Coppy would not be saying things like this.
Combine that with John Hart‘s visit to the MLB Network yesterday morning (a snippet of that interview is posted in Bowman’s piece linked above), and it becomes fairly evident that – barring something dramatic – the Braves are almost done with their off-season.
At this point, the remaining tasks are: Catcher and Bench.
It’s part of the equation that the 40-man roster is now full and thus adding a Jason Castro (or whoever) and Jeff Francoeur will require someone to be dropped off that list. Such transactions may wait until after the Winter Meetings, but otherwise it now seems that we’ll be playing the hand we’ve got come April.
Now we just need to hope that the Nationals don’t go get Chris Sale for themselves. ]