Atlanta Braves hold an extended #AskCoppy session

It’s fun to see a General Manager answering fan questions… it’s even more fun to try and decipher “GM speak”.

In a periodic event that is really an awesome ‘press conference’ for Atlanta Braves fans everywhere, GM John Coppolella took to twitter once again on Friday afternoon… for two and a half hours!

How unusual is this?  Heck, other fans are actually jealous:

As usual, there were a lot of ‘frustration’ and ‘trolling’ questions, but through it all, there are several nuggets that we can glean from the lengthy session – and virtually no topic was left wanting attention.

As always, Coppy accepts responsibility for the “product on the field.”  He never shies away from such questions, and that’s especially refreshing in this day.  That included a finger-pointing evaluation of himself regarding the Alex Wood/Hector Olivera trade.

There were also a lot of questions – or statements – about the loss of Freddie Freeman.  In summary:  (1) No, he can’t be replaced; (2) We’ll try to hang in there anyway.

He did indicate that the James Loney deal was done quickly simply because of his proactive agent.  Good job by him (Brian Peters)… though Coppy jokingly suggested that he’d considered Chipper Jones to replace Freeman!

Given the length, we won’t attempt to regurgitate all of the answers Coppy provided.  If you’d like to do so, then check this link and then scroll – for a while – down the timeline.

Coppy is certainly much more forthcoming in his remarks than was his predecessor, but it’s still a good idea to expand upon his 140-character-or-less answers to see what he really might be saying between the lines.

So let’s dig in a bit… questions will be paraphrased to provide some brevity.

The Team

THE BULLPEN – Any plans to improve the bullpen?  Seems like we’d be over .500 if they were better.

TRANSLATION:  A.J. Minter, Mauricio Cabrera, perhaps some others.  Right now – as you can easily see from Washington – bullpens around the league are struggling with a vast divide between good pens (Indians:  1.85 ERA!!) and bad ones (Nats, Mariners:  5.44).

Currently, the Braves relievers sport a 4.38 ERA… just 20th best, but they’ve clearly had their ‘moments’ despite being very good lately.

My conclusion from this? Good relief pitchers are going to be a hot commodity at the July trade deadline.

ABOUT THE CURRENT TEAM – Do you not have any money to spend or [do you] prefer not being good?

Ouch… but the answer is forthright… and perhaps a little surprising:

REACTION:  This will be another reason to pay close attention this Summer… and into the off-season.

I had personally been operating under the belief that the bench upgrades were not coming simply because the payroll budget was tight – perhaps even overspent.  Here Coppy says that this is not the case, and perhaps he has been withholding some funds for targeted purposes.

ALSO:  While Chase d’Arnaud was DFA’d from Boston today, Coppy specifically said that he won’t be putting in a waiver claim for the former Brave… though would not rule out a minor league deal if he clears waivers and remains available.

Wheeling and Dealing

ABOUT TRADES THIS SUMMER – Are you a Buyer or Seller this Summer?

REACTION – This should excite everyone, but it especially does that to me.  This was the scenario I proposed early this week, that the Braves could certainly be involved in stacking up additional prospects by selling off veterans, then turning around and filling long-term needs.

If that’s what Coppolella is suggesting, then don’t sleep on him this Summer, for there’s going to be quite a bit of trade “inventory” available to go after.

Which needs, you might ask?

OF PARTICULAR NOTE:  Again, in line with the ideas of that prior post, the context of this answer was this trade deadline…this Summer.

Honestly, I can’t imagine that he’d blurt this out unless he already had some active ideas going on this subject… though admittedly, he openly coveted Chris Archer back in the Winter and he’s still a Ray, so I will temper that thought by saying ‘it still takes two to tango’… you need to have willing trade partners.

ALSO:  A later question backed this up – confirming that he will use ‘young prospects’ to make trades for help at the major league level.

ALONG THE SAME LINE – Could [we] be expecting any more roster moves or trades?

TRANSLATION/REACTION – Multiple thoughts about this answer:

• Gotta wonder if he’s almost becoming a nuisance to some of his counterparts!
• This is the “quiet” time for most teams.  As Coppy suggested, trading season really doesn’t ramp up until after the draft.
• Those thoughts aside, he’s still getting after it.  My own suspicion is that the Braves are laying foundations for future possible deals: perhaps exchanging names of interest, getting timetables or conditions by which teams might be inclined to deal.

There is a Draft in Here

So why show the NFL Draft stage here?  Because MLB has the least interesting draft venue of any of the major sports… least lights, fireworks, camera, and audience.

That makes sense, of course, because you’re drafting 1200 guys, if whom 2/3rds will never see the majors and the first ones won’t get there for 2-3 years.

But I digress.

EXTRA DRAFT PICKS? – Do you think you may be able to add another draft pick [via trade for Competitive Balance picks] before the draft?

TRANSLATION:  This answer was not optimistic, but neither was it a “no”.  At this proximity to the MLB draft (3½ weeks away), it’s actually interesting to me that he is still so diligently pursuing this… on a daily basis.

That’s especially interesting since there’s only a handful of teams in possession of such picks.

That answer was backed up later.  Worth monitoring.

ABOUT SOME DRAFT PROSPECTS – This was interesting for the detail involved:

QUESTION:  You should take a look at Pavin Smith and Adam [Haseley] out of UVA [University of Virginia], both can really swing the bat and Adam is a two-way player.

REACTION:  Depending on the list, 1B Smith is the 7th or 10th-ranked draft-eligible player on the Baseball America board.  OF/LHP Adam Haseley is 13th on their list.

So Coppy didn’t miss a beat here – he knew not only who these guys are, but the time of their batting practice prior to the Ga Tech game!  [he missed that BP session doing this, though!]

So if you have any doubt that your GM is keeping track of everything that’s going on… well, forget it.  He’s fully plugged in.

ABOUT THAT FIRST DRAFT PICK – How many of the top guys are you considering for the #5 pick?

TRANSLATION – Let’s do the math here.  Picking from the 5th position means that 4 guys on that short list will be gone when pick #5 rolls around.

It’s almost a lock that Hunter Greene will be gone in the top three – though he’s also certainly on the list.  If you have been following Ben’s Mock Drafts, then these guys might be the balance of the #Braves draft-possibles:

• MacKenzie Gore (LHP)
• Royce Lewis (SS/OF)
• Jordan Adell (OF)
• Austin Beck (OF)
• Shane Baz (RHP)
• Sam Carlson (RHP)

This list notably includes more position players than pitchers, and is consistent with prior drafts an philosophies expressed about preferring high schoolers.  However…

Huh… that’s actually surprising.  Not just 1, but “multiple” college guys.  THat would probably bring in guys like these:

• Brendan McKay (LHP, Louisville)
• Kyle Wright (RHP, Vandy)
• JB Bukauskas (RHP, N. Carolina)

The first two guys may not even be there for the Braves to consider… it’s fairly reasonable to guess that Minnesota and Cincy will snap up both… and if not, then one of them (the Reds) might take Greene with the Padres taking the third pitcher.

But then there’s Pavin Smith also in the neighborhood… and Coppy knew all about his visit to Atlanta today, so. who knows?  But I would count it likely that one of the kids named above will be an Atlanta Brave draftee on June 12.

IN CASE YOU DIDN’T KNOW – Primary focus with your first pick in the upcoming draft?

REACTION – No surprise, though it is notable that there seems to be more activity around hitters this year.  Continue to read Ben’s draft pieces as we get closer to June 12th.

Other Topics – including call-ups

FIRST, A HUMOR BREAK – Coppy complimented the avatar of @BravesCody… who borrowed a pic of Jose Bautista getting hammered last year by Rougned Odor.  Here it is via a different tweet of his:

About Prospects, Call-Ups

There were several questions along the lines of “when will we see                   called up to the majors?”

Here’s a typical one:  “Acuna and Allard look like the 2 top prospects, what’s a realistic ETA if they both keep playing great?”

Now while that’s interesting in general, it’s even more interesting when you consider that there’s very few of these younger kids whose names appear on the 40-man roster.  Even Ozzie Albies isn’t on it yet.

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Once a team does this, it’s like there’s a serious commitment made to the player – it’s like going from ‘just dating’ to ‘engaged to be married’.

That analogy is even more appropriate given that the risk of losing the player is high if you subsequently try to remove someone from the 40-man list… as we saw with Chase d’Arnaud, for instance.

That roster has 25 players on it for the active roster – the Atlanta Braves team, and just 15 slots for the reserves.  So even with September callups, that list has been selected carefully.

As of now, Lucas Sims (pictured above) is on ‘the 40’… so is Max Fried.  Albies, Demeritte,

Acuna, Allard, Soroka, Weigel, Newcomb, Minter, etc. … none of them are at this point.

Heck, neither are James Loney, Dustin Peterson or Carlos Franco (the latter pair just promoted to Gwinnett yesterday).

So I would not expect any kind of ‘prospect invasion’ in September, but maybe a couple of guys.

BEYOND THAT.  Coppy likes how the better prospects are ‘pushing’ their way up to the higher levels of the minors – and doing so strictly by their performances on the field.  It’s one of those proverbial ‘good problems to have’.

Finally… Is Coppy Lurking Among Us?

QUESTION – I read that a lot of GMs have fake Twitter accounts to monitor the chatter amongst fans… so what’s your fake Twitter handle?

Did you notice that he didn’t deny it??  So if you want to check around, look for somebody following several hundred people, but with only a very few followers… maybe even single digits.

Report your results back here.

Next: It's Loney Out Tonight...

I did note that he’s ‘full plugged in’, right?