Day two trade rumors include Atlanta Braves
By Fred Owens
The Ask
Consider the players who fall into the same 4.5 fWAR area over that time; Freddie Freeman, George Springer, Anthony Rizzo, Mookie Betts and Kyle Seager among others. Yelich signed a seven-year $49.75M deal prior to 2015. The four remaining years only cost 42.5M and there’s an option year for $15M; that ‘s dirt cheap for a perennial 4.5 WAR player. ALl that adds up to a high price.
The only thing that might mitigate the cost would be the Braves taking a Martin Prado’s contract. Prado just turned 34 suffered injury riddled seasons over the last two years. He has two years and $28.5M left on the three-year 40M contract the Marlins gave him after 2015.
If the Braves take Prado’s contract a package of Sean Newcomb, Cristian Pache, Touki Toussaint and another body like Matt Wisler might work.
That’s A Wrap
Odds of this happening are slim. Anthopoulos told Mark Bowman yesterday that slow and steady was his mantra until he learns more about his assets.
"“I don’t know the evaluators. . .I don’t know all of the internal analysis. . .I would say my thought for Year 1 would be a more cautious approach. That doesn’t mean we don’t want to be active . . .But you’re not comfortable if you don’t have comfort with the information yet. That’s just going to take some time.”"
Bowman reinforced that idea in his post today.
"for now, Anthopoulos seems content to patiently progress through this Hot Stove Season and wait for the opportunity to see these young pitchers with his own eyes before defining their trade value."
On the other hand, Anthopoulos is a gunslinger, if he sees a chance to steal a talented controllable player he could well do the unexpected.
Right now the Cardinals are pretty desperate to improve their run production, are about to sign a huge TV contract and have a fan base that is already clamoring for change. They are far more likely to go overboard than AA. . . at least for now.