Atlanta Braves… wanna buy an outfielder? Seems Milwaukee has a few

On the heels of big deals tonight, the Brewers are now flush with outfielders.  Anyone wanna do a little bargain shopping?

So the new Milwaukee outfield is now Ryan Braun, Christian Yelich, and Lorenzo Cain.  The Atlanta Braves did create a hole in left field when Matt Kemp was dealt back out West, but there’s not yet any sign of a longer-term partner for Ender Inciarte and Ronald Acuna.

No surprise here – they’ve shored up their offense and defense in the outfield, so pitching is the next logical step… but it’s not clear to me that either of those players will bring back what they need – unless the Brewers also take back a big contract.

But let’s go through the exercise together as a class:

Brett Phillips

On Brett Phillips:  he’s now listed third on the depth chart – at every outfield position.  Oh, excuse me – 4th for center field.  So he’s not even a 4th outfielder… more like 5th or sixth.

That said, he’s still young (closing in on 24 years old) and had an excellent AAA campaign last season (.944 OPS with 19 homers and a .305 average).  He strikes out too much (30%), but does get on base (upper .300’s).

Phillips entered 2017 as the 12th best prospect in the Brewers’ system (MLBPipeline).  BaseballAmerica ranked him 7th recently noting that he has the best OF arm in their system… I guess he’s 11th and 6th, respectively, now that Lewis Brinson is a Marlin.

Domingo Santana

There have been some discussions – here and on twitter about Santana.

One thing he’s got going for him – he’s a big boy (6-5/220) with a big bat (30 HR/.505 slugging in 2017).  One thing he doesn’t have going for him… he’s not a great defender – the worst of Milwaukee’s outfield contributors.

Santana is 25½ and will be first-time arbitration eligible next year.

With Alex Anthopoulos said to be concentrating on defense to support the Braves’ young pitching, you’d think that Santana would be off limits in any discussions (personally, I would be in that same camp).

However, it is admittedly difficult to ignore that Santana has continued to improve as a masher in his short time in the majors.  A slash line of .278/.371/.505/.875 with the kind of power that is sorely missing from the Atlanta lineup is hard to come by – particularly at pre-arb rates of pay and with 4 years of team control.

All That Said…

Assuming that the Braves even want to strike up a conversation about either of these players, the problem will be in what the Brewers want back, which would be a veteran starting pitcher.

You could argue that Atlanta actually now has 3 options here:  Julio Teheran, Brandon McCarthy, and Scott Kazmir.  Of those, Milwaukee would want Teheran, and when the Braves counter with “only if we also get Travis Shaw“, the conversation would probably end quickly.

I doubt that the Braves would offer either of Mike Foltynewicz or Sean Newcomb, and since the Brewres need a more-established veteran, they might not even ask.  However, I also expect that McCarthy wouldn’t be their preference either.  In other words, it would probably be Teheran or nothing… and nothing is likely the answer.

So why even go through this exercise?  Frankly, it’s because the Braves really do need an extra bat – one that can be a threat in the middle of the lineup.  Other than Freeman, that threat is not there, and the Braves will be finding it difficult to score runs at times unless they can knit multiple hits together.

But finding such a bat is hard enough; finding one that’s still pre-arb is so much more difficult.

All that is why I was personally on the Yelich train; his reasonably-priced contractual control was noteworthy – but at least he’s now out of the division.  Not sure that will be the result for J.T. Realmuto, though.

Next: Connections on Nunez?

So while either of the Brewers’ newly available outfielders might not be a terrible idea, I expect the stars aren’t aligned quite right to make it happen.