Atlanta Braves Morning Chop: enjoy your prospects while they last

Not All Gloom and Doom

While this doesn’t paint a rosy picture for trends in the minors, I want to be quick to point out that there are a few players on the field at the upper minors and major league levels that should still be with the club for the next few years.

• Acuna:  under team control through 2024
• Albies:  2023
• Camargo:  2023
• Newcomb:  2023
• Swanson: 2022
• Inciarte:  2022
• Foltynewicz:  2021
• Freeman:  2021

The trick, of course, will be whether enough key stars can be kept for longer periods of time (i.e., getting contract extensions) so that the team will have a chance to backfill the coming holes in the farm system.

Such timelines will play a role in addressing how to promote from the minors, how to use prospects, and how to handle extension offers.

It would make sense, for instance, to try and get the middle infielders signed up for a longer term simply because the Braves have virtually no one even on the horizon to replace them.

Accordingly – given the prospects available now – Atlanta cannot simply go ahead and choose to overpay now to get a right-fielder or frontline starter (or whatever), because they have to think about this future calculus as well.

In other words, having Kyle Wright and Ian Anderson for 6 full season could actually be better for the Braves over the long haul rather than using them to get Corey Kluber (note: this isn’t a trade proposal; it’s an illustration) … even taking Kluber’s prowess into account.

So yes: spend the prospects as needed, but spend wisely.

That gets back to the money question

In the short-term, you could argue “Okay – we don’t want to lose prospects, so let’s spend cash and sign free agents instead”.  There are a few trade-offs here as well:

• Cash used for long-term free agent contracts may mean having less cash to extend ‘the kids’
• Free agents still have to choose you, too… you can’t simply say ‘go sign this guy’
• Such free agents often are difficult to move as needed if team circumstances change

So it’s a tough problem… and this was all brought about by the rule violations that put the Braves behind the 8-ball.

Hopefully as these Days of Reckoning are realized, the lesson won’t be lost on this or other teams… it’s a penalty with ramifications that will filter through the entire organization for probably a full decade.