Atlanta Braves Morning Chop: Anthopoulos poured gas onto his own fire

Not a Good Start

Matthew covered this last night, but I want to underline it. This is quoting from The Athletic… subscription required for the full piece.  Here is the very first question:

"[Schultz/O’Brien:]  All we heard about the Braves’ move to SunTrust was that it would drive a higher team payroll. Fans contend that the team promised as much. Terry, you said the team would have money to spend. But it has been a relatively quiet winter. Please explain. Anthopoulos: Did we promise we were going to spend more money, or did we promise we were going to have more flexibility? Nobody is ever going to say, “We have to spend ‘X’ amount.”"

Thanks, Alex:  I’ll take “Word-Parsing” for $200, please.

No, you don’t have to spend ‘X’ dollars, but can you explain the difference to me between ‘having no flexibility’ and ‘spending nothing when you have flexibility?’  The result is the same.

He went on (next question) to detail that he had spent $56 million for 2019 that wasn’t on the books in early 2018.

Kinda.   He counted Gausman and O’Day in that list (acquired mid-season).  He didn’t subtract jettisoned free agents (Suzuki and McCarthy, chiefly).  And there was the elimination of $33 million in so-called ‘dead money’ for Adrian Gonzalez and Scott Kazmir.

Oh, and Markakis is gonna be paid less than half of his 2018 salary.

That’s not really an addition of $56 million.

Right now, the COTS site projects the 40-man roster to cost the Braves $122.3 million on Opening Day.  Anthopoulos admitted in this interview that he was sitting at $126 million to finish 2018… above the intended $120 million budget.

Any way you slice it, $126 million is a bigger number than $122 million. 

Start the Chant:  DEE-Fense!

The rest of the interview was in the tenor of continuing to defend and justify positions:

• Wanting to be in the upper tier (of league payrolls)
• We’re getting to the ‘neighborhood’ of the middle this year
• Justifying the lack of a big contract based on baseball history
• We like being an underdog(!)
• We make some decisions because there’s a lot of things we know that the public doesn’t have access to (yeah, we know this)

The almost bizarre answer from Terry McGuirk was this one involving payroll status compared to last year (the answer tended to drift from the original question):

"We still have an appreciable amount of dry powder [cash] ready to go. The winter to us is certainly relevant. But the psychological value when you add to your team at the trade deadline is appreciable. We build that into the budget now."

Okay, I have something to say about this.

• If there’s an impact player available NOW that can help the club win, then doesn’t it make sense to acquire that player now?  In other words, 162 games of help > 81 games of help.
• Example:  Craig Kimbrel was hanging out in the Orlando Airport on Thursday… now within your reach.  In July, he won’t be available.

I certainly get the idea that adding players later is helpful for the purpose of filling holes that exist then, but before July you’ve got to get into a competitive position to make that act even relevant.