Could the Atlanta Braves be a player for Cleveland’s Mike Clevinger?

The Value of Clevinger

The BaseballTradeValues.com site – for what it’s worth – suggests that Clevinger has a median ‘value’ of $82.5 million dollars.

That’s pretty steep, but justifiably so. Of all of the Atlanta Braves – majors and minors – only 2 players exceed that rating: Acuna and Albies (both are over $175M thanks to their contracts).

The next highest are Crisitian Pache (79.1) and Mike Soroka (69.8) with notable option Drew Waters sitting two notches down from there at 56.8.  We’ll get back to these outfielders in a moment.

Clevinger has only been in the league for 3 full seasons and he’s been extremely effective already: 41-21 overall with a 3.20 ERA (more like 2.96 if you remove his 53 inning rookie season of 2016).

He threw 200 innings as a 27-year-old in 2018, though was limited to 126 innings in 2019 thanks to a back strain and an ankle sprain… yet returned from those maladies to produce his best year yet.

2020 will be his age 29 season and thus far, his stats have only been getting better year-over-year.  Even if they regressed to 2018 levels, that would still be All-Star caliber in the National League.

On top of all that, Clevinger is looking at an arbitration salary in the neighborhood of ‘only’ $4.5 million this year – his first Arb year.  So yes – if he’s actually available, he’s definitely the kind of pitcher any team would want to pursue.

If the Indians are looking for a premium outfielder – and not just a ‘Topmost’ prospect – then Atlanta has a couple of them that might be available… plus a pitcher that could at least replace Clevinger in their rotation to account for the ‘one additional player’ Morosi referred to.