The Atlanta Braves are still looking for teams out of the race to make deals with.
What a difference a week can make. Our Atlanta Braves are 7-2 in their last nine games and have taken control of the NL East — even as the toughest part of their schedule is coming to a close.
Meanwhile, another team that was surging a week ago now finds itself doing some sobering self-reckoning.
After their August 18 game, the Arizona Diamondbacks had won their 6th straight game and 10th of 13. They had vaulted into second place and were suddenly looking like ‘buyers’.
Since then… disaster. Not only have they lost eight straight games, but the last six of them have come at the hands of the Giants and Rockies — teams that a playoff team should beat.
The Rockies’ games were each decided by a single run: even with late comebacks falling short on Tuesday and Wednesday. Heartbreaking. Momentum-killing.
Thus this quote from GM Mike Hazen… which came before last night’s loss:
"“I think we’re going to have to take a more measured approach to how we’re looking at things and see how the next few days play out,” Hazen said. He later added, “We’re going to have a lot of conversations around a lot of different things, but I’m not sure how aggressive we’re going to be on the buy side.”"
That sounds like a man who is in the process of doing a ‘180’ — changing from a buyer to seller.
Like we did in looking at the Cincinnati Reds yesterday, let’s look briefly at the options Arizona may or may not have of interest to the Atlanta Braves:
Pitching
Right now, the Arizona pitching — like with so many other teams — is in shambles. Madison Bumgarner was ineffective and is not hurt. Robbie Ray and Luke Weaver have only been marginally better… both with ERA values above 7.
Their best pitchers have been Merrill Kelly (who’s hurt and likely done for the year) and Zac Gallen (who’s been outstanding, though never pitched over 150 innings in any year, ever).
‘Robbie Ray’ is the name that pops up most often: he’s a free agent at year’s end, and is thus the most expendable. But something’s clearly wrong with him since his walk rate (which was never great) has doubled from a year ago.
So any team thinking they can fix that could probably get him for pennies on the dollar.
Zac Gallen… is not going to be available without a King’s ransom: he’s 25 and won’t even be arbitration-eligible until 2023.
Teams may well inquire on closer Archie Bradley. He’s got one additional year of control after this season, so that might be a good move if Arizona chooses to let him go elsewhere. That won’t be Atlanta’s focus, of course, but do watch for such a deal elsewhere.
Hitting
A couple of years ago, third baseman Eduardo Escobar was looking like a budding star. In 2018, he hit in the mid-270’s and OPS’d in the mid-800’s for Minnesota.
Things haven’t gone as well in the desert after he got a 3 year/$21 million contract starting in 2019.
Let’s check that for a second: he was great in 2019 (111 OPS+, 35 homers, 118 RBI, and led all of baseball with 10 triples), but his numbers have fallen off a cliff here in 2020:
- .189 average (a drop of 80 points!)
- .584 OPS
Now there is a question about Escobar: is he just missing by a smidge when comparing this year vs. last or has he just been lucky in the past?
- Exit velocity: up 1.2 mph
- Expected/Weight On-base Avg: down just 11 points to .324
- Expected/Weight On-base Avg when making contact: down just 12 points to .375
- Hard-hit percentage: down from 31.8% to 28.3%
- Walk rate: down from 9.5% to 7.1%
- ‘Barrel’ rate: up from 5.7% to 6.8% (with sweet spot% up by about the same margin)
- Chase rates (swinging at pitches out of the strike zone) have been better this year: down from 40.8% to 36.4% with contact rates constant.
- His contact rate on strikes has actually been better by a sizeable margin.
Scouts would have to confirm this, but explanations could be that he’s either trying too hard to be ‘The Guy’ in their lineup (which is odd, given that they have Walker, 2 different Martes, and Peralta all hitting over .300 around him) or he’s simply in a run of very bad luck.
We’ve talked about the Atlanta Braves perhaps needing an upgrade at third base to deal with the struggles of Austin Riley and Johan Camargo. Last year, Escobar would have been ‘The Guy’.
He might be available for trade now, but his struggles make a ‘buyer beware’ situation: there’s no way to know if the change of scenery would work, and the cost of such a trade would be enough that a team would need to know they were getting the ‘2019 Escobar’.
In the Braves’ situation, you’ve already got two third basemen who are treading the Mendosa line with their hitting. Trading for another one (more likely: swapping out one of them) isn’t necessarily an upgrade.
So there’s the rub with Arizona: no good matchups. Their best players (hitting or pitching) are either unavailable or playing positions that the Braves have covered.
Their most available players… aren’t terribly desirable.
One could take ‘a flier’ with someone, but it’s hard to expect a deal that would provide any real impact. That’s not at all what we would have expected when this season began.