Reaction to the Atlanta Braves trade deadline inaction

The Atlanta Braves in Context

I find myself today in a rare agreement with Jeff Schultz of TheAthletic (paywalled)… their resident critic of the Braves (a position he’s occupied for years back to his AJC days).

Over the past couple of Winters, I have warned of the Braves prized pitching prospects “withering on the vine” and possibly suffering from ‘prospect fatigue’ as they jam the upper reaches of the minors without getting a proper chance to flourish in the majors.  Schultz pointed this out today as well.

Atlanta simply doesn’t have mound space available for all of them and needed to use at least some of them — while still regarded well — to bring back a top-flight proven asset. Those opportunities have been available. Those opportunities have been passed over.

Thus far, the only such deals in recent memory that have had any significance in this context included the acquisition of Chris Martin (Kolby Allard going the other way) and Shane Greene (Joey Wentz).

Other trades have typically involved leveraged contracts that the Braves accepted (this was key in the deals for Kevin Gausman and Mark Melancon).

So meanwhile, they’ve held onto pitchers like Patrick Weigel, Kyle Muller, Chad Sobotka, Huascar Ynoa, Jasseel De La Cruz, Tucker Davidson, Philip Pfeifer, Freddy Tarnok, Jeremy Walker, Ian Anderson, Jacob Webb, Touki Toussaint, Kyle Wright, Sean Newcomb, Mike Foltynewicz, Bryse Wilson, and Grant Dayton… just to name 17 or so.

I mean… do they think all of these guys were going to turn out to be aces? More to the point today: how much are these guys worth in trade currency now?

But for this point, let’s take Mike Clevinger for one cherry-picked example.  The Padres somehow managed to get him without giving up a single Top-100 prospect.

Heck, Seattle extracted that (OF Taylor Trammell) from San Diego as part of the 7-player “Austins” trade late Sunday (Austin Nola and Austin Adams with Dan Altavilla).

So now, teams were said to be asking for OF Drew Waters (both Texas and Cleveland). Are you telling me that the Braves couldn’t get along without him in the future when you have Ronald Acuna, Cristian Pache, and (possibly) Adam Duvall as controllable pieces in your outfield for some time to come?

I can understand that Anthopoulos might be a little guy-shy in that he once dealt away Noah Syndergaard, but even that has to be looked at in a proper long-term context: Thor hasn’t quite been able to live up to his potential (though R.A. Dickey could never replicate his Cy Young season after moving to Toronto, either).

No trade is perfect.  Not every trade is “won”.  In fact, the ideal situation is that both parties flourish in the process.  But standing pat does nothing to improve the status quo.

Arguably, then, trading no one might be worse than standing pat in some circumstances.