Atlanta Braves podcast 36: on Smyly, the roster, and early trade ideas

Are you thankful that the Atlanta Braves have already signed a starting pitcher?

Being a trendsetter often involves risk.  That was the situation developing last week when the Atlanta Braves went a bit off-script and signed Drew Smyly to an $11 million contract for the 2021 season.

No, that wasn’t $11 million for two years… it was just for one.  Unfortunately, that fact seems to have completely overshadowed anything else about the transaction… like the fact that the Braves still need a couple more starters.

But with that, a lot of us here at The Take were taken aback.  The questions came quickly?

• Why the overpay?
• That has got to be an analytics signing, right?
• Didn’t everybody else have him pegged at half that price?
• Does this mean the Braves really do have money to spend?

All valid questions and questions that will only be answered once Smyly himself starts throwing regular season games in April.

The hope, obviously, is that the Atlanta Braves saw something about him that ‘clicked’ recently in their heads… something that can be shared with Smyly that will allow him to maintain and improve upon the good work he did in 2020.  That’s even as everything was working off of small sample sizes.

Our trio of talkers give our respective takes on this subject, on the Rule 5 draft, the coming non-tender deadline, and the chances for getting a trade done for a big bat.

Maybe there’s some hope… if Alex Anthopoulos can still find enough people in his office to help him finally make The Big Trade that puts his Braves team over the top in 2021.

But the podcast…

Here’s a direct link to it for you.  If you prefer, you can certainly use this inline player:

If you prefer to download it for later,

here’s a link for that

, too.  Finally, you can look up TomahawkTake on your favorite podcast/tunes streaming site as well.

This is effectively our ‘Thanksgiving Special’, as we’ll skip next week and be back with you again in a fortnight’s time (can you remember when that word was spelled like this and meant “two weeks”?).

In any case, we’re thankful that you continue to both read and listen to our opinions on how the Atlanta Braves are doing the things they are doing — we do want you all to know that we sincerely appreciate your patronage here:  thank you!