The Atlanta Braves under Alex Anthopoulos
(Q6) Overall, what sort of grade would you give this organization and why?
(A6) I just hinted at this above. Our site has literally been begging Alex Anthopoulos to use his 2nd tier pitching prospects to make the Big Trade Deal that would put the team over the top as an indisputable league and MLB favorite. They are that close.
Instead, those same pitchers… guys like Touki Toussaint, Sean Newcomb, Bryse Wilson, Tucker Davidson and a couple of others… are still toiling at the AAA level. I guess the organization hasn’t given up on them yet (see Mike Foltynewicz), but there was never enough room at the top for all of them, so why not engineer some sort of mutually beneficial swap?
Had Atlanta landed Nolan Arenado or George Springer, for instance, that would be established. Perhaps even J.T. Realmuto. All of these top-tier free agents were said to be in play for the Braves to one degree or another, but the front office failed to make the decisive move to land any of these players… or Mike Clevinger last year (yeah, that one didn’t work out for San Diego, but they tried), or Darvish or Musgrove or… well, the list gets long quickly.
In short, all we’re really looking for here is one more impact player. For a change, we really can’t blame parent company Liberty Media, either… they’ve definitely spent the money lately.
Credit should be given for not messing up the talent already in the house when Anthopoulos arrived, but since then his impact accomplishments have been limited: Josh Donaldson’s signing in 2019, Ozuna in 2020, the great bullpen arm acquisitions for 2020, and the re-signing of Ozuna for this season… which frankly, was more the result of Ozuna’s own desire to return and the curious market conditions in which we reside today.
The Braves should be the league co-favorite with the Dodgers by now. The fact that some are projecting them second or worse in the division is because of front-office inactivity.
That compels a grade of B-minus because teams that are this close should be tearing down any and all barriers to reach the Promised Land.
So far, this hasn’t happened.