Atlanta Braves still looking for righty relief help

Even at this late date, there’s a report that the Atlanta Braves are not yet settled on their bullpen options.

File this under the same heading as we’ve seen throughout the off-season thus far:  “Close, but no cigar”:  the Atlanta Braves are still looking for right-handed help for the bullpen.

There have been a lot of them available on the free agent market this Winter, but thus far, the Braves have opted to ink only these:

• Josh Tomlin ($1.25m major league deal)
• Nate Jones (minor league deal)
• Carl Edwards Jr. (minor league deal)

Now there’s news from Jon Heyman about what else might have been going on:

The Trevor Rosenthal information is new — that the Braves were trying to get him is not terribly surprising, but we hadn’t heard this in the “chatter” until now.

Rosenthal signed with the A’s last week in an interesting deal:  he gets $11 million, but it’s a deal with heavily-deferred monies:

Difficult to suggest the Atlanta Braves had a shot with Rosenthal

There were a few factors working against the Braves, if they were indeed going after Rosenthal hard:

• At a minimum, their competition beyond Oakland included the Brewers and Mets (twitter reports)
• Jeff Passan reported that while he had multi-year options, two other factors were involved:  the higher AAV with Oakland’s offer and a chance to be the closer.
• While the Braves might have been on board with the 1-year deal, it’s likely they couldn’t offer $11 million (or didn’t want to defer that much money).
• As a member of the Braves, Rosenthal might not have been in line to be the closer (Will Smith and/or A.J. Minter likely being a little higher in that pecking order.  That probably impacted the money side as well.

So that brings us around to Shane Greene again, who still doesn’t have a job and likely should sign — somewhere — within the next week in order to be ready for the regular season.

It still may not be easy:  Greene now emerges as the top RH relief option still available, and the jilted suitors for Rosenthal (Brewers, Mets, maybe others) should also be interested in his services.

After a bad 2019, Greene’s numbers did rebound in 2020, though GM’s should be forgiven if they question which years are the “real” numbers for Greene:

• 2015-16, 2018, 2019 in Atlanta:  ERA results above 4.00
• 2017, 2019 in Detroit, 2020:  ERA results below 3.00

Other RH relief pitchers still out there:  David Robertson, Trevor Cahill, Jeremy Jeffress, Tyler Clippard.

Still, while the 32-year-old Greene may have had his heart set on a multi-year deal, it’s about at this point that he should probably be looking for the best 1-year pact he can find and get it done.

That’s been the specialty of Alex Anthopoulos lately:  short contracts for players wanting to prove themselves.

Sounds like the right play for both sides right about now.