It’s an extremely busy time of the year for the Atlanta Braves and all the rest of major league baseball. Major decisions on many fronts.
If you’re waiting for teams to start engaging in major trades, note that your Atlanta Braves and the rest of MLB will be distracted for the next few days.
The distractions? The Draft and the All-Star break.
Generally speaking, not much other business will be conducted until at least Wednesday once the game is over, but it will be so much more so as the draft is happening during the same week — for the first time.
The draft schedule is as follows:
- SUNDAY, 7PM: Round 1 (ESPN and the MLB Network)
- MONDAY, 1PM: Rounds 2-10 (MLB.com)
- TUESDAY, Noon: Rounds 11-20 (MLB.com)
- All times Eastern
Even after the 20 rounds have been completed, savvy teams will be fanning out across the country to see how many other undrafted players they can snap up for the requisite price of $20,000 or so. But that remains as a side-show to the main event.
Atlanta Braves and the next 2 Weeks
This week’s podcast talks about the trade deadline and the draft: Fred got some great info from ESPN this week that he wanted to share, and the entire podcast team chimed in on whether the Braves should be buyers or sellers at the deadline.
The real trick here: it’s truly going to be difficult to achieve major “success” (however you might define that) in either operation… both buying and selling will be difficult propositions.
But that’s the problem you run into when your team has been floundering for much of the year: there’s simply too many areas of need.
Right now, signs appear to point in the “buy” direction, but we don’t have any idea how full that shopping cart will be when the Braves leave the store.
In the meantime, here’s our analysis on the problems with both the “buy” and “sell” sides, along with Fred’s pre-draft analysis.
We may not see a 2-sport star like Tom Glavine picked this year, but most signs are leaning toward a college pitcher.
You can grab this podcast via any of the usual ways:
- This direct download link
- Virtually any of your favorite subscription sites
- This convenient player
Regardless of how you listen… thanks for doing so. The effort is appreciated.
In the meantime: it’s going to be an interesting next couple of weeks… stay tuned!