Let me go ahead put this out there as well. As obvious as it may seem, we should still put in writing that Marcell Ozuna will most likely never wear an Atlanta Braves jersey again and the biggest remaining question there is how much money the team will save off his contract if any.
Second, I do not see Guillermo Heredia being back on the team either. He would simply be a cheerleader if he came back and I am not a fan of paying a player just to smile on the bench.
Let’s go ahead and get the other obvious out of the way.
Ronald Acuna will hopefully be back in May and be close to 100% and playing everyday. However, as any good team knows it’s best to have protection for a player coming back from a significant injury.
The World Series hero though, Jorge Soler, would be the perfect solution for the Atlanta Braves should the DH become a thing starting next season. Every single soul knows he can mash with any name in MLB, and if worse comes to worse, he could play the outfield to give some other guys a rest from the field.
The only hurdle could be…did he price himself out of the Atlanta Braves comfort zone with his big World Series run?
I would think now, but one never knows.
So with that being said, we turn our focus to the NLCS hero Eddie Rosario.
It was not that long ago that no team seemingly wanted Rosario and I never understood that. He has been a good player for many years and fits the bill for almost any team in the game. Luckily for us, the Atlanta Braves were seemingly able to get him for next to nothing….a panda head wearing costume player (Hey Trent)
I would absolutely love for the Atlanta Braves to bring back Rosario and let him cover the outfield until Acuna gets back and then re-evaluate from there.
We have not even touched on the other half of any outfield equation. Do the Atlanta Braves trust Cristian Pache to still be what they expected and be the team’s center fielder this season or perhaps next? If they believe that, we could be in line to lose multiple players off this list. And with that, we haven’t even mentioned Drew Waters. A lot of these potential moves could also depend on how they still view Waters long term.
Either way, it’s going to be a fun off-season as we are the World Champs after all.
It’s never too early to try and plan on going back to back though.