Braves News: Braves trade for Joe Jimenez, Elvis Andrus rumors, more
After several days at the Winter Meetings, the Atlanta Braves had been quiet while the market was going wild with lengthy and expensive free agent deals. Braves general manager Alex Anthopoulos said of the meetings that while they didn’t finish any deals, the Braves still considered the meetings productive and that they made progress on several fronts.
One of those fronts appeared to be the acquisition of Joe Jimenez from the Detroit Tigers. Last night, AA intimated that the Braves had targeted Jimenez at the trade deadline and couldn’t quite get a deal done. Well, Atlanta finally got their man as the Braves traded for Jimenez and some cash in exchange for prospects Justyn-Henry Malloy and Jake Higginbotham.
More Braves News
While we don’t have any news on the Dansby front, one named that got floated by Braves beat writer Mark Bowman as an option at shortstop is Elvis Andrus. While he is far from a perfect solution, here is a look at what Andrus would bring to the table for the Braves.
While the Braves haven’t made a big free agent signing at the major league level yet, the team has still stayed busy to keep the minor league system stocked. Recently, the team signed Joe Hudson and Hudson Potts to minor league deals.
Before we saw Kenley Jansen signed a two year deal with the Red Sox, the Yankees and Aaron Judge signed a gigantic deal which saw the slugger get nine years and $360 million to stay in the Bronx. For funsies, we took a look at how Judge’s deal compares to the Braves’ current contracts. So many Ozzie Albies-es.
MLB News
The obvious big news of the day that was mentioned above was that Aaron Judge and the Yankees appear to have come to terms on a nine year, $360 million deal. We had some fun with it on the site yesterday, but kudos to Judge and his team for securing the most expensive free agent deal in baseball history. This wasn’t the only monster deal to get signed yesterday as Xander Bogaerts somehow got an 11 year deal from the San Diego Padres worth $280 million.
The Boston Red Sox, not to be outdone, went abroad with a big signing of their own as they were able to snag Japanese star outfielder Masataka Yoshida on a five year deal. Including the rumored $15 million posting fee that Boston is having to fork over to Yoshida’s Japanese club, the deal will be worth well over $100 million.
Other than selecting a player during the minor league portion (Domingo Gonzalez from the Pirates), the Braves didn’t make any selections or lose any prospects during the Rule 5 Draft that went on yesterday. For a look at which teams did end up drafting some players in the Rule 5, here are the draft’s results.