Braves News: Braves acquire Sean Murphy in trade, per report

OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA - OCTOBER 04: Catcher Sean Murphy #12 of the Oakland Athletics looks on against the Los Angeles Angels at RingCentral Coliseum on October 04, 2022 in Oakland, California. (Photo by Lachlan Cunningham/Getty Images)
OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA - OCTOBER 04: Catcher Sean Murphy #12 of the Oakland Athletics looks on against the Los Angeles Angels at RingCentral Coliseum on October 04, 2022 in Oakland, California. (Photo by Lachlan Cunningham/Getty Images)

The Atlanta Braves have been pretty suspiciously quiet over the course of the offseason. Sure, they traded for Joe Jimenez and while he is a fine reliever, he is in the last year of his deal and has his own warts. We have heard very little on the team’s plans at shortstop and left field is an open question.

The one real rumor we had (which was immediately shot down) was that the Braves were the frontrunners to trade for Sean Murphy which was a weird move to be sure. The Braves had Travis d’Arnaud and William Contreras who are both quite good, but Murphy is good enough to at least make it an interesting story.

Things just got a lot more interesting.

That was the first big news of the offseason for the Atlanta Braves, but everyone wanted to know what the Braves had to give up to get Sean Murphy who has three years left of team control. When we have more details, we will update this post.

**UPDATE**

This is going to be a three-way deal with the Braves, Oakland, and Brewers involved. We’ll have a separate post with all of the details when the become available.

What could this mean for the 2023 Atlanta Braves?

For starters, it seems reasonably clear that the team is not going to be carrying three catchers on the roster. One option is to just shift William Contreras over to full-time DH and then move Marcell Ozuna off the roster completely. We can dream.

The more likely option is that one of Travis d’Arnaud or William Contreras are about to be headed elsewhere. Given the amount of team control that Murphy has, our guess is that that means that Contreras is probably headed out.

Regardless of the cost, this is clearly going to be the most consequential move the Braves have made this offseason. One fun note, just before news of the trade broke, this little nugget was shared by our friends over at Jomboy Media

Jake would go on to predict that William Contreras would be heading to the Brewers which would mean this is a three team deal. Oh boy, here we go.

Schedule