Happy New Year’s Eve, Braves fans! Yesterday was another quiet day from the Atlanta Braves with 2023 mere hours away. Not that surprising given the holiday weekend, but for those who are having some anxiety about the Braves’ roster going into next season, it doesn’t do much to stop that.
The biggest question amongst Braves fans going into the year 2023 is what is going to happen at shortstop now that Dansby Swanson is no longer a Braves. Will Vaughn Grissom or another internal candidate be able to fill the void? Will the Braves actually make a move for an external option like the recently made available Ha-Seong Kim or follow-through with the long rumored signing of Elvis Andrus as a stopgap? I guess we have to wait at least until the calendar year turns over to find out.
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Weirdly enough, the position that the Braves could improve the most going into the 2023 season vs. what they got in 2022 isn’t shortstop (where they seemingly have a couple options that project to at least be reasonable), but left field. It would certainly cost more in terms of trade assets, but there do seem to be some controllable options left on the trade market to potentially give the position a boost. They could also just hope that the current group can piece together some decent production, although that could be tough.
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We did have a signing elsewhere in the league yesterday as veteran Evan Longoria found a new team. Longoria is pretty far removed from his heyday where he was one of the better third basemen in all of baseball, but he can still play a bit when he is healthy and the Arizona Diamondbacks decided to bring him in on a one year deal. It had been said that Longoria wanted to play for a contender, which does make us wonder why he decided to sign with Arizona although him living in the state probably factored in heavily.