It was an interesting day for followers of the Atlanta Braves yesterday. Fans woke up to the news that Alex Anthopoulos had pulled off a trade with the Mariners that brought three players including Jarred Kelenic and Marco Gonzales to the Braves. However, given that the Braves seem to already have plans to trade Gonzales away, their wheeling and dealing seems to be far from done.
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Yesterday wasn't so much about moves themselves, but instead about conflicting reports with national writers continuing to push the Braves involvement in some big names with Braves beat writers pushing back. Case in point: the Braves have long been rumored to be interested in Dylan Cease and the fit makes a certain amount of sense given the Braves' need to add a quality starter. However, Mark Bowman went out of his way to downplay Atlanta's involvement in Cease's trade market. This is definitely the time of year where misinformation is rampant, but it is hard to get a sense of what is real in this case.
A more glaring example is all of the chatter surrounding the Braves and Shohei Ohtani. There are a lot of reasons why a Braves pursuit of Ohtani doesn't make much sense as good as he is and Bowman was quick to throw water on that idea as well, but that sure didn't stop MLB's Jon Morosi from talking up the Braves' involvement at multiple points yesterday. Morosi has a bit of a reputation of spinning interesting notions into actual rumors, but the wide range of the coverage of the Braves interests and activity was particularly stark yesterday.
The one thing that everyone seems to argue on is that the Braves are far from done at the Winter Meetings. Regardless of how all this Cease and Ohtani stuff shakes out, Atlanta is firmly in the middle of a lot of stuff. They still have to find a new home for Marco Gonzales and late last night, they were connected to Seth Lugo on the free agent starting pitching market. The Braves may not get anymore deals done at the Winter Meetings themselves, but fans can expect them to continue to be active the rest of the offseason.
MLB News
The big event today at the Winter Meetings is the second ever Draft Lottery with coverage starting at 5:30 PM EST. 17 of the 18 non-playoff teams all have a chance to land a top 6 spot in the 2024 draft with the odds scaling based on their 2023 record. The Athletics, Royals, and Rockies are tied for the best odds for the #1 overall pick at 18.3%. The Nationals are ineligible for the lottery this year because they pay into revenue sharing and got a lottery pick last year.
Speaking of Ohtani, his market seems to be cooking along and it sounds like we should have a decision from his camp soon on which team will get the privilege to commit over half a billion dollars to him. The latest word is that Ohtani recently met with the Blue Jays, but it still seems like this is anyone's game right now especially with it being unknown as to how much money he has on the table at the moment.
With most of the big free agents still out there as well as Dylan Cease, Juan Soto, Shane Bieber, and others on the trade market, there is still a lot of dominoes left to fall. At least a couple should fall during the last couple days of the Winter Meetings, but it is looking more and more that the meat of the offseason could stretch into the Christmas holiday season and possibly even the new year.