In 2006, the Atlanta Braves had their best season by a first baseman since Andres Galarraga when Adam LaRoche put up 2.2 fWAR thanks to his 32 home runs. However, at the same time, the Braves had their second-worst bullpen since their division title run, which might have contributed to the franchise missing the playoffs for the first time in 16 years.
Looking to shake things up, the Braves shipped off LaRoche along with minor leaguer Jamie Romak to the Pirates in exchange for closer Mike Gonzalez and top-100 prospect Brent Lillibridge. The Braves made LaRoche available because of their belief in prospect Scott Thorman, but this trust ended up being disastrous for years to come.
Forgotten prospect Scott Thorman led to a snowball of bad Braves decisions
The 2000s had plenty of failed Braves prospects, especially after 2005, and Scott Thorman was unfortunately one of them. In 2005, Thorman hit 21 homers and knocked in 92 runs while slashing .294/.343/.480 between Double-A Mississippi and Triple-A Richmond. The following year, he hit 15 bombs in 81 games, and had a 55-game cup of coffee with the big league squad, though his .23 4/.263/.438 slash line was less than impressive.
Still, the Braves seemed to have enough trust that the lefty-swinging Canadian would anchor first base. Unfortunately, Thorman was not able to match the Braves expectations. By the end of July, Thorman was the second-worst hitting first basemen in baseball by wRC+, with a 64 wRC+.
The Braves were only 3.5 games out of first, however, and decided to pull the trigger for star first baseman Mark Teixeira, sending prospect Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Elvis Andrus, Matt Harrison, Netali Feliz, and Beau Jones to Texas.
This trade relegated Thorman to the bench, where he was even worse. While Teixeira certainly met the Braves expectations, Atlanta once again missed the playoffs, and the trade with Texas would become one of the worst trades in baseball history thanks to four of the five prospects seeing varying degrees of success at the big league level.
The following season, with the Braves out of contention again, Atlanta traded Teixeira to the Angels for Casey Kotchman and Stephen Marek. Marek never reached the bigs, while Kotchman was such an underwhelming first baseman, the Braves traded him for Adam LaRoche, the first baseman the Braves traded to start this cycle.
Thorman never played in the majors again after the 2007 season. He spent the entire 2008 season with the Richmond Braves, failing to see the success he had in 2005 and 2006, then bounced around in the minors with the Royals, Rangers, and Tigers organizations.
Of course, Thorman's not to blame for the Braves poor decision making in the late-2000s. The Braves were right that a lefty-swinging Canadian would anchor first base for years to come, they were just wrong about who that first baseman would be.