Question 1
Despite not making a trade for Chris Sale or Chris Archer, the Braves have been very busy this offseason. What free agent acquisition or trade this winter has been the best move the Braves have made to this point?
Andy Harris: Just for the sheer entertainment value I want to say the Bartolo Colon free agent signing, for strengthening the minors I want to say the Alex Jackson/Tyler Pike trade, and for outmaneuvering the Yankees I want to say the Jacob Lindgren signing. But I think I’ll go with the dubious excitement of signing a utilityman with the Sean Rodriguez free agent deal.
The signing of Rodriguez from a roster construction perspective opens up a lot of possibilities. It has the potential to strengthen the two most unsettled non-catcher spots on the diamond. At second, he could be an interesting platoon partner for Jace Peterson if the team decides Ozzie Albies isn’t quite ready for primetime. At third, he could serve as the starter if Adonis Garcia turns into a pumpkin at midnight and the team wants to keep Rio Ruiz marinating in Gwinnett. He can play in right field against tough lefties and act as a defensive sub in left field. He can even be a reasonable fill-in at first base, which we never ever want to see.
All this for a reasonable guarantee of $11 million over the next two seasons, and I haven’t even touched on what could be surprising offensive capabilities. The man had a 129 wRC+ last season. If he can duplicate that, forget filling in… he should start every day somewhere. It was widely publicized that the Braves targeted Ben Zobrist last off-season and was the runner-up to acquiring him after the Cubs. That the Braves could have potentially picked up a Zobristeque player for a third of the cost is a coup in my opinion.
Chris Jervis: Sure, Andy. Take the ‘gimme’.
I’m pretty high on the acquisition of Jaime Garcia. The Braves, operating from a position of depth, sent minor league pitchers John Gant and Chris Ellis, along with minor league infielder Luke ‘Tacks’ Dykstra to the St. Louis Cardinals for Garcia. Gant was in the minors, but had been on the big league club, and is probably a major league contributor in some capacity. Ellis was good at AA, but not so good at AAA. In his defense, he was pretty young for his first exposure at the level (3.8 years below league average). Dykstra was primarily minor league depth, and with Dansby Swanson and Ozzie Albies ahead of him, unlikely to see playing time in Atlanta.
Garcia has had injury issues over the years, but he has been pretty good when he’s pitched. Since he arrived in 2008, his career ERA of 3.57 ranks 23rd out of 98 pitchers who have thrown at least 850 innings. That’s just ahead of #24 Jake Arrieta. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.
Garcia’s peripheral stats paint him to be an above-average starter when he’s pitching, as well. He has a career 3.56 FIP and a career 3.60 SIERA. In addition to being a little above average, he’s fairly easy to gauge. His numbers show that, for the most part, what you see is what you get. He isn’t outperforming or underperforming what we would expect to see; he’s pitching exactly like the numbers say he should. He’s averaging 3.0 fWAR per 200 IP, which is solid-to-good for a starter. Clearly, Garcia has never thrown 200 innings, but I was using that to show that he’s been an effective pitcher for his career when he does pitch.
Garcia, when healthy, is an above average starter, has playoff experience (2011 WS champion with the Cardinals, throwing a 1.80 ERA in 2 WS starts), and is on a short-term contract. He is in the final year of a 4-year extension signed in 2011 that will see him earn $12M in 2017. The contract is not an albatross, as it’s a good, market rate for a starter in today’s market, and it ends at the end of the season. All of these are things that contending teams look for when considering deadline deals, and Garcia strikes me as the type of player that a contender might overpay for at the deadline. Atlanta could get a good half year of production from Garcia, and then flip him at the deadline for potentially more or better talent than they gave up to acquire him.
Brent Blackwell: The Braves have been doing so many smart things lately, it’s tempting to make this a case where we try to find the smartest of the smart things. As Andy said, signing Sean Rodriguez was smart. As Chris pointed out, the trade for Garcia was smart. It’s all smart. We have smart people running a team with no immediate pressure to win a championship. That’s the kind of situation that breeds smart, non-desperate decisions. We’ve enjoyed several years of smart decisions.
What have we not enjoyed several years of? Pure, unadulterated, fun. Big fun. Jumbo-sized fun. And that’s precisely what the Braves added when they signed Bartolo Colon. Colon brings a labored breath of fresh air to the roster, giving this fanbase exactly what it needs. Sometimes being smart isn’t fun. It was smart to trade away the Jason Heywards and Craig Kimbrels, even the Juan Uribes, but it wasn’t fun.
The fans largely trusted management with this rebuild, and while 2017 understandably may not be the year to pay off that trust with a championship, it’s time to at least start making Atlanta baseball fun again. There’s no better way to bridge the gap between strategic losing (2015-2016) and hopefully serious contention (2018- ) than with a year of fun baseball in a new park. While there are certainly higher upside moves, and moves more likely to make Atlanta better, there’s not a more symbolic or important one than bringing the man whose career outlasted Turner Field into the dugout for year 1 of a new, more fun, era of Braves baseball.
Rebuttals
Andy Harris: Well, as Brent has said, most everything this offseason has been ‘smart’ from the Braves front office including signing and trading for veteran starting pitching on short-term deals. Judging from how quickly the Braves moved to sign R.A. Dickey and Bartolo Colon, they clearly believed that the price of starting pitching was only going to climb as players signed through the off-season. As it turns out, the free agent market has moved extremely slowly, and we’re not seeing the crazy money thrown at mediocre starters that many anticipated. That was hammered home when the Pirates signed Ivan Nova for a ridiculously reasonable 3 year/$26 million deal last week. Nova for that price would have excited me a lot more than Colon or Garcia at 1 year/$12 million.
With the Garcia acquisition, I did also cringe at losing John Gant, a guy that I pegged as a sleeper to emerge has a back or mid-rotation guy rather than the long reliever role that everyone seemed to try to pigeonhole him into. It may work out if the Braves can flip Garcia for more helpful pieces, but I suspect the Cardinals will get more from six years of control on Gant than what we’ll end up deriving from Garcia.
Chris Jervis: Sean Rodriguez is Ben Zobrist? That sounds like something from a Facebook group, or a 12Up article.
Rodriguez is a decent utility option. He plays several positions, and plays some of them well. But I worry we overpaid for a career .234/.303/.390 hitter. He may be a better option at second base than Jace Peterson, but Peterson made strides last year, particularly in the second half, with his ability to get on base. Rodriguez has had only one season that most would consider ‘good’, and that was last season, at age 31. Every other season has been below average, via wRC+. He may have made some changes, but I question whether 6 months of data should override six years of data.
Bartolo Colon is fun to watch. But that’s because he’s a clown. He’s a 300-pound, 43-year old, near-4.00 ERA pitcher, and he shouldn’t be an option for a team that wants to be taken seriously. I understand that he’s an innings eater, and that he can impart some knowledge to a young pitching staff, but $12M seems to be a lot for that. It’s unlikely that he can be flipped for anything worthwhile at the deadline, though slightly possible. This just doesn’t seem like a serious move for a franchise that wants to get back to decades of dominance.
Acquiring Jaime Garcia isn’t something that will turn the Braves into a winner. But it’s a move that, like many of the other moves we’ve seen them make, serves a dual purpose. He should provide them with a quality MLB player while he’s here, and he should return them a respectable, if somewhat higher risk, prospect when he’s moved. These are the types of moves that good teams make, IMO.
Brent Blackwell: If Jaime Garcia isn’t something that will turn the Braves into a winner, and Rodriguez might only be a great platoon partner for Jace Peterson, why should I be happier about those moves than this one?:
Or this one?
Bartolo Colon’s entire GIF library – that’s my rebuttal.
Judge: My decision of the winner can be found on the final page.
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