This blog has moved! Yes, already!
As of Thursday, Feb. 12, this little blog has relocated to a new home on AJC.com. It’s the same newspaper, the same Web site and the same writer (feel free to groan) — there’s just a new URL.
New features: Bigger type, more graphics, comments that load 10 times faster and a larger and more recent photo that makes me look pretty doggone old. I think you’ll like it (the blog, not the photo). But I am, as we know too well, often wrong.
Home > Mark Bradley > Archives > 2008 > November > 14
Friday, November 14, 2008
Wren wise to not buckle to Padres’ demands
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Getting Jake would have been, to use a dated expression, jake. But getting Jake Peavy would almost have been too easy. The Braves’ starting pitching falls to pieces and they go out and land one of the best in the business — no muss, no fuss, the rich get richer.
Only that’s the thing. The Braves aren’t rich anymore. They’re not the moneyed club that raided San Diego for a fairly productive first baseman on July 18, 1993, for the modest price of Melvin Nieves, Donnie Elliott and Vince Moore. The days of the Braves dealing from a position of absolute strength have gone the way of the Crime Dog.
In this post-Time Warner era, the Braves have become just another mid-level organization. They’ve got a handful of nice big-league players and their usual array of heralded prospects, but they’re unable to make a Fred McGriff-type move without having it hurt. That’s surely why Frank Wren has backed away from his protracted negotiations with the Padres — they wanted an awful lot, and Wren’s club is no longer positioned to give.
It’s believed the Padres were asking for prospect Tommy Hanson, and the best Wren was prepared to offer was Charlie Morton with Yunel Escobar as a sweetener. And therein you see the problem: Even the lure of a young starting shortstop plus a young starting pitcher wasn’t enough to sway a general manager whose team lost 99 games this summer. Because if these dangled young Braves were so good, how’d Atlanta manage to lose 90?
Peavy made financial sense. He’s under contract for $59 million over the next four seasons. That’s a lot of money, but it’s not nearly what CC Sabathia will command as a free agent. Trading for Peavy wouldn’t have broken the bank — dented it, yes — but Wren would have had to bankrupt his minor-league chain to swing such a deal, and that he cannot do.
Because what if Peavy, splendid as he is, comes up with a bum arm? Then you’re without the big-ticket pitcher, and you’re also without Hanson, whom Wren has told reporters could one day be a Peavy. Then you’re where the Braves wound up 12 months after they traded for Mark Teixeira, and that’s not a place an organization can visit more than once.
Dealing five prospects for a one-year rental — John Schuerholz’s parting gift to Wren — left the new GM with a defoliated farm system. Trading for Peavy would have made a loud noise, but so did dealing for Teixeira, who departed for Anaheim with barely a whimper. With the unerring wisdom of hindsight, that brief noise was poor compensation for a raft of lost youth.
The Braves didn’t lose 90 games just by getting unlucky. They lost 90 games because they went too long without developing a Peavy of their own. (And it’s only through Wren’s deft trade of Edgar Renteria that they have Jair Jurrjens.) Their aging pitchers finally broke down, and there wasn’t a yet a next wave behind them. Hanson and Jurrjens and maybe Charlie Morton could be that next wave, but the Braves know better than anyone the cost of buying age with youth.
In August 1987 they traded Doyle Alexander to Detroit, where he went 9-0 and helped win a division title. The kid pitcher the Braves got for Alexander is bound for Cooperstown. Maybe Tommy Hanson will turn out to be more a Pete Smith than a John Smoltz, but in all of baseball there’s still no greater commodity than young pitching. Give Wren credit for hoarding his. Give Wren credit for not making the best trade he’ll ever not make.
Permalink | Comments (346) | Post your comment | Categories: Braves/MLB
