Braves drop Bourn and Bonifacio, keep Stubbs

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. – It was an expensive week of eating dead money for the Braves, who cut Michael Bourn and his $14 million guaranteed salary Saturday, five days after releasing Nick Swisher and his $15 million salary.

The Braves designated for assignment the contracts of Bourn and utilityman Emilio Bonifacio, opting instead to purchase the contract of Drew Stubbs, who signed a minor league deal with the Braves on Wednesday, and make him their backup center fielder behind Ender Inciarte.

Bourn, 32, is a left-handed hitter like Inciarte, while Stubbs is a right-handed hitter and thus a better fit. The switch-hitting Bonifacio was no longer viewed as a suitable backup by the Braves.

“(Releasing) Bourn was very, very difficult,” said Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez, who has praised the popular veteran at every turn. On Saturday morning, he called Bourn into the manager’s office to break the news to him.

“It might have been the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. You spend so much time with them, and you care for both of those guys,” Gonzalez said. “Boni played his first year in the big leagues for me, with the Marlins. There’s a personal attachment there. And you know with Mike Bourn how we feel about him in this organization and what he brings.”

Bourn hit just .238 with a .592 OPS and 17 stolen bases in 482 plate appearances last season with the Indians and Braves, including .221 with a .561 OPS in 46 games for the Braves. He’s viewed as a consummate professional, and the Braves liked having him around as a mentor this spring to center-field prospect Mallex Smith.

“It was tough. It was really tough,” Gonzalez said of the decision. “It was a lot of hours of meeting yesterday, and a lot of hours of talking back and forth. And it just seemed with Stubbs, it’s a fit. It’s a fit because one’s right-handed and the other one’s left-handed. Because they’re kind of like the same player.”

The Braves also purchased the contract of veteran reliever Alexi Ogando, who had been a non-roster invitee to spring training on a minor league deal, and announced their full 25-man roster including four rookies: relievers John Gant, Jose Ramirez and Dan Winkler, and left fielder Hector Olivera.

DFA’ing Bourn and Bonifacio ($1.25 million salary) instead of outright releasing them, there’s a chance the Braves could work out a trade for either and recoup some of the money they owe on those deals.

The Braves got Bourn and Swisher from Cleveland in an August 2015 trade for third baseman Chris Johnson, a deal that also included roughly $15 million in cash from the Indians to offset the difference in what was owed to Johnson and to Bourn and Swisher.

That trade, from the Braves’ perspective, was all about getting rid of the bad contract of Johnson that extended through 2017. The current front-office regime wanted to clear the decks of what they considered bad deals inherited from previous general manager Frank Wren before the Braves move into their new ballpark in 2017.

The Bourn and Swisher contracts ran only through 2016, with vesting options for 2017 that wouldn’t have vested with the Braves because they wouldn’t have gotten the required plate appearances to trigger those options.