The first day of baseball’s Winter Meetings on Monday saw Braves officials fielding numerous calls from teams interested in some of their many young starting pitchers and pitching prospects. Specifically, they were trying to wrest a young hitter who can make an impact from teams interested in the Braves’ best pitchers, Shelby Miller and Julio Teheran.
Miller, who had historically poor run support during a nonetheless impressive first season with the Braves, in particular has created a buzz around baseball’s annual winter gathering/swap meet, as the price of free-agent pitchers has soared to absurd levels and some teams look to go the trade route instead for a top-shelf starter.
The Braves are known to have engaged in trade discussions Monday with at least two teams, the Cubs and Diamondbacks, both of which have at least one young hitter who intrigues the Braves — outfielder Jorge Soler and infielder Javier Baez of the Cubs, and A.J. Pollock leading a group of young Arizona outfielders. The Dodgers and Red Sox also have shown interest in Miller.
Not just here fielding offers on pitchers, the Braves have had discussions with several free agents as they look to add a catcher — Tyler Flowers has been targeted — a right-handed hitting center fielder to split time with Michael Bourn, and possibly another versatile infielder.
So far, the Braves hadn’t received an offer good enough to convince them to pull the trigger on a deal for one of their big pitchers, but there was a growing sense among scouts and executives around the sprawling Opryland Hotel that it could happen before the Winter Meetings end Thursday.
“Last year we didn’t do anything at the Winter Meetings except make a Rule 5 pick,” Braves general manager John Coppolella said. “We didn’t even have that many conversations. This year it’s been totally different. There’s been a lot of interest in our young players.”
Braves president of baseball operations John Hart said the Braves are in a far different place than they were a year ago at the meetings, when they were in payroll-dump mode and didn’t have the young pitching talent in their system to draw much if any trade interest from other teams.
“We talk about trying to improve our ballclub for ’16, ’17 and beyond,” Hart said, by way of explaining the different situation the Braves are in now as opposed to last December. “We’ve set our course, which we’re very excited about. We really like what we’ve got in our system, the pipeline is starting to get full. We’re going to have another year of the draft and all of that. That’s all good.
“As we look at what we can do in ’16, we’re certainly talking to free agents. We’re not fishing in the ocean, we’re fishing in a smaller pond (for the less-expensive free agents). And we’re talking deals. You pick up the phone and call a club about a player. The people they come back at (asking about) are our young players, and it’s been a variety as we go along.
“We’re kind of early in the rebuild, in the building of this, so we’re a little reluctant to talk about these guys. If the free agents that we’re discussing and we’re talking to, if that doesn’t play itself out, if we so chose, we have the ability to make some deals as we go along.” It’s just a matter of, we’ve worked so hard to acquire a number of these young players, and when you keep getting hit on them, you know, we’re not really anxious to go out there and start moving these guys.”
So why, many fans and others want to know, would the Braves even consider trading either of their only proven top-of-the-rotation starters? When Miller, a first-time arbitration-eligible pitcher who’ll likely make $5 million or less in 2016, is under contractual control through 2018, and Teheran has four years plus an option left on his club-friendly contract?
And the answer is, basically, because they need offense and can’t afford to sign top free-agent hitters. And to date, they haven’t been able to acquire high-upside young hitters in recent trades for the likes of Andrelton Simmons.
By trading Miller or Teheran, the Braves might be able to get such a hitter or hitters. If they don’t, they presumably won’t trade either pitcher.
“We have not picked up the phone one time on Shelby Miller,” said Hart, insisting that the Braves have not called another team peddling the pitcher, but acknowledging conversations with teams that have called asking if he’s available. “We are all very happy having Shelby Miller continue to grow from a (No.) 3 when he came here, to a 2, to a 1, and be a part of us for three years. You look at the price of poker for pitching right now, and you look at a guy like Shelby at a young age with 200-plus innings and a 3 ERA, All-Star, young pitcher under control — we’re certainly going to get calls. And we’re not afraid to receive the calls and discuss.”
“But none of us here, starting with myself and Coppy and (manager) Fredi (Gonzalez), have any interest in trading Shelby. But at the same point, at this time of year you’re going to get these calls, and Shelby’s been a guy – we’ve had calls on others. I’m not going to tell you everybody we’ve had calls on, but we’ve had calls on a number of our young pitchers, Shelby being the one who’s probably the primary guy that we’ve had calls on. The actual answer to that question, yeah, if you’re going to be called, you’re required at least in our way to take a look to see if there’s something that could better us, be it a combination of short-term and long-term – what depth do we have in our system? Pitching. Where are we a little bit lacking? Upper-level position players.”
Coppolella added, “We’re a team that has to listen on a lot of players. We’re certainly not going to listen on (first baseman) Freddie Freeman; we’re not trading him. We were 30th last year in runs scored. We were 29th the year prior to that. That’s why we’re not going to listen on Freddie Freeman. We need more offense, we need more players like Freddie Freeman. Like John said, we haven’t picked up the phone once to call anybody on Shelby Miller. When teams calls us, we’ve got to at least listen, whether it’s Shelby or any of our many young pitching prospects. I think that we owe that to our fans to try and get them some semblance of an offense.”
