The Braves made a plethora of trades in the past 12 months, most of which made sense, given the team’s situation. But a couple of those deals — the one that sent away Juan Uribe and Kelly Johnson, and the one that brought Hector Olivera to Atlanta — beg a second look.
But first, some background: The Braves, after firing general manager Frank Wren near the end of the 2014 season, set about on a mission to get out of their rut of mostly mediocre-to-good performance in recent years — the team hasn’t won a playoff series since 2003 — by restocking the farm system with high-level prospects, almost all of them pitchers The team wasn’t able to acquire top position-player prospects despite looking to add some of those as well.
While acknowledging a continued shortage of position-player prospects in the high minors, the Braves believe they can eventually add bats at the big-league level by using some from their stockpile of pitchers as currency, or entering the free-agent market, though they won’t get involved with the highest priced hitters in that pool.
The Braves wanted to get back to the pitching-first blueprint that made them so successful throughout the ‘90s in order to have a serious contender in place by 2017 when they move into a new ballpark. They decided they would do it by biting the bullet right now, taking a step or three back in hopes of improving significantly in the not-too-distant future.
And that meant trading away some assets — primarily those players with expiring contracts and an onerous contract or two — in exchange for solid young talent.
“At the end of it, I think we all feel that we’re in a much better position sitting here than we were at this time last year, in spite of the fact that we had 90-plus losses,” said John Hart, Braves president of baseball operations. “We’re in a much better position. We have a level of financial flexibility. We have absolutely grown our farm system between the trades that we made and the draft and international.
“You don’t just snap your fingers and have it work. It wasn’t without pain, I’ll say that. We certainly feel for — I do — our fans, to have to go through that six- to seven-week period that we did. It was tough. It was tough for all of us in here as a group. But we kept our eye on the mark and we think we’re positioned much better to go forward than we were a year ago We know we are. There’s no ‘we think we are.’ We know we are.”
Still, some questions linger. They traded Evan Gattis last winter ever though he had four years of contractual control and possesses the kind of big right-handed power not often seen in the so-called post-steroid era. While he’s a below-average left fielder for sure, he’d at least serviceable in left and could hold up well enough to catch at least 30-40 games a year without putting too much stress on his knees or back.
But if one or two of the prospects the team got in return — right-handers Mike Foltynewicz and Andrew Thurman and third baseman Rio Ruiz – develop into a front-line player, then the Braves will feel good about that transaction. They didn’t think Gattis could hold up to the rigors of playing every day in the National League and the Astros used him almost exclusively as a DH in his 27-homer, 88-RBI season.
Put aside the Gattis deal and the bad timing of the Craig Kimbrel trade (on the eve of opening day), which was understandable because the Braves found a team to take Melvin Upton Jr.’s albatross of a contract. Two other moves — the last two — only exacerbated the downward spiral that saw the Braves produce an unbelievably bad 15-48 record between July 8 and Sept. 17.
Those deals:
- July 24: Braves trade veteran infielders Johnson and Uribe to the Mets for pitching prospects John Gant and Rob Whalen, neither regarded as an elite prospect.
- July 30: Braves trade left-handers Alex Wood and Luis Avilan, right-handers Jim Johnson and Bronson Arroyo and highly rated infield prospect Jose Peraza to the Dodgers for 30-year-old Cuban rookie third baseman Olivera and lefty reliever Paco Rodriguez, part of a three-team, 13-player trade. The Braves also got minor league pitcher Zach Bird and a 2016 competitive-balance draft pick (No. 34 overall).
Some believe trading Johnson and Uribe was going overboard with the wheeling and dealing at that point. The Braves, who had just begun to struggle, traded away two of their most productive hitters at a time when Freddie Freeman was injured. Beyond that, they also traded two veterans who were good with young players and might have helped stabilize things before the season snowballed.
“When we made that deal with the Mets, we were 2-9 over our last 11 games,” general manager John Coppolella said. “We had just lost (closer Jason) Grilli, Freeman was hurt. You know, it wasn’t a tough trade for us in that we like both prospects we got; we think they’re both in our top-20 prospects. Gant pitched really well when he came over here. He could be up here at some point next year. For us, just seeing the way the team was starting to struggle, we felt it was a good opportunity to stay with the plan and keep adding young players that we really like a lot.”
Trading Wood flew in the face of everything the Braves and many other teams have preached in the past: Don’t trade good young starting pitchers with multiple years of contractual control remaining, particularly not left-handers as good as Wood.
And while Peraza’s stock had dropped since his lackluster spring training and continued lack of walks — if you’re not going to hit for any power, you need to get on base more — he was still a valued commodity. In return, the Braves got the 30-year-old Olivera who’d had several health issues and hadn’t played an inning in the majors.
“As we looked at the (upcoming) free-agent market, there weren’t any real impact bats out there,” Coppolella said. “Olivera, I think you’re going to see him get better and better each year. It was his first year here. I think it was tough for him. There were some things on the field and off the field. For us, we feel like we’ve added a lot of young arms. We feel like he can be real good for us in that lineup.
“The Dodgers signed him for $62 million, $28 million of that as a signing bonus. We’re on the hook basically for five years, $32 million. We felt that was a really good value for what we think he will be. Based upon our scouts and based upon what he’s done when he’s played, in Cuba and all that, we thought that was a really good value there. Alex Wood is great. We didn’t want to trade Alex Wood. We just couldn’t have gotten him in that trade without putting Wood in it. Actually at first they wanted (Andrelton) Simmons, and we said we can’t put Simmons in that deal.”
