LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. – The question for Braves veteran Nick Markakis was about Matt Kemp’s impact on the Braves’ lineup since arriving late last summer. He gave a good answer, but first Markakis used the opportunity as a jumping-off point to discuss something else he’d thought about.
John Coppolella’s trade acumen.
The Braves general manager has made dozens of trades alongside president of baseball operations John Hart since they assumed power after the 2014 season, Some trades were simple and straightforward, some quite creative. But in a majority of the deals, the Braves have have come out even or ahead.
Sometimes way, way ahead.
That appears to be the case again with the trade for former four-time Gold Glove second baseman Brandon Phillips a few days before spring training. The Braves needed a second baseman after finding out Sean Rodriguez would require shoulder surgery for injuries from a Jan. 28 car accident.
To get Phillips, a metro Atlanta native who has made three All-Star teams since 2010 and hit over .290 the past two seasons, but had a strained relationship with the rebuilding Reds, the Braves gave up just two minor league pitchers — neither figured in the team’s plans — and will pay only $1 million of Phillips’ $14 million salary in the final year of his contract. The Reds are paying the other $13 million.
As far as we know, sorcery was not involved.
“Got him for nothing,” Markakis said. “And now you have the opportunity to get first whack at him if you want to try and re-sign him. You give away nothing and yet you can (try to re-sign him). I’d take him any day on my team. I played against him. He gets it. He’s been around a while. He’s probably got the second-most amount of time (in the majors) on this team. He knows what it takes, he knows how hard he has to work and what he needs to bring to the table.
“And that’s with everybody in this clubhouse. That’s why I think it’s going to be fun.”
When asked about his impact on the lineup late last season and going forward, Markakis had begun his answer with, “Shoot, you’ve got to give Coppy some credit, too, man. He pulled off these trades.”
The most visible of Coppolella’s lopsided trades was the December 2015 fleecing of the Arizona Diamondbacks, in which the Braves acquired Dansby Swanson, Ender Inciarte and Aaron Blair in exchange for Shelby Miller and Gabe Speier.
Second place might be the December 2014 trade that sent Justin Upton (and Aaron Northcraft) to the Padres for top pitching prospect Max Fried, infielder Jace Peterson and outfield prospects Mallex Smith and Dustin Peterson.
The net result of that J-Up deal has been the Braves giving up one year of a pending free agent and getting Fried, the two Petersons and hard-throwing lefty prospect Luis Gohara, whom they acquired from the Mariners as part of a January trade for Smith and reliever Shae Simmons. Also, six months later they used about $10 million of the financial savings on Upton’s $14.5 salary to take on the salary of aging pitcher Bronson Arroyo as a means of getting yet another elite pitching prospect, Touki Toussaint, from the Diamondbacks in a crafty trade that cost the Braves only Phil Gosselin.
Last summer, Coppolella got power-hitting infield prospect Travis Demeritte from the Rangers for pitchers Lucas Harrell, whom they had signed as a minor league free agent, and Dario Alvarez, who’d been a waiver claim by the Braves.
The Braves also traded for picks in the 2015 June draft that yielded power-hitting prospect Austin Riley at No. 41 and hard-throwing lefty prospect A.J. Minter at No. 75. Minter likely will make his debut at some point this season.
They continued by trading for picks in last year’s draft that the Braves used to take pitching prospect Joey Wentz at No. 40 and catcher Brett Cumberland at No. 76.
The Braves have gone from being a bottom-five farm system when Coppolella and Hart took over in October 2014 to being a consensus No. 1 in the rankings last month.
“It’s through the hard work of many and because of the leadership and courage exhibited by (Braves executives) John Hart, John Schuerholz and Terry McGuirk that we’ve been able to make such rapid improvement,” Coppolella said. “We are all invested in this together as an organization, from top to bottom, across player development and scouting, and we feel that we’re on the cusp of something truly special.”
The one big trade the Braves regretted was a three-team deal in July 2015 to get Hector Olivera from the Dodgers, which cost the Braves lefties Alex Wood and Luis Avilan along with infield prospect Jose Peraza. The Braves also got Miami’s competitive-balance draft pick (Wentz) and lefty Paco Rodriguez in that deal. They hope Rodriguez is a big part of their bullpen after missing the 2016 season recovering from Tommy John elbow surgery two months after the trade.
Regardless of what the Braves get from Rodriguez and eventually from Wentz, they offset much of the debacle that was Olivera by shipping him and the remaining $28.5 million they still owed him to the Padres in exchange for Kemp. A trade that was viewed as a swap of bad deals at the time, it’s one that’s seen in quite a different light now given the performance of Kemp, who provided a big offensive boost hitting cleanup behind Freddie Freeman last season.
The Braves are paying Kemp what amounts to $8.5 million more per season for three years than what their payroll would’ve been if they’d kept Olivera, who was trouble off the field and unproductive on it. They were expected to eventually release Olivera if they hadn’t traded him.
Now they have a lineup that was starting to click before Kemp, but which really coalesced when the big outfielder arrived and hit .280 with 12 homers and 39 RBIs in 56 games for the Braves, never asking for or wanting a day off.
“Me and Matty came up around the same time,” said Markakis, a 12th-year veteran who played at least 155 games in 10 of the past 11 seasons including 158 in 2016. “We didn’t cross paths that much, but I’ve had the opportunity to watch (Kemp) play, and the brief time I did play against him, he’s a gamer. He wants to be out there every day along with all of our guys. Those guys want to be out there. They play and they play and they play.
“That’s what you want as baseball players, it makes it easier on your team, makes it easier on your manager and it makes it easier on the players, too, because you’re not constantly having new guys rotate in and out. These guys want to be on the field, they want to play, and those are the type of guys you want to play around.”
