This time a year ago, the buzz concerned the Brothers Upton — one imported as a big-ticket free agent, the other arriving via blockbuster trade. Those two major talents, it was thought, might well keep the Braves running abreast of the mighty Washington Nationals deep into September and perhaps further. Very little of that came true.
The Braves blew past the Nats early and won the National League East by 10 games. Justin Upton had something to do with it, given his 12 home runs and 19 RBI’s in April. B.J. Upton, the more expensive of the two, did next to nothing all season and by October had been reduced to pinch-hitting. (Actually pinch-missing. He struck out three times in three postseason at-bats.)
Which goes to show, not for the first time, that baseball is a funny ol’ game. The biggest offseason reasons to like the 2013 Braves proved almost incidental. This in turn brings us to the offseason about to conclude. (The Grapefruit League opener comes Wednesday.) There has been no significant acquisition to stoke the proverbial hot stoves, but let’s be clear: The Braves have had a great offseason and that’s not an adjective I deploy lightly.
The Braves have won more games than any other National League team the past four seasons. They stand a very good chance of winning more games than any other NL team the next four seasons. The St. Louis Cardinals, beneficiaries of a bountiful farm system, will have some say in that, and so will the Nationals and the newly moneyed Los Angeles Dodgers. But by signing four of their splendid youngsters — Freddie Freeman, Julio Teheran, Craig Kimbrel and Andrelton Simmons — to long-term extensions, the Braves should be able to go core-to-core with anybody for a good long while.
Barely three weeks ago, we wondered if the Braves had the wherewithal to lock up any of the above. We now stand back and marvel at how forward-thinking these Braves — the Braves who sank $60 million into Derek Lowe, $62 million into Dan Uggla and $75 million into B.J. Upton — just became. Some of this core-keeping has to do with the revenue stream that will flow from the move to Cobb County, and some surely is due to the influence of adviser John Hart, who as Cleveland’s general manager wrote the textbook on locking up young players. But most of the credit must go to the man who has seldom gotten credit for anything — Frank Wren.
We can quibble that he gave Freeman too much and Jason Heyward too little, or that Mike Minor might have been a sounder investment than Teheran, or that, as the sabermetric set insists, throwing big money at a guy who works one inning is the height of folly. We can continue to loop those albatross contracts — Lowe, Uggla and the elder Upton — around Wren’s neck. What we cannot deny is that this GM, in the span of two weeks, transformed his franchise from one that had slipped from A-list status into a fortress of secured young talent.
Here’s what the Braves have: An All-Star first baseman, age 24, under contract through 2021; the best closer in the business, 25, under contract through 2017 with a team option for 2018; the best shortstop in the business, 24, under contract through 2020, and the best arm this farm system has produced in two decades, 23, under contract through 2019 with a team option for 2020.
They paid a hefty price — $135 million for Freeman, $58 million for Simmons, $42 million for Kimbrel and $32.4 million for Teheran — but would you rather have that quartet, the eldest of whom is 25, for a total of 25 seasons (not counting option years) at $267.4 million, or would you rather be the Angels, who still owe $322 million to Albert Pujols, who’s 34, and Josh Hamilton, who’s 32?
Best of all, these extensions — and we shouldn’t forget the two years at $13.3 million awarded Heyward, which will take him to free agency — came at a time when we weren’t sure the Braves were capable, financially or intellectually, of such pricy and prescient doings. With four strokes of Wren’s pen, the Braves have been remade.
They’re still owned by faceless Liberty Media, but they’re no longer the franchise that reacts while others act. With these four extensions, the Braves have sounded a new fanfare. They cultivated these players and for once they aren’t about to let some other team reap the harvest.
Almost lost amid the flurry of business was the news last week that Wren himself had been given an extension. He darn well deserved it.
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