Alex Gonzalez: Atlanta Braves 2011 Player Preview

before saying yea or nay. He’s probably the best option offensively for 2012 at this point.

I also said .263-.332 w/ 14 HR.

It’s not like he’s going to be a huge commodity in the off-season even if he repeats 2010, which is highly unlikely.

If a guy like Tyler Pastornicky, Brandon Hicks, or Diory Hernandez has a big year, maybe we go with the in-house option for 2012. That’s still pretty unlikely, though, and I’m guessing we’ll end up either making a trade or signing a free agent other than Gonzalez. He seems like a good dude, but he’s just not very good at baseball.

I wouldn’t mind resigning him as a late-inning defensive replacement for less than $2M, but I don’t want him as the starter.

well i wouldnt mind seeing gonzalez signed after 2011. who else could we get? also gonzalez isnt really expensive to keep

I hope Ed Lucas emerges as last year’s Omar and we won’t have to sign Agon. That’d be nice.

We are going to have a group of 6-7 prospects that should be about ready for the big league rotation by 2012. We also have Hudson, Hanson, Lowe, Jurrjens, and Minor under contract for 2012. I say we move a prospect or two for a nice shortstop.

The prospects I’m thinking about referenced above: Teheran, Delgado, Vizcaino, Hoover, Oberholtzer, and Beachy.

Than having one of the best fielding shortstops in baseball hitting 7th where his bat factors in very little.

I don’t get all the AGon hate. The Braves lineup is likely the deepest in the NL this year and if any team can manage an all-glove SS its us. If he hits 13 homers and 26 doubles then I won’t be crying over my soup.

IMO 3B will be a much more pressing need in 2012, or LF if Prado switches to 3rd. SS is a defensive position, and re-signing a very good one for 2 million seems like a decent deal to me.

We could certainly be doing worse.

I’d be up for paying him a similar amount moving forward, provided he puts up decent numbers, i.e. his career totals. I don’t see our SS options being ready next season, so cue Stephen Drew for JJ talks here.

In the end, we got Carlos Lee and Aramis Ramirez’s production (yes, I’m serious…check out those dude’s 2010) for about 1/7 the price.

What I’m trying to say is that at least we realize our weak link is a weak link, and he’s getting paid a very modest amount for being so. We could be ball-and-chained by one of the aforementioned players, but we aren’t.

Sea Bass’s defense alone pays his salary, and he’s no Cesar Izturis. Jose Lopez barely put up a .600 OPS last season (granted, it was in Seattle’s voluminous ballpark) and got paid $3.6MM in the offseason. Doesn’t play nearly the defense that Sea Bass plays, and does it at a less demanding position.

Could be worse.

-C

.258 avg.
.306 OBP
12 HR

I say resign him for 2 years/ 5 mil if he’ll take it. Free agent and trade market for SS looks thin next year, and things could be much worse with Sea Bass. Out of all of our “depth” at SS in the minors, the only two guys with serious upside are probably going to have to change positions (Salcedo to 3B, Lipka to CF, I think?) 2 years of roughly average production on the cheap to fill a hole so we aren’t forced into a bad trade out of desperation with our young arms doesn’t sound bad to me.

Andres Thomas isn’t ready yet? He was moving through the farm fairly quickly in the late 80’s I thought.

Realistically, we can probably only expect a guy that will give us .245/.320/.400 along with something like 18-22 HR’s. Along with rapidly declining fielding.

If we can get him for cheap, I say why not keep him around for another year.
I mean, do I really believe in Brandon Hicks or Diory Hernandez?? NO

I mean, the guy who’ll be ready earliest would be Tyler Pastornicky, and even him starting in 2012 might be rushing it. I don’t want us to rush our guys just b/c we aren’t willing to pay for a servicable shortstop for one more year. We get our production from other positions anyway (C, 2B, LF, RF)

Two of Gonzo’s last 3 seasons have been fairly good. SLG% over .447 in both.

He was awful for most of his career,and then something seemed to click from 2007 on, with a strange worst-of-his-career 2009.

But 2007 and most of 2010 showed what he can do. When he’s on, which recent stats show is as likely as him being off, he can be a .260/.315/.460 type of hitter.

Combine that with being a top 5 defensive shortstop and…why are we complaining? This team has a good chance to have 6 guys with an OPS over .800. AGon isn’t going to be holding anything back.

I’d really like to think they could do better than re-signing the hacker™.

and I’m not too upset with Sea Bass being our SS for this year, we really ought to be able to find someone better by next season. We don’t have to set our sights too high.

I hear that Omar Infante guy will be a free agent after the season. Not that he’d be a particularly good regular SS, but it would be pretty hilarious if we got him back and started him alongside Uggla.

I’d like for us to take the wait and see approach on re-signing him in the offseason. If he doesn’t regress then sign him for another year at about $2MM

2010 projection: .250 BA .230 OBP .390 SLG 14 HR
                                            (that’s right)

I’m looking at you GoBravesNY.

We can find some slick fielding SS with no offensive value and pay the minimum

Then resign a declining SS with no offensive value.. at 2.5MM. Even then I bet he wants to turn that “20 HR” season into a 4-5mil a year deal

Next year’s free agent class blows, and it doesn’t look like any of the names worth trading for could be had. So its either keep Gonzo and know what we’re getting or sign another crappy stopgap while we wait for Lipa/Pastornicky/Salcedo to become MLB worthy.

Hmm…I guess he hasn’t seen Jason’s stat line if you exclude the month of June when he had a busted wrist. I know I sure wouldn’t want .293/.411/.538 with 20+ HRs, 80+ RBI, 75+ R, 10+ SB on my fantasy team.

No reason not to wait, he’s getting older, and we have no idea if Chipper is going to retire or not after the season at this point, or if Lowe’s contract will be movable after the season. We also need to see how CK and JV handle the back of the bullpen duties and how our SS prospects are developing.

We could probably make a serious run at Jose Reyes next off season if things shake out right for us. If they don’t, we can always offer Unicorn a deal then.

He’ll still get a big contract in the 5-6 year range and may not even play 3 combined seasons at the injury rate he’s currently on. Even if he plays 150 games this year I don’t want him. We have solid prospects in our system and at least one them could pan out to be just what we need. I’d rather have our homegrown talent than sign a player I’ve never liked from the Mets. But that’s just me being a loyal Braves fan confident in our organization.

i agree about not signing reyes. we should use the money to address our OF needs. and A GON is decent enough until our prospects are ready