FanPost

Rebuilding: The Trends, The Braves, and Dave Stewart

Although I think that all these thoughts are my own, I am an avid reader of all things Braves and occasionally read a Keith Law piece on Reddit SO if I borrow any ideas, my apologies. Throughout the next week or so I want to post several thoughts that I have had on the current state of the team and possible where we might be going forward. Today I would like to address Rebuilding.

Moneyball. The Dodgers. Baseball is an interesting game that has so many factors that must align just right for your team to win the World Series. Every team has some sort of idea (you hope!) of what its current strategy is and what it should be doing. We have the Dodgers who are able to buy both a pretty good major league squad and a loaded minor league system. We have the Yankees who are waiting for some major league contracts to expire while trying to piece together a major league squad while also letting a farm system grow. We have the Cubs who are making up for all those years of suffering. We the Marlins who are....wait there is no plan there. We have a number of teams in different stages of a 're-build'.

I think the term 're-build' is funny as teams have sucked since the very beginning of organized sports. What started as Moneyball in the 90s has now evolved into teams decided that being .500 every year isn't the only solution. You can take advantage of the past two CBA's and lose as much as possible now with the hope of amassing so much talent that your next winning team can win for a long time. Its not really that crazy of a thought, we just have some highly educated Front Offices that are trying new things. We also have some more Old School mindsets that think that Baseball is still a gut thing and that you either have it or you don't. Its not something new, we just are seeing more and more teams take advantage of the current state of American Sports. Side note: this does not happen in European Sports because of their system of relegation and promotion SO know there is an alternative method out there in case you ever hear someone complaining about 'tanking'.

Rebuilding hurts the fans. It hurts the players that are on the teams. It does not hurt the team financially. It actually helps the team financially. Higher draft pools, more international money to spend, and the revenue sharing agreement can almost make up for lost ticket sales. This might all change next year with the new CBA but it may not. Right now though, if you are set on building from the ground up you should absolutely fully commit to it. It is clearly more incentivized to be a lower 1/3rd team than being being a .500 team every year. You could list several teams right now that would be better selling off major assets and starting over. Of course, not every team does this and until recently very view teams have tried to be as bad as possible. There are always bad teams but the bad teams now might end up with the fewest amount of wins in history.

*From now on when I say the word 'Rebuild' what I mean is taking this to the extreme and losing as many games as possible to acquire as much talent as possible*

You could say that the Cubs' rebuild began when Theo Epstein became GM for the club. Buttttt the team had not won a World Series since 1908 or been above .500 since 2010, so when did they really start rebuilding? The Astros fully committed in 2011 with the hiring of Jeff Luhnow. However, the team had last made the playoffs in 2005 and was playing for very little when he arrived. The Phillies may have only started their rebuild last year with the trade of Cole Hamels but they have been awful for the 3 years before 2015. It is difficult to classify when a team should commit to a full blown rebuilding job until they really start to suck.

Or is it?

Because now we have the Braves. A team that did not really suck when it was broken up. A year removed from a playoff birth but 10 years removed from winning a playoff series. The team was loaded with MLB talent and had a two year window with the current team in place. It was a starting pitcher or two away from being one of the best teams in baseball (almost like the Diamondbacks last year perhaps? Now THATS a weird thought. It makes you almost understand Dave Stewarts' mindset). Not really your 'ideal' full blown rebuilding candidate.

Or was it?

You had a farm system that was empty. You had a team that had 2 years to win before losing at-least 2 major pieces (Heyward and the Good Upton). The front office was in a really unique situation: starting a full rebuild when you have talent on the major league level. Not a little talent, a LOT of talent. Enough talent that we can now see how much it would cost to trade for what we had! 20 pitchers (or so it seems), Inciarte, 3 draft picks, The number 1 pick in the draft, taking a bad contract, and losing a player to a rival (sorry Cardinal fans). It seems strange to look at it backwards doesn't it? It would completely emptying one( or three) farm systems, giving up years worth of draft picks, and taking on an awful contract to acquire that much talent. I know I just said the same thing twice- it is that mind boggling. I don't think any GM in baseball would in one move give up that much talent to acquire the team that we had. Would you? (side note: If you look at the Padres you see a team that almost did just that).

By trading so much established major league talent, The Braves were able to accumulate so much talent that it was almost like skipping 3 years of rebuilding atleast. No one is saying that the Braves will absolutely suck in 2019. Some people even think we might be competitive in 2018, some even predict a winning season in 2017. If we had been starting from a team that only contained: Gattis, the bad Upton, Simmons, Freeman, Teheran, and 2 draft picks (for losing the good Upton and Heyward) we would be in completely different shape. We would have Sean Newcomb, Aybar, Chris Ellis, Rio Ruiz, and Folty from trades (assuming we did the same trades). We would then absolutely have to part with Teheran and Freeman. There would be no possibility of keeping anyone. Maybe we might have won the World Series in one of those two years, maybe we would have been under .500, we will never know. What we do know however is the farm system we have now, Freeman, and two years of suffering already finished. We could have been starting a 5 year timer now. Instead, we are about to start seeing call ups this summer, call ups next year, call ups for atleast the next seven years (okay, that might be a bit much, call ups until this latest crop of high school pitchers we just drafted turns 25.

My point being that rebuilding sucks for so many people BUT maybe, just maybe it is better to only have to suffer through the true rebuilding part rather than the years of suffering before starting to rebuild. It was a completely unique approach that the Braves' Front Office took, you cannot really compare it to anything. Lets not lose faith yet. Ask any Phillies, Cubs, Marlins, or Astros fan what they think of the Braves and whether they would rather take this approach. They will be atleast able to sympathize.

This FanPost does not express the views or opinions of Battery Power.