Scott Thorman was so bad last year and this spring that he was able to fly through waivers on his way to triple-A Richmond without being claimed by any team -- I don't blame anyone for not wanting him. He is, though, a real nice guy and someone who you could always respect for hustling on every single play. I hope he can find a better way of hitting than just swinging for the fences every at-bat.

The Braves also found their stopgap for Omar Infante today when they claimed Ruben Gotay off waivers from the New York Mets. Gotay can play second, short, and third base and while not a power hitter he excelled against right-handed pitching, batting .318 with four home runs and 22 RBI, he also hit .288 (15-for-52) as a pinch hitter.  Gotay was also clutch in "Close & Late" situations, hitting .349 (15-for-43). Apparently Glavine put in a good word about Gotay:

These two moves clear up some of the Braves backup situation on the infield; it looks like it will now be Gotay and Martin Prado as the backup infielders, with Brent Lillibridge starting at triple-A. That leaves only the choice between Corky Miller and Brayan Pena for backup catcher, and it has been widely believed that Pena will be moved in a trade.

The backup outfield job is still between Josh Anderson and Gregor Blanco, but the team may carry both if they can trade Pena and can't find a power bat off the bench in the trade market. I would imagine they wouldn't put Pena on waivers as he would be more likely to be claimed than Thorman -- they would rather get something for him or they may keep him in addition to or instead of Miller.

I like the demotion of Thorman, and I am glad he still stays in the system just in case he does figure out his potential (of course it looks more and more like he's a 4-A player). I also like the addition of Gotay. He's not flashy or a scary bench bat, but he's a solid defender, he cost nothing, and he'll likely be more of an asset than a hindrance on the bench (and that's a win). Plus, on the off chance he has a really good season, that would rub mud in the Mets' eyes -- and we know that's the second most important thing next to winning.

Over at MLBTR there is a strong sense that outfielder Matt Murton is available since the Cubs acquired Reed Johnson earlier this week. Dierkes seems to write off the Braves as potential suitors, saying that Diaz is the guy in left, and while that is true, the Braves want a power bat with some experience off the bench -- and Murton would likely fill that role.

Add to that two factors that have historically attracted the Braves to players, (1) Murton went to high school in the Atlanta area (Eagles Landing in McDonough), and (2) with only two and half years of service time he's priced just right for the Braves modest payroll that still wants to have payroll flexibility to possibly add someone mid-season.

Matt Murton is a very similar hitter to Diaz in the numbers he puts up -- not quite as good average wise, but he probably has more power. For whatever reason, Lou Pinella never seemed to take to the red headed outfielder and the Cubs seem to constantly find reasons to bring in other options in the outfield year after year.

Chicago is apparently looking for left-handed relief pitching and we may still have Royce Ring available, which may be a good fit (though it would be rather ironic since they traded us their main lefty relief guy in Ohman over the winter). The Braves would still have depth at the lefty relief stop with Jeff Ridgway and Francisley Bueno in the minors and the hopeful return of Mike Gonzalez sometime around the All-Star break.

That's all the story that was just posted on AJC.com said:

Good.

I'll post more here as we learn what we got in return (if anything).

Update [2008-3-26 9:40:0 by gondeee]:

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette we swapped Yates for pitching prospect Todd Redmond.

He looks like an interesting middling starting pitching prospect. Over at Minor League Ball John Sickels gave him a grade of C this year, but last year he gave him a grade of C+ and ranked him as the seventh best prospect in the Pittsburgh organization (by the way, Lillibridge was ranked 3rd that year).

It looks like we got a young arm with decent to good upside. Nice trade if for no other reason than we were able to pare off Yates from the roster.

Here is a link to his minor league stats.

Update [2008-3-26 9:50:46 by gondeee]:

Baseball America rated him as having the best control in the Pirates organization. In 2007 they ranked him as the ninth best prospect in the Pirates system. This little tidbit is from a BA Pirates Organizational Report filed at the end of the 2006 season:

We seem to have done a good job of snagging some good prospects from a Pirates organization that doesn't have many prospects. It looks like people soured on Redmond because he had an off-year last year. If he can rebound to his 05 or 06 numbers then we got a really nice young arm in return for a reliever we were probably going to release anyway.

Checking in with some thoughts from other folks around baseball, and churning up some scenario's of my own:

Don't Give the Phillies Anything!
It was pointed out by Jayson Stark in his column that the Phillies are in desperate need of relief pitching, and they are trying to use Wes Helms as one of the chips to get more relief. Baseball Prospectus recently reported that the Braves may be one of the teams that are in on Helms -- being that he is a former Braves farm hand and known to the organization. But that's just one reason why we shouldn't trade for Helms -- we know how terrible he can be.

The other, and possibly more important reason not to trade for Helms, is that we don't want to give Philly any relief help -- something they're asking for in return. The bullpen is likely the biggest problem area on the Phillies roster and the Brave need to do all they can to keep it that way. Hopefully this talk about Helms is just uniformed speculation, as he is essentially the third base equivalent of Scott Thorman.

Will We Trade a Pena This Year?
The annual Braves "trade-away-a-Pena" watch has officially begun. Most signs point to Javy Lopez winning the backup catcher job, and that would likely leave the out-of-options Brayan Pena without a major league job. He's likely not as valuable on the trade market as a solid defensive shortstop -- like the other Pena was -- his catching skills still need some work, but they are not terrible by any means and his bat is probably better than Tony Pena's.

It's tough to know which teams may have interest in a backup catcher, but Pena is likely to draw some interest, and he's likely too valuable to make it through the waiver wire without being claimed. One team that is in need of a catcher is Cincinnati. They are apparently willing to move super-utility man Ryan Freel to acquire a backstop. The only probably with Freel is that he's owed $7 million over the next two years, which may not fit with the tight budget in Atlanta.

The other option is that the Braves decide to release Javy and once again open the year as they did last year with Pena as the backup. While Javy is considered by many to be the presumptive-backup-catcher, on the merits of their work this spring Brayan Pena is a far better choice to serve as a backup "catcher." Javy, on the other hand, would likely make for a better hitter (especially power hitter) as the backup catcher. This situation will be an interesting one to watch and see in what direction the Braves will go.

Is Out Bullpen in Need of Another Reliever?
While many of us try to determine who will fill out the bullpen behind Soriano, Moylan, and Ohman, the Braves may be searching for more than the cast of characters currently in camp. The interesting question is if the Braves have room to absorb more salary if they were able to acquire someone like Brian Fuentes from Colorado, who would likely make more than Soriano. He's been rumored to be available in the past, and the Braves have apparently been interested. With the emergence of Jair Jurrjens and the presumed backup role that Chuck James will play at Richmond this year, could it be possible that the Braves feel comfortable dangling Jo-Jo Reyes as a trading chip?

Reyes fits the bill as a young arm with moderate to high upside and projects as a middle of the rotation starter -- something the Rockies want in return and something some teams value far more than relievers (see Ramirez, Horacio, formerly coveted by Seattle). He has plenty of value, especially to the Braves, who opted to include Matt Harrison in the Teixeira trade instead of Reyes. His spring has not been too stellar, but he's still young and has time to develop.

And they continue to be head-scratchers. The Braves acquired left-handed reliever Jeff Ridgway from the Tampa Bay Devil Rays for utility infielder Willy Aybar and minor league shortstop Chase Fontaine. Really!

I'm I missing the point of the Braves off-season strategy again? Is this the same thing as the Kotsay trade; will I eventually come around to it? For now, I'm a bit lost as to why we made this trade and why we included so much.

Ridgway is a 27-year old lefty who has thrown exactly one-third of an inning of major league baseball. In return we gave up a valuable (albeit formerly drugged-out) Aybar and a young infield hitter in Fontaine who it's been said has a high upside, for a 27-year old lefty! Don't we already have two and a half lefties in our bullpen? What was the Will Ohman trade? Is Royce Ring a useless pile of dung and I'm just not aware of this?

Oh, this really makes me fear that Mike Gonzalez might not be back this year, so the team is trying to acquire all the options and depth it can. But is this really the market for what can only be described as an "organizational left-handed reliever?"

Last year at Durham Ridgway did strike out 67 batters in 64.2 innings pitched and he held left-handed batters to a .163 batting average and right-handers to a .269 average. Okay, not too bad, but it's still just triple-A. He does apparently throw in the low 90's getting all the way to 94.

So we make this trade AND the utility infielder we just acquired, Omar Infante, apparently has a broken hand that could require surgery and keep him out until mid-March necessitating that he may have to start the year on the disable list.

DEJA VU ALERT!!!

Isn't this the same damn thing that happened to Aybar last year? He had a broken hand which made him miss spring training, oh, and that led to a bit of a pain killer addiction, be it a prescription pain killer or Johnny Walker Red.

I guess it's a decent move for depth that we hope (there's that word again) can be a major league pitcher. At least we won't be short of lefty-relievers next year.

I'm fairly certain this will be the penultimate thing I will write about the Kotsay trade (it may even be the ultimate). We have been discussing it ad nauseam for several days now and I'm sure it's beginning to wear on some folks, but I wanted to take a closer look at the two pitchers we gave up, and see if their hype (perhaps their hype was only in my mind) was on par with what the experts say about them.

Baseball America's take on Jamie Richmond is a bit more reserved than the projections I had read in the past from others:

That's the first I've heard of Richmond being labeled a middle reliever, but apparently that's becoming the consensus. I asked Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus where he might rank Richmond and what he thought the young right-hander's future might look like. Here was his response:

John Sickels ranked Richmond at number 13 in his listing of the top-20 Braves prospects of 2008, with a grade of C+. Sickels seems to think a little more highly of Richmond than the others do.

Baseball America's take on Devine is quite similar in some ways to their take on Richmond in that he also has trouble with left-handed batters -- and correct they are. Devine's lefty/righty average-against split at double-A last year was .286/.169, at triple-A it was .243/.140, and continuing that trend in the majors he posted a .300/.211. When looking at the lefty/righty split for all of his major league service time his weakness against left-handers is even more pronounced with a .345/.234 split. It's really hard to be a right-handed reliever in the majors when left-handed batters can come in and hit .345 against you and get on base at a .500 clip.

That brings us to the issue of walks, which were well chronicled by Velcro this year. Joey Devine's major league career consists of 25 games, with 19.2 innings pitched, and 21 hits allowed to go with 22 walks - over a hit and walk per inning pitched. And if you thought he was better in 2007 you'd be wrong - 8.1 IP, 7 H, 8 BB continuing his career trend. The only difference between last year and the two previous years seems to have been his luck once he put runners on base.

I still think both of these young pitchers have some untapped upside, but I suppose I'm feeling better that what we gave up was by no means the top pitching talent in the system. In fact, with the ERA that Joey posted throughout his various stops last year (2.06 at AA, 1.64 at AAA, and 1.08 in the MLB) one could say that we sold high on Devine. We may have also sold high on Richmond. I kept wondering throughout last year why the Braves never promoted Richmond to hi-A, when they gave Heath and Hanson promotions. They may have wanted him to maintain good stats at low-A instead of getting bombed at hi-A so he would be a more attractive trade piece.

Much like the Teixeira trade we'll have to wait to see what becomes of the prospects we traded away. One thing is for certain, we will likely have to update this list once again.

I'm past my upset phase of the Mark Kotsay deal and I've moved on to acceptance. One reassuring comment that helped ease my pain came from Tyler Bleszinski of Athletics Nation. For those of you who don't know, Blez is one of the preeminent baseball bloggers around the web and one of the driving forces behind SB Nation, as well as a rabid A's fan. He had this to say when I asked him to reassure me that there was an ounce of value in Kotsay:

This is the part of Kotsay's game that we can't read about in a box score and something that doesn't show up in his end of season stats. I had heard that he was a good defender, but perhaps we need to upgrade that to above average defender. Still, we have to "hope" that Kotsay is healthy and that he hasn't lost a step.

The Atlanta Braves don't make these kinds of deals! What in the hell are we doing giving up two very projectable minor league pitchers for ONE YEAR of an average center fielder! Joey Devine was bad enough, but now we find out that the deal also includes right-handed starter Jamie Richmond. While still only an A-ball pitcher, Richmond owns a 2.49 ERA and a 1.06 WHIP through three seasons of minor league baseball.

When I read that Richmond was part of the deal I shouted out, "Oh My God, What in the Hell are we Doing!" What in the hell are we doing? I understand the desire to maybe have a more experienced centerfielder, but is THIS really the market price for Mark Kotsay!

Livid doesn't even begin to describe my mood right now.

Scratch off 2005 first round pick Joey Devine, he was just traded to Oakland for Mark Kotsay.

Go ahead and eliminate the other first round draft pick from 2005, Beau Jones, he was part of the Teixeira deal.

We didn't have a first round pick in 2004.

Scratch off both first round picks in 2003, Jarrod Saltalamacchia who went to Texas in the Teixeira trade and the injured Luis Atilano who we sent to Washington in 2006 for 27 plate appearances of Daryle Ward.

After Jeff Francoeur was drafted in 2002, we selected Dan Meyer in the supplemental round, who we then sent to Oakland as part of the deal for Tim Hudson.

Keep going back to 2001, and our first pick that year was Macay McBride, who we sent packing to Detroit for Wil Ledezma. Our other two first round (or supplemental) picks that year were Josh Burrus - who was released this past winter - and Richard Lewis who we traded to the Cubs as part of the Juan Cruz deal in 2004. (By the way, Lewis was one half of the Georgia Tech double-play combination that got drafted that year; the other half was Mark Teixeira, who was the fifth pick in this year's draft.)

Go back yet another year to 2000 and we find that our first pick, Adam Wainwright, was included in the package to the Cardinals that brought us J.D. Drew. He was drafted one pick above Scott Thorman, who has got to be headed somewhere soon!

The moral of this story is if you're a first round draft pick by the Braves, it seems the odds of you getting traded are much greater than your odds of spending many successful years as a member of the Braves. So look out Cody Johnson, Steve Evarts, and Cory Rasmus; dare I say look out to Jason Heyward and Jon Gilmore, but history tells us several of these prospects will be sent packing before their careers as Atlanta Braves flourish.

As a reassuring note to fans, if we look at this list of traded first rounders (and supplemental first rounders) we really shouldn't be surprised to see Joey Devine sent packing. This is just one way the Braves do business and have done business for some time now.

Oh, and we gave up our first round pick this year for Tom Glavine...

For a team that's supposed to be better funded than it's been the last few years, we're certainly acting like we need tons of financial help with the way this Mark Kotsay trade might work out. There's been a lot of flack about the Braves giving up top relief prospect Joey Devine for the aging and injury-prone Kotsay, but that's not all we're getting. We're also getting over $5 million of Kotsay's salary paid for by the A's, and apparently that is the reason that we chose to give up a higher level prospect in exchange for the mediocre centerfielder.

So I'm confused now. What in the hell was all the rhetoric coming out of the Braves organization late last year about the team being "flush" with cash. Now we're trading away a better player than we need to in exchange for cash!

One thing that has been discussed exhaustively throughout the winter is whether or not some combination of Blanco or Anderson could hold down the centerfield job; with the general consensus from TC readers and from other Braves sites around the net being, "yes, they can." Why then are we sacrificing Devine at this point in the off-season (and possibly another minor leaguer, heaven forbid) for an injury-prone player coming off three seasons of continuous decline?

I've liked every one of Frank Wren's moves thus far this off-season, but this one really makes me scratch my head, wonder why they made it, then yell really loud, WHY!

If we're actually giving up a better prospect in Devine (and perhaps another prospect) in exchange for Kotsay and CASH, then perhaps us Braves fans and all the beat writers around the team truly have no idea what the financial situation of the team is - and it must be worst than we think. Otherwise, why require cash back in the trade?

Or maybe we, the internet pundits, are just not viewing Kotsay the way we should be. All the Braves players think he's a solid, proven performer. Maybe the Braves think the surgery he had last year to remove a herniated disk will put Kotsay's injury problems behind him. But that's an amazingly large gamble; one that didn't workout last year with Mike Gonzalez.

As of right now I'm not terribly thrilled by this trade, and perhaps even a little distraught. This seems like a bit of a desperate move to get someone, anyone with experience and not have to pay a lot for him. Then again, we could be getting the second coming of Luis Gonzalez and Wren will look like a genius at the end of the year, but somehow I doubt it.

And we didn't even get any chicks for free!