BRAVES NEWS

Baseball America's Braves Top 20 Prospect List Gets A Shake-Up

After having an extremely busy offseason that was more focused on the future than the present, the Braves farm system has undergone an extreme makeover of sorts. The Braves front office's wheeling and dealing has already turned what was one of the weaker minor league systems in baseball into one of the better ones, and that's mostly due to all of the new faces who will be in the minors (and potentially make it to the Majors sooner rather than later) this season. As such, AJC Braves beat writer Dave O'Brien decided to share Baseball America's ranking of the top 20 Braves prospects, which includes all of the new prospects who have entered the system.

Bill Madden Compares Braves Rebuild To A's Rebuild

For some reason, Bill Madden of the New York Times decided to take a look at two teams that will look drastically different from the 2014 versions of themselves: Our Braves and the Oakland Athletics. Madden explains that while the Braves are hitching their wagon mostly onto prospects and projects at the expense of forsaking the Major League roster, Billy Beane has seemingly managed to strip down and rebuild the Major League team in one offseason. From the article:

"We may not be the prettiest girl at the dance," [John] Hart conceded to the Associated Press last week, "but we’re going to be a lot of fun to dance with."

By contrast, in the case of Oakland’s Billy Beane, who did a similar dismantling of his club with nine deals with nine different clubs involving 27 players, there is considerably more certainty as almost all of the players he got back in trading, among others, All-Stars Josh Donaldson, Jeff Samardzija, Derek Norris and Brandon Moss, will likely be playing for the A’s this season.

Here's The State Of The 25-Man Roster As Of Right Now

If you missed it, Scott took inventory of the current state of the Braves roster right now. As expected, the batting lineup isn't exactly a pretty sight considering that Freddie Freeman is the only impact bat on the roster right now. In addition to the black holes at CF and 3B, left field is probably going to be a bit of a boondoggle this season as well. On the other hand, the rotation has the potential to be pretty doggone good, so that's definitely something positive.

As Expected, Braves Seen As Longshot For World Series

Bovada's released their odds for the 2015 MLB Season and to the surprise of absolutely no one, the Braves are currently seen as big-time underdogs to win the World Series. Currently, Bovada has the Braves as 33-1 longshots to win it all. Comparatively, the Braves went into 2014 with Vegas giving them 18-1 odds to win it all. However, if you're an eternal optimist, don't worry! The Kansas City Royals had 50-1 odds last season and they ended up winning the pennant, so all hope shouldn't be lost, I guess.

MLB NEWS

Astros Closing In On Vogelsong

Meanwhile in Houston, we already know that the Astros are now finished with the tanking part of their #Process and are actually looking to field a competitive team now. The proof was in the pudding when they actually sent prospects out in their trade for Evan Gattis, and now they're apparently close to signing free agent pitcher Ryan Vogelsong. After only making 19 starts in 2013, Vogelsong made 32 starts in 2014, picking up an ERA of 4.00 and a FIP of 3.85 during what was probably his final season with the even-year juggernauts San Francisco Giants.

Tigers "Gave Up" On Scherzer When He Turned Down $144 MM Last March

The Nationals shocked the baseball world by signing free agent pitcher Max Scherzer to a 7-year, $210 MM deal (that he is actually deferring so that he'll be making $15 MM a year for the next 14 years and will also enjoy a $50 MM signing bonus spread over the next few years. Genius!) this past weekend. Of course, this had to sting the Detroit Tigers and their management, even though (according to Ken Rosenthal) they apparently haven't seriously had contract talks with Scherzer since last March, which is when this happened:

In his decades as owner of the Tigers and Red Wings, Ilitch rarely has failed to retain free agents he truly wanted to keep. Because of his vast wealth, loyalty to players and desire to win, Ilitch often spends more on stars than a team executive would suggest is reasonable.

And it's very likely that Scherzer's $144 million tender was the largest final offer rejected by an Ilitch employee in more than 50 combined seasons of Tigers and Red Wings ownership.

After Scherzer said no to that sum, sources say Ilitch never became fully re-engaged in trying to retain him -- financially and perhaps emotionally, as well.