Just in case you couldn’t quite get enough of reading about the SBN Offseason Simulation, I’ve got you covered. This post presents thoughts on all the Braves-related moves made during the exercise, as well as a bunch of moves that didn’t happen.
I’ve interspersed comments from the incomparable rajah for prospect stuff. I don’t really pretend to know or understand much about many prospect names, especially pretty much all the names in minor league systems beyond Atlanta’s, so I relied heavily on the team’s collaborative thought process when making those moves. With that said, enjoy. Or not. (Also, as a warning, this is going to be super-long. You probably figured.)
Trades
1. OF Nick Markakis for SP Wade Miley and SP Yovani Gallardo
This might be my favorite move of the simulation (as far as things I was involved in), and if you hate it, you can point to the fact that I did this without soliciting any feedback or advice. Nick Markakis is definitely a guy but he’s pretty much just a guy. I know that people love to point out his physical ailments and his second half improvement, but no matter how much you want to adorn him with good vibes or positive expectations, he’s still an unimpressive corner outfielder (unless you really want to take the +10 DRS from 2016 as predictive) who has touted just an average bat over the last three seasons. Even in a best-case scenario, I don’t see him eclipsing 2 WAR next year, and I think that he ends up somewhere around 1.3 to 1.5, with a decent chance that his age begins to catch up to him and makes his 2017 and 2018 look like the 1 WAR guy he resembled in 2016, full recovery from physical ailments or not.
(For what it’s worth, unless you assume that the current $/WAR is up to above $9M/win, Markakis’ 2016 was “underwater” value-wise by fWAR. Even with his high DRS, he only clocked in at 1.7 rWAR, too.)
The Braves had some rotation spots open, and I love this trade because it fulfills two objectives. First, it gets some starters who can both eat innings and have sufficient upside to net some kind of prospect return if they bounce back, and these starters have no sizable commitment on the budget beyond 2017. Second, while the trade is relatively even in terms of money, it loads up financial commitments in 2017 while relaxing them in 2018, where the free agent class is better. That’s not to say that I want or expect the Braves to really dive in and buy some overpriced veterans in 2018, but the flexibility will definitely be more useful in 2018 than 2017, especially as far as potentially procuring another starter, given the incredibly weak starting pitching market.
After this fake trade, Miley would be with his fifth team in four years. Jeff Sullivan called Miley an “unexciting, generic innings sponge,” which is probably harsh but true. I’ll just let Sullivan continue to describe Miley as he was at the trade deadline this past season:
Miley is basically a #4, who had a #2/#3 season in 2015. He generally tends to underpitch his FIP and his xFIP, but I’m not sure there’s much of a reason that should continue. Leaning heavily on his xFIP as a predictive measure, I figure him for right about 2 WAR next season, which is an immediate boost.
Of course, Miley for Markakis wouldn’t be a great trade, so absorbing Yovani Gallardo needs to happen too. Gallardo is kind of a weird guy in that he had four consecutive 2 fWAR-ish seasons until getting much worse in 2016 with the Orioles, where he too had some injury issues. Gallardo’s biggest issue in 2016 was getting strike one, and then all the bad things that happen when you don’t consistently get strike one. Is that fixable? I have no idea, but I don’t think he’s as bad as he showed in 2016. Either way, I figure he’s going to backstop his value at over 1 WAR over 200 innings, but more likely will come in looking like a #4, somewhere in the 1.6-1.9 range.
(For what it’s worth, I’m more optimistic about either Miley and Gallardo than I am about R.A. Dickey, though this isn’t a big difference. The real value was just removing the Markakis money for 2018, though I do think that under a reasonable projection, Miley and Gallardo both fetch more in midseason trades than Dickey does.)
2. OF Mallex Smith and RHP Max Povse for C Stephen Vogt and RHP Logan Shore
Wait a minute, you might be thinking. First, you trade Markakis, paving the way for Mallex Smith to start in Atlanta. And then... you go and trade Smith too? What the devil is going on here?
Well, here’s what happened, not in the order listed: 1) Jason Castro got a qualifying offer, and accepted it; 2) I’m not very sanguine about Mallex Smith. Some other things that happened included the prices for Andrew Knapp and Carson Kelly being prohibitive, and Chance Sisco not even being on the table. Other discussions for catchers were similarly not too fruitful.
I think Mallex Smith is a really great person, and an exciting player with a lot of potential. I also think Mallex Smith is a below-average regular, if used in that role. In a vacuum, I don’t think having Ender Inciarte makes Smith unnecessary and/or redundant, but I do think that an outfield where you have the nigh-unmovable (and unmoving) Matt Kemp as well as Inciarte begs for an upgrade beyond a guy I’m thinking will struggle to clear 1.5 fWAR.
Stephen Vogt is not actually all that great at the whole catching thing, but he seems somewhere around average. His pitch framing numbers vary from “average-ish” to pretty bad. What Vogt does provide, however, includes: 1) cost control, having three seasons of arbitration left; and, 2) a backstop bat that backstops at “reasonably below average” rather than “near unplayable.” I figure that in a timeshare, especially where his exposure to lefties is severely limited (career 67 wRC+ against lefties, and 110 against righties), he could be above-average. The pitch framing is a real demerit, but that may vary, and he controls the running game much better than Flowers, at an average-y level overall.
I don’t know much about Logan Shore, but I do know that he was a Top 50 selection (47th overall) in the 2016 amateur draft. He’s not a great strikeout potential guy, but should move quickly, which makes him a neat complement to the arms the Braves already have in their system. I’m sure rajah hates this trade because he likes Povse more than Shore (Povse was a third round pick in 2014), and the verdict on this trade will likely be determined by whether Shore was a substantial enough upgrade over Povse, if at all. I will say that the community only rated Povse as the team’s 22nd-best prospect, and given that someone like Joey Wentz, who was drafted more closely to Shore, is #16 on that same list, it does seem like there may be a crowdsourcing-based upgrade there.
rajah’s thoughts: Logan Shore was consistently the best SP on a Miami team that featured AJ Puk. He has excellent command, a plus changeup, a low 90s fastball, and a slider that needs to improve consistency. He has the body to be a workhorse. Trading Povse for him is basically a wash in my opinion, with Shore having a bit more prospect pedigree, but Povse was a requirement to get the catcher that Ivan wanted in a market where we were seeing most of the Cs we wanted going at ridiculous prices, and praeceps wanted Shore.
3. RHP Matt Wisler and RHP Zach Bird for RHP Chance Adams and OF Dustin Fowler
The Braves have a lot of pitchers, but they can’t keep letting all of them eat innings and hoping they’ll all figure it out eventually, because not all of them will. Wisler’s had over 250 innings in the majors already, and has responded with a pretty amusing 4.88 / 4.88 / 4.87 pitching line. That’s not very good, and what sours me more on him is that even his better outings as far as run prevention go seem to be as a result of balls finding gloves rather than a dominant pitching display.
To that end, I elected to move Wisler, as well as near-non-prospect Zach Bird (who I was excited about when we acquired him, but has proven ornery as far as proceeding to put up good minor league stats), for a couple of Yankees farmhands. Again, I don’t know much about these guys, but the way I understand it is:
- Chance Adams was a fifth-round pick in 2015 and has pitched pretty well in AA, and especially showed great strikeout potential before moving up to that level. rajah says that he’s basically a Wisler value reset, and given that I think Wisler is hitting like, his 20th percentile outcome, that seems like a great move in and of itself.
- However, the conversation for this move started with Dustin Fowler, an apparently toolsy outfielder who’s grown into some pop this past season at AA. The Braves need more talent, especially outfield talent, in their upper minors, if only so I can stop hearing the words “Mel Rojas Jr.” and “Ronnier Mustelier” occasionally and expecting them to mean something to me. A red flag for me is Fowler’s low walk rate, but a higher walk rate would mean he was probably outside of the range of guys you could get for Matt Wisler.
This move gives the field of Aaron Blair, John Gant, Rob Whalen, and anyone else that wants to participate more of a shot of sticking in the rotation, and may help clarify the rotation situation for 2018 a bit more. I’m not very convinced that Wisler will do anything in 2017 to further answer questions about his long-term rotation viability in a positive way, but I also hope he proves me wrong this year.
rajah’s thoughts: The Yanks suggested Adams in their Wisler offer, and I felt like the value was appropriate to pair with Fowler. Chance Adams made it to AA in his first full season of pro ball, featuring a mid-90s fastball, an above average slider, a developing changeup, and a show-me curve. He’s got a #3 SP upside. In a sense, this is a reset of Wisler’s midrotation prospect status, but with stuff that translates to the pen better if he misses as a starter.
When the Yankees came calling about Wisler, I was immediately drawn to Fowler as a guy who would be expendable on the Yanks’ depth chart but could still be a solid starter and maybe even an above average player. Fowler has an average-to-above-average hit tool, with above-average-to-plus defense, above-average-to-plus speed, surprising gap power for his size, and a slashing approach. He needs to work on his strike zone discipline. Having conquered AA, he’s ready to move up to AAA with another Dustin, Peterson.
4. C Anthony Recker for C Chris Iannetta and LHP Nick Wells
I wasn’t expecting to get anything like an offer like this, but I think it’s pretty neat. I don’t consider Recker a loss of any kind, as he’s 33 and has generally not been able to stick in the majors despite good defensive skills. I’m also not buying his 100+ PAs with a .343 BABIP as indicative of anything. Recker was acquired for nothing, and acquiring something for him is pretty interesting, I think.
The Mariners wanted to move Chris Iannetta due to salary concerns. Luckily for them, I loved Chris Iannetta last offseason, and that love affair has somewhat, but not fully, faded. Iannetta did something very strange during his first season in Seattle: he improved his BABIP but lost the decent power he showed when doing so, pretty much negating any expected offensive improvement. He also utterly and completely regressed in his pitch framing outcomes, which has made me much more skeptical of the stability and repeatability of pitch framing than I was previously. (Seriously, he went from 4th-best to 4th-worst among all catchers with 5,000+ pitches caught between 2015 and 2016.)
Nick Wells is a very fringy prospect from a not-too-strong Mariners system. He had underwhelming numbers in A-ball in 2016 (5.55 ERA, 4.86 FIP), but throws from the left side and is just 20 years old. The thing I find mildly interesting about him is that, at the time of the trade for John Gant and Rob Whalen, current Braves employee Kiley McDaniel noted that Gant, Whalen, and Wells were all in the same 40 FV group. Obviously, Gant and Whalen have improved their stock a bunch more than Wells since then, but hey, we got something potentially neat for Anthony Recker.
Of course, we then had three catchers. And I was fine with having three catchers. Someone always gets hurt in Spring Training, and three affordable veterans is a good position to be in if a contender’s key battery piece goes down before the calendar turns to April. But I was also fine when the Rays came calling on Flowers...
rajah’s thoughts: Nick Wells reminds me of Zach Bird in that at age 20 he’s still a raw projectable arm struggling in low A. Unlike Bird he has control. He’s got a potential above-average curve, average change, and a fastball that touches 93 but sits in the upper 80s. At 6’5", the Braves can hope they can unlock the lefty’s potential velocity more consistently. The Mariners offered up Wells in their initial proposal and gave us a chance to pick another comparable prospect. I looked at other C+ prospects like Boog Powell and Luis Liberato, and ultimately we felt that Liberato wasn’t a realistic return and Wells had more upside than Powell. Liberato is a toolsy teenage OFer that would fall somewhere in the Juan Yepez / Leudys Baez value tranche. Powell is strictly a 4th OF who’s ready now.
5. C Tyler Flowers for 3B/1B/OF Richie Shaffer
Third base was a position that I tried, but ultimately failed to address. So, when the Rays gave me a chance to move the affordable-but-not-great Tyler Flowers for a way to diversify the team’s chances to have a passable outcome at the hot corner, I took it.
Tyler Flowers had a pretty good season with the bat last year (110 wRC+), but even with that under his belt, he’s a career 88 wRC+ catcher who strikes out literally just about a third of the time he comes to the plate. The strikeouts aren’t a problem in and of themselves, but he also doesn’t hit for much power, and hasn’t walked too much, either. Flowers does tend to make good contact when he doesn’tw hiff, but he somehow managed to earn his 110 wRC+ with a 44% hard% that I’m not sure is sustainable, especially given that his swing plane didn’t cause many line drives to occur even though he was hitting the ball harder. He also pulled fewer of those balls, and a combination of hard contact, not that much pulling, not that many line drives, and not a very fast runner is not one I’d want to bet on long term. Yes, the Braves do lose his pitch framing, which has been quite good, but the running game will plague them a bit less now. Plus, with Iannetta in the fold (career 129 wRC+ against lefties, and has hit them very well for the past three seasons), Vogt’s platoon weakness can continue to be neutralized.
Richie Shaffer is an older prospect (25) who creamed AAA pitching last year with a .311 ISO, but wasn’t able to replicate that power output this year. He’s gotten 140 major league PAs over the last two years and has been average-ish there, but has shown nice power and a good walk rate. He also hits righty, so if the Adonis Garcia experiment ever ends, he and Rio Ruiz may make a passable platoon. I wouldn’t expect third base next year for the sim-Braves to do anything more than 1.75 fWAR in aggregate, but that’s better than what the Braves got over 700 PAs from the position last year (1.5), so it’s something.
All in all, I was able to get younger and slightly cheaper, trading from a more stable stable (yes, this was intentional) of catchers to get other options for a roster position with considerably more uncertainty and flux.
rajah’s thoughts: Richie Shaffer is a 1B/3B with a good arm who has also played some corner OF, though his OF range is very limited. He hit 30 HR across AA, AAA, and MLB in 2015, but he took a step backward this year as he struggled to adjust his long swing for MLB while spending most of his time back in AAA. On the low end of his range of reasonable outcomes is a bench bat that mashes lefties while playing the corners, which happens to be a good match to platoon with Rio Ruiz in 2017. Both myself and the TB GM suggested Shaffer to Ivan independently and almost simultaneously, so the deal was quickly struck.
Free Agent Signings
I’m not a big fan of free agency for established starters, given the winner’s curse, but there are ways to make some roster fringe additions that I think can really help any team, regardless of their budget, so that’s what I tried to focus on.
1. LHP Mike Dunn - $7M over two years ($3.5M, $3.5M)
Ian Krol was really good last year. I was kind of bummed that the best return the Braves could get for Maybin included a guy who struggled to turn in a replacement-level performance over the past three seasons, including a passable-but-not-great performance against lefties during that stretch, but Krol was probably the best sneaky-good surprise for the 2016 Braves from a performance perspective. I don’t know if Krol will repeat any of his 2016 success ever again, but if he’s capable of it, I wanted to get another lefty reliever to be able to have Krol used in higher-leverage situations regardless of the handedness of the batter, because Krol’s 2016 splits featured a 2.37 FIP and 2.77 xFIP against lefties, and a 3.32 FIP and 3.12 xFIP against righties.
Enter Mike Dunn, part of the trade that yielded Dan Uggla for the Braves back before the 2011 season. Dunn has pitched at least 42 innings in each season since departing Atlanta, and has held lefties to a career 3.06 FIP / 3.65 xFIP. I wouldn’t be interested in having him face righties often (FIP/xFIP around 4.30), but as a LOOGY, I think Dunn came reasonably cheaply. Given how insane reliever prices are, Dunn may also be able to fetch something neat at the deadline, especially given the two-year deal, and is affordable.
As a side note, I veered towards Dunn because Brett Cecil, my primary target for this role of lefty-reliever-who-can-be-traded-for-stuff-later, ended up being snatched up by the Nationals at something like $24M over three years after a slight bidding war in which I participated. That’s too much for a reliever.
2 and 3. OF Matt Joyce and UTIL Sean Rodriguez, each signed to $10M over two years ($4M, $6M) with a $6M team option and a $1M buyout of that option
I also signed Matt Joyce last year. Matt Joyce had a great year last year. I feel smart, at least about that. (Trading Maybin for DJ Peterson, well, not so much.) In about 300 PAs, Matt Joyce put up a fancy 137 wRC+ with 13 homers for the Pirates. His OBP was a bit over .400. He even hit lefties pretty well (116 wRC+).
The downside with Joyce is that, even aside from his known platoon weakness, he can’t really field. He may give Matt Kemp a run for his money in terms of outfield issues. On the flip side, Sean Rodriguez is a pretty good corner outfielder who had a good year with the stick in 2016, also for the Pirates. Rodriguez also historically pounds lefties (or at least is good against them, with a career 112 wRC+), but is no good at hitting righties. You probably see where this is going.
Rodriguez can also play a reasonable second base and third base, and in the worst case scenario, can fill in at center field and shortstop, though I wouldn’t really want to play him there except in an emergency. The plan would be for Joyce to bear the heavy side of the platoon burden but exit for Rodriguez in close-and-late situations, both if he’s facing a lefty reliever or just to get a better defense on the field for part of the game. The flexibility with Ruiz and Shaffer (and I guess, Adonis Garcia and Jace Peterson) also allows for some additional pinch-hitting antics, given that Rodriguez can be moved from the infield to the outfield.
These moves also backstop a situation where Matt Kemp becomes unplayable, like he was in 2010 or 2013. While not a great outcome due to the platoon weaknesses of Rodriguez and Joyce, an outfield of Joyce-Inciarte-Rodriguez may be reasonably productive. Were I really running the team, I’d probably try to play matchups with the entire set of non-catchers not named Freeman, Swanson or Inciarte, both from a platoon perspective but also from a type-of-pitcher faced perspective, in case analysis indicates that certain players do better or worse against certain pitch types or velocity tranches.
4. RHP Andrew Cashner - $3M base one-year deal, with $500k in escalators for each of 100, 125, 150, 175, and 200 innings pitched.
I don’t know what Andrew Cashner is going to do in 2016, but this was the right price to take a flier on him. Cashner was average-or-better pitcher from 2013 through 2015, before having all sorts of issues last season. If he bounces back, he not only gives the Braves a fairly reasonable rotation even if none of Blair, Whalen, Gant, et al pan out, but he’s also an insurance policy for Yovani Gallardo and Wade Miley becoming age thirty pumpkins.
Cashner’s affordability can also make him a very attractive trade piece, should it come to that.
5. Minor league deals - Kelly Johnson, Shane Robinson, Drew Stubbs, Brett Oberholtzer, JJ Hoover
Not much to say here. I mostly thought it would be funny to take Kelly Johnson and trade him to the Mets again.
Robinson and Stubbs provide some fifth outfielder options that can man center field, if need be. Robinson can’t hit at all, but is a good outfielder. I thought Drew Stubbs got a bit of a raw deal last year, but when you strike out in nearly half of your plate appearances, I can see why you’d get released. He also may be losing a step or two in the outfield, but it’s hard to tell. Please don’t get hurt, Ender Inciarte. Please.
Oberholtzer and Hoover are two former farmhands that provide depth, and probably won’t make the team. The Braves have oodles of bullpen options, and Oberholtzer can at least limit his walks to lefties in case something happens to Krol or Dunn. Hoover has been awful since 2013, but may be useful against righties if he ever sorts out his walk and meatball issues. Nothing much to see here, though.
2017 Outlook
In sum, here’s about what I expect, WAR-wise, from the crew assembled:
C: 2.5 (platoon, does not count pitch-framing)
1B: 4.5
2B: About 1.5 over the course of the season, between Peterson and Albies being called up
SS: 3.5 (perhaps optimistic?)
3B: 1.5
LF: 0.5 (sigh)
CF: 3.5
RF: 3.0 (though some of this may come from Rodriguez playing elsewhere, and requires heavy leveraging of platoons)
SPs: Teheran (2.5), Foltynewicz (2.0), Miley (2.0), Gallardo (1.5), someone else (1.0)
RP: Figure 3.0 for a bullpen that has nice pieces but likely won’t dominate
Additional various bench production: Figure 1.0
Overall, that’s around 32-33 WAR, or about an 80-win team on paper. There’s room for improvement there, and the value-bleeding beyond what I’ve estimated largely comes only if the C and RF platoons don’t do their jobs. Improvement from Kemp, second base, and the fifth starter position will push the team towards contention, though they’ll likely still struggle to get a Wild Card spot. Without improvement from those positions, though, this is really more of a “waiting in the weeds” attempt to really go for the jugular with additional flexibility and hopefully a more-experienced set of young players in 2018.
And now, a listing of stuff that didn’t happen
In no particular order, here’s a listing of stuff that didn’t happen, but was discussed:
- We tried to make an offer on Evan Longoria, but heard nothing back. Other guys on whom we inquired but never really got a discussion going were Andrew Toles, Yasiel Puig, and Derek Dietrich.
- Guys that we inquired and basically got a “no” on were prospect catchers Carson Kelly and Chance Sisco, Kyle Seager (my fave), Andrelton Simmons and Kole Calhoun (though, annoyingly, Calhoun was eventually traded), and Buxton/Sano from the Twins. You can throw As prospect Matt Chapman in there too.
- Ender Inciarte was the hottest Braves commodity this offseason, but my asking price was “two average-or-better major league regulars under team control and a top prospect” and no one was willing to pony up anything close to that. The most insane offer I’ve seen in the SBN sim came for Inciarte, when the Angels proposed Tommy La Stella, Cory Rasmus, and Brady Aiken for him. Rasmus was eventually released. (More on that later.)
- My first call about third base was Cubs prospect Jeimer Candelario. The price was far too high, involving two of the Braves’ top-tier arms. One for one, I could see; two for one, no real interest. One target I had to “solve” 3B was Yangervis Solarte. However, Yangervis Solarte isn’t really that good, but the Padres wanted Riley, Soroka, and Sims for him. The Royals wanted Allard, Sims, and Davidson for one year of Moustakas. Luis Valbuena got a qualifying offer, and then Valbuena and Solarte were actually traded for one another. You can see why 3B is a mess.
- We tried to make plays for either Starling Marte or Gregory Polanco of the Pirates, but found the prices a bit too dear. I know there’s been some discussion of whether the price for Polanco (one of Allard, Anderson, Maitan, Soroka, plus Ruiz and Davidson) was worth exploring further, but I may be a low guy on Polanco and take full responsibility for nixing that line of discussion so long as one of the first few names was involved.
- We bid a lot for Lourdes Gourriel (Gurriel?), up to $127M over six years. The Red Sox beat us at #133M over seven years (lower AAV). Either way, this seems silly now, given that Gourriel got a floor of $22M guaranteed over seven years from the real life Blue Jays. Guess the market for Cuban imports is really souring.
- We also bid a lot for Brett Cecil, but did not want to pay him $24M over three years. He went to the Nationals. I’m happier with Mike Dunn at those prices. I think Gourriel and Cecil were the only two gentlemen I was not able to sign that I targeted on the free agent market.
- No one wanted Matt Kemp... (except, see below, kinda). The Cubs did propose a crazy (to us) offer of Allard, Soroka, one of Riley/Sims, and one of Toussaint/Fried for taking on Kemp’s deal, and giving us Soler. I understand that that may be something like the market value of escaping Kemp’s horrible contract versus his production, but freeing that money is just not very useful to the Braves, so there was never going to be a match there.
- Flowers and Krol were discussed with the Astros, but the Astros ended up making a play for Quintana that removed the (from my perspective) interesting prospects they had from consideration.
The most exciting thing that didn’t happen
The Angels, who also acquired Cameron Maybin in this sim, came calling on one of our outfielders. Markakis had already been traded, but I was willing to listen on Kemp and Inciarte. I said I wouldn’t swap Maybin for Inciarte, but I would definitely do so for Kemp.
The Angels seemed to be fine with this (!!). I felt like I had to inform them of Kemp’s contract. The response was something like, “Wow, that’s a massive contract. Can you pay down Kemp’s 2017 salary, at least?” Of course, that would largely be fine with me, so I shot back a note that we could definitely do that so long as the Angels covered Maybin’s $9M for this season, so that we weren’t paying $30M for Maybin in 2017.
And then... silence. Now, that wasn’t really unexpected, given the unbalanced nature of what was going on, but it was still a little disconcerting given how great the trade would have been from the Braves’ perspective. A bit later, instead of a yes/no to my proposal as far as Kemp’s 2017 salary, I get an inquiry about Inciarte’s price. I respond, “two average or above major league regulars, and a top prospect.” The response I get, as indicated above, is “Tommy La Stella (not an average major league regular), Cory Rasmus (not even a major league regular, but a not-very-good relief pitcher), and Brady Aiken (I guess he’s kind of a top prospect?).” This deal is rejected, and I try to ask about Kemp again, and get told something like (paraphrasing): “Inciartes [sic] is who we wanted all along.” Such a shame, getting Kemp off the books would have been fantastic.
Oh well, maybe next year.