Braves bring back Adeiny Hechavarria on a one year, $1 million deal

This has been a tough week for Braves fans (and for baseball fans in general, really). The Braves had long been to be the favorites to re-sign Josh Donaldson to fill an important void in the middle of their lineup and, unfortunately, the Minnesota Twins came in and offered him a four year deal that he ended up taking.

This signing is not going to make folks less upset about Donaldson leaving, but it is still a good one.

For starters, it is really hard to give out a bad $1 million contract in today’s game, so things already start off well for this deal. In addition, Hechavarria was a really useful bench piece for the Braves in 2019. After being signed last year because Dansby was hurt again and neither Charlie Culberson nor Johan Camargo good seemingly handle shortstop duties in the interim, Hechavarria manned the position ably until Dansby’s return and was a really strong bench piece down the stretch.

It also helped that Hech hit basically more than he ever had in his career with the Braves with a .328/.400/.639 in 70 plate appearances. That won’t happen again, but this is still a good signing nonetheless especially when you consider that there basically wasn’t a backup shortstop on the roster before now.