The Atlanta Braves became just the fourth team to have four Silver Slugger Award winners in the same season Thursday night. Ronald Acuña Jr. was named as a Silver Slugger winner for the second consecutive season. Freddie Freeman and Marcell Ozuna took home their second career Silver Slugger Awards while Travis d’Arnaud won the award for the first time.
We have come to expect greatness from Acuña and Freeman, but there probably hasn’t been enough said about just how good the Braves’ offseason was last year. Alex Anthopoulos brought in Ozuna on a one-year, $18 million deal to replace Josh Donaldson. Ozuna went out and put up one of the best season’s of his career leading the NL in homers and RBI.
Anthopoulos signed d’Arnaud to a two-year, $16 million deal which has to be one of the best value deals of the offseason. D’Arnaud posted a .919 OPS and slotted into the clean up spot in the batting order for the stretch run.
More Braves News
The Braves announced that they sent minor league infielders AJ Graffanino and Greg Cullen to the Baltimore Orioles to complete the Tommy Milone trade. Milone was released by the club at the end of the regular season.
Cory McCartney took a closer look at the free agent market for ways the Braves can fill their needs in Thursday’s Starting Nine column.
Liberty Media held their earnings call for the third quarter and revealed that the Braves saw a revenue decrease of 50 percent.
2020 Season player-by-player review
If you have missed any of our player reviews you can find them all here.
MLB News
MLB is reportedly offering to implement the DH in the NL next season in exchange for the players agreeing to expanded playoffs for the 2021 season per ESPN’s Jeff Passan.
Former GM Dave Dombrowski is not a candidate for any open GM position and is instead focused on bringing an expansion team or a relocated team to Nashville per a report by The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal.
The Boston Red Sox are reportedly down to three candidates for their managerial opening. MLB Network’s Jon Heyman reports that former Red Sox coach Alex Cora and Phillies director of integrative performance Sam Fuld are the favorites.