re: The ATL Thread: Offseason Edition

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No moves have been made yet with KK

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He has no trade rights relative to Japan. He turned down the chance to go home to prove he belongs in the bigs.

Several Japanese teams were willing to take him and pay about 50% of his contract. Now we are reduced to finding a ML team to take him and we'll get stuck with about $5-$6MM. I would think many teams could use a 5th starter for about $1.5MM.

There aren't going to trade Minor, the only lefty with starting possibility.

I would love to have Ellsbury but I don't think they can work it into the lineup and budget. What do you do with McLouth - he's too expensive to trade. What we've got to hope for is a resurgent Schafer creates competition with McLouth in spring training. Maybe the added competition at the position will force McLouth to improve and one of the two emerges as a solid CF starter.

My biggest concern is with moving Prado to LF. I think he'll do great there. But, my fear is that either or both of Chipper struggles to return or is re-injured and/or Freeman struggles in his first real big league action. Now you have to move Prado to 3B or 1B. There is no real way to plan for that in the budget via offseason moves. At that point, you'd have to trade away some young arms (JJ, Beachy NOT Teheran or Delgado) for a solid LF. But you can't go out and buy that in the offseason and have an expensive piece sitting behind Prado in case Chip or Freeman struggle.