re: The ATL Thread: Offseason

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I don’t think anybody would have traded for him because that would require going to arbitration with him. I would be shocked if he gets more than $4M on the open market. He would have had some value only if he was still still pre-arb.

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And he was also injured. We couldn’t have got a bucket of balls for him with all that. But I think he does have value, more than you do anyway. Ozuna too. I’ve made this argument before, but I think these guys—all of them, but these 2 specifically because of the risk that their ‘20 seasons were outliers—are more valuable to the cumulative offense than their individual stats reveal, both raw counting stats and whatever analytics you guys prefer.

The whole offense, when clicking, is better than the sum of its parts. And those parts are already pretty damn good. But when you have Duvall and Ozuna in the lineup, there are no easy outs. Not just no easy outs, nobody 1-9 that can’t hit mistakes 400+ feet, even when they’re slumping.

So my take is that that makes pitchers have to throw more high pressure/effort pitches starting with the very 1st one to Ronnie. There’s no breathing room—no part of the lineup pitchers can just relax for and cruise through—running through that ‘20 Braves lineup (and I think it will even more stressful for pitchers in front of crowds) 5-6 innings and 100 pitches to the Braves offense is not the same as it would be for just about any team in MLB save the Dodgers. We’d get to teams’ bullpens faster, which over the course of 162 games would trend to extending our leads which would lead to our own pitchers throwing more lower leverage/effort/stress pitches which would obviously be beneficial.

Sorry, brevity has never been a strong suit. Basically, Duvall and Ozuna being in the lineup helps the entire team cumulatively and more than can be really calculated mathematically (though I’m sure there are some analytics that may come close). However, all that depends on the NL keeping the DH. That 1-9 pressure is different when it’s 1-8, and I think it really changes how you may build your team.

So, of course AA can’t really make a legit offer to Duvall or Ozuna until we know. So, when the frick are they going to decide this? How can we be this far into free agency without knowing whether or not there will even be jobs for some guys? I don’t think it benefits either side to negotiate without knowing. There are some guys whose value in the NL would be drastically different depending on the DH. And I think Duvall and Ozuna are 2 of them.