re: Atlanta Braves Trade Deadline

Damn, that one exchange really touched a nerve with you, huh bro?

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If the Twins are actually open to moving Sonny Gray like rumors suggest they are, I'd love to see AA get him.

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I'd really like to see the Braves pick him up.

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I'm just trying to help people learn to communicate with the natives, bro

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Look at you joining the hive.

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Hoping for a right handed bat to platoon with Rosario

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There seems to be a lack of left-handed starters in the NL right now. I have no data to back that up, but I can’t remember the last time I saw Ozzie hit RH. I’d be fine replacing Eddie with somebody better—his lack of effort letting balls drop right in front of him lately pisses me off to no end—and decreasing his role. But like somebody said, we need pitching, and trying to upgrade LF would just be a misallocation of resources we don’t have in great supply.

I wouldn’t mind Pillar getting some more starts against RHP, though.

Eddie in LF is not a problem.

Yeah Eddie isn't the best out there but he isn't a liability by any means.

I like Duvall, but he gets hurt too much. The Braves need relief pitching.

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There’s no one on the shitty farm that would cause me to lose sleep if traded but Grissom, AJSS, Alvarez, Schwellenbach, Phillips, Murphy, Dodd, Ritchie and Guanipa are the only tradable guys who are even more than lotto tickets to me.

Some teams have like 30+ guys better than the last few names on that list and most have at least 18-20.

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I stole this from Grant McCauley. He was talking with another guy about the deadline and potential moves. The other guy said with the state of the farm, he didn’t think AA would give up more than 1 or 2 of those guys—pretty sure AJSS is our only top 100 prospect—and so he thought a “big” trade was unlikely.

Grant went the other way. Not that we’re gonna give up a bunch of “our” top prospects just to do it, but if the right trade presents itself, AA won’t be scared to pull the trigger because of the current weakness of the farm. A few points he made:

—the farm is down because we had a crazy stretch of our best homegrown guys coming up early and becoming fixtures (Ronnie, Ozzie, Riley, Harris, Fried, Strider, Soroka (pre-injury).

—that group mentioned earlier (AJSS, Grissom, and co) are good for US, but not thought of that highly around baseball (relative to other teams’ top rated prospects)

—because of that and all the arms we’ve taken the last few drafts, we’ll just replace our current top guys with likely better—and younger—ones in a year or 2

—being able to sign international players again is gonna really help fill out the farm with talent (seeing Ronnie, Ozzie, Ozuna, and Arcia having so much fun playing together has got to be a nice recruiting tool.) if that even matters—I’m not sure—maybe they just sign with whoever gives them the most money. Which leads me to the final point.

—the Braves really trust their scouting department to be able to identify guys and then the organization to develop them. But not just to identify them before they become Braves, but to identify prospects we can live with moving and ones we may see something in we’d rather keep. And AA has a good track record, in Atlanta at least, of not getting burned by guys he moves becoming stars for other teams. Those clubs whose top end prospects go 20-30 deep, how many actually ever make it? There may be a handful of “sure things,” but most are lotto tickets, and you don’t really know which ones are gonna pan out.

Grant was arguing that the Braves are better than most at guessing/predicting which ones are gonna hit. At least now. I mean how frustrated did we use to get when we had all these top prospects, but kept them too long and their once-high trade value became basically zero?

So Grant’s argument—and I agree with him—is that, while AA won’t be reckless (and will probably won’t guys under team control another couple years before moving some of our bigger names), he’s not gonna shy away from making the right deal
that gives us the best chance to win another World Series because he’s scared of the current state of the farm. I think they’re confident they can build it back up through the draft, international signings, and identifying which guys to keep and which you can live with moving.


And just an FYI, I know a lot of people talk about AA like he’s some sort of super genius. I heard one guy on a pod say he thinks he’s hands-down the best front office guy in all of professional sports. We see it on here too—“In AA we trust.” He’s got some weird cult of personality. I think he’s really smart, and I do trust him, but even though he’s the face, I don’t believe for one second he’s doing all this solo. I think one of his talents is to identify and hire the right people around him and throughout the organization, trusting them to do their jobs, getting their opinions on players, and then making the final call. So when I say “AA did this” or whatever, I’m mainly talking about him and the team he’s put in place working in concert rather than just him the man. Though he obviously has final day.

Holy shite, if that wasn’t a vintage Hot Carl long-arse trade-deadline post that almost nobody will ever read.

Bowman on Hand:

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Brad Hand adds more depth to the Braves’ bullpen mix. As I wrote yesterday, just getting a guy to eat innings like Richard Rodriguez did in 2021 could help your primary high-leverage guys in October

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We gave up a 25 year old AA pitcher for a lefty reliever that is actually decent and has closing experience. It’s a good move.

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He will fit right in with what we currently have, erratic and you never know what you'll get when he pitches. He is a Grossman/Mike Ford type of add.

edit - He reminds me of Will Smith. That is what we picked up.