<img alt="Atlanta Braves v San Francisco Giants" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/AZIxWE2bwJiRzMzdzv1LNInXgGo=/0x0:4500x3000/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73525857/2166826887.0.jpg">
Photo by Lachlan Cunningham/Getty Images
This week’s mailbag touches on a variety of topics surrounding the 2024 Atlanta Braves A big thank you to everyone that took the time to send in questions for this week’s Atlanta Braves mailbag. We have some great questions this week so let’s dive right in.
Does this season change your overall outlook at all for the team going forward or are you leaning more towards the idea that all of the injury bug came home to roost and next year almost certainly can’t be this bad from an injury standpoint?
I thought this was a really great question. It is hard to believe now, but coming into the season, this Braves team received one of the best preseason projections that we had seen in a long time from multiple projection systems. I do think that this season is an outlier for this roster. Injuries happen to every team and we will talk about them more in a minute. But, one of the biggest things that Atlanta has battled is notable offensive underperformance. Entering Thursday, the Braves as a team, have the third-largest gap between their wOBA and their xwOBA. Only the Pirates and the White Sox have underperformed more. As a team, Atlanta still leads the majors in average exit velocity and are second in hard-hit rate and barrel percentage. The problem has been that so many of those hits with good contact have gone for outs.
Is it bad luck or something else? Probably both. There is an element of luck to baseball that is more present than other sports. The offensive environment is directly impacted by the baseballs that the league uses and there have been enough questions about them in the past that I believe that it is fair to question what exactly is going on. Some players have already done so. Whatever the reason, the Braves simply haven’t gotten the offensive seasons they were expecting from Austin Riley, Sean Murphy, Matt Olson, Michael Harris II, and Ozzie Albies.
Injuries have no doubt played a part. Murphy missed two months after getting hurt on Opening Day and has seemingly been trying to catch up the rest of the season; even now, his seasonal line is tanked by what seemed like Spring Training-level PAs immediately after his return. Albies has had two different stints on the shelf while Harris just returned from a two-month absence. That time on the sidelines limits the opportunity those players had to turn things around.
Then of course, there are the two biggest injuries. Atlanta lost the Cy Young favorite in Spencer Strider just two games into the season. They lost the reigning National League MVP in Ronald Acuña Jr. on May 26. Some might point out that Acuña wasn’t having the same type of season as in 2023, but I’d point out that he still leads all Braves outfielders in fWAR and hasn’t played since the end of May.
After last season, we just all expected the Braves to win no matter what the obstacles were. The reality is that you’d be hard-pressed to find a team that could lose their top pitcher and top position player and still hang in contention as long as they have. Then, factor in long injury stints for their starting catcher, starting center fielder, starting second baseman and others. The Dodgers have dealt with a number of injuries themselves, but take Bryce Harper and Zack Wheeler off the Phillies and see what you have. (While not fully intended to be used this way, an analysis by Dan Szymborski at FanGraphs suggests that the Braves and Phillies could be something akin to tied atop the NL East if their injury luck were normalized.)
Time will tell what happens to the 2024 Braves. I think when we look back on it, we will probably view it as a disappointing season, but that is mostly because of the high expectations that were built up coming in. For that reason, this season just feels like an outlier to me and I’m still confident in their future. They will have things to address during the offseason, most notably in the rotation. Still, this core is locked up and I think they will be primed to bounce back in 2025.
Since he’s had an inconsistent season, is it possible Max Fried may sign a high-salary 1-year deal with the Braves and try to reset for 2026?
Not a chance. I wouldn’t call Fried’s season inconsistent either. He had two tough starts to begin the season and then put together a stretch where he was among the best starters in the league. He hasn’t looked like himself in two games since returning from the Injured List for forearm neuritis, but the reality is that he probably should have taken a rehab start before returning. He says he feels good physically and if that is true, I expect him to round into form for the stretch run.
Fried is 30 years old. Among the 148 starters with the most innings right now, he’s 50th in fWAR despite the IL stint. He’s 38th in ERA-, 48th in FIP-, and 26th in xFIP-. Even if those numbers don’t improve, he still stands to gain more by hitting the free agent market a year sooner; there’s no guarantee he’ll pitch better than this next year. Last offseason and the Trade Deadline in July showed that the price tag for pitching is still sky high. There will be teams lined up looking to sign him and I don’t believe he gains anything by signing a one-year deal.
Do the Braves have any idea why Sean Murphy and Matt Olson have had such less production than last season ? Has the NL adjusted to them and they need to counter adjust?
Let’s talk about Murphy first because I think the situation with him is fairly obvious. He got hurt in his first at-bat on Opening Day and then missed about two months of action. He got off to a slow start once he did return, but has a 112 wRC+ since the start of July. Hell, if you take out only the few PAs he had after returning in May, he has a .341 xwOBA. He isn’t immune to the power outage that everyone else on the roster not named Marcell Ozuna has experienced. His average exit velocity, barrel percentage and hard hit rate are all down considerably over last season. He’s underperformed his xwOBA but it isn’t by a wide margin. You also have to factor in that his playing time has been a little more sporadic due to a good season by Travis d’Arnaud, which has limited his opportunities. He’s up to a 97 wRC+ for the season though and while he won’t reach his preseason projections, he’s starting to look more like himself.
As far as Olson goes, I think he’s been the most disappointing player in the lineup. I didn’t come into the season expecting him to hit 50+ homers again, but to go from the best season of his career to the worst was unexpected. Olson and the Braves have been searching for answers so much that it might have been unproductive. He is a player that has always had peaks and valleys. I think there was an enormous amount of pressure on him to produce when the lineup began struggling and that just magnified things. His numbers are down across the board so it is hard to pinpoint on any one thing, but his struggles against the fastball have been notable. Olson hit .316 and slugged .630 against fastballs in 2023. Those numbers are down to .240 and .449 in 2024. The good news is that he has a 153 wRC+ in August and is starting to look like himself again, so maybe some of the adjustments are taking hold.
Honestly, you could probably write a whole thing about Olson that would be longer than this mailbag, and it’s hard to confirm a lot of it without a real heart-to-heart with the man himself, which isn’t the sort of thing he’s likely to engage in given that he’s a fairly reticent guy. Olson suffered from a substantial xwOBA underperformance on fastballs in April despite actually hitting them at an elite clip; the inability to loft a higher-drag baseball in colder temperatures out to left may have thrown him for a loop. It looks like he started focusing more on breaking pitches after that, a throwback to what he did early last year, but pitchers continuing to pound him with fastballs made that an awkward plan as he kept falling behind. He’s back to killing fastballs in August while taking a more selective approach overall, so that might be part of the story, but it’s only been two weeks of August so we’ll have to wait and see.
Does Ian Anderson have to have great results in Triple-A or is he close to being called up?
I think Ian Anderson is available if needed, but I don’t know that he has been back on a mound long enough to say he is ready. I think every start he makes at Gwinnett is valuable in that he continues to work on his command and his curveball. Brian Snitker said before the Giants series that the Braves were mostly done with using six starters and would try to just leverage off days to give guys extra rest. I’m not sure I completely believe that and I will be surprised if we don’t see Anderson before the end of the season. However, with the impending return of Reynaldo Lopez and Spencer Schwellenbach pitching well, there really isn’t a spot for Anderson unless someone gets hurt or does need an extra day.
Whether we see him or not, hopefully he can get to the end of the season healthy and can have a close to normal offseason. Next Spring Training should be a big one for him as he will be among the group of pitchers competing for a spot in the rotation.
With A.J. Minter injured and Aaron Bummer erratic, is claiming Kyle Muller to be a middle reliever in low leverage situations a consideration?
The Braves haven’t closed the door completely on Minter, who is headed for hip surgery, but it seems unlikely we will see him again this season. That is a tough break for him as well because he is headed to free agency this winter. Atlanta still appears to be in decent shape in the bullpen with Dylan Lee back and with Aaron Bummer. I wouldn’t characterize Bummer as erratic. He has a 3.74 ERA but a 2.02 FIP. His xFIP also shows that his FIP isn’t just an artifact of a low HR/FB. He has a 59.5 percent ground ball rate yet opponents have a .423 BABIP against him, which is a ridiculous number. Sometimes guys that allow hard contact but not fly balls can end up with weird pitching lines because screamers past the infield aren’t accounted for in FIP and xFIP if they keep being yielded by the same pitcher, but Bummer’s xERA, which does account for those things, is also below 3.00. It’s kind of funny, because Bummer is actually having his best full season ever at age 30, but the Braves largely use him in low leverage and he’s had to deal with absurdly bad ball-in-play luck to boot.
Kyle Muller isn’t available because he cleared waivers and was outrighted to Triple-A after being designated for assignment by the Athletics.
Why is Luke Jackson still on the roster?
I’m only including this question because I wrote as much last Sunday after that loss in Colorado. The answer is depth. Jackson finally logged a scoreless inning Wednesday night so maybe he can give them something down the stretch. Another thing to consider that I didn’t write last weekend is that Daysbel Hernandez has been optioned four times this season. If the Braves bring him up again, then they can’t send him back down without exposing him to waivers. The Minter injury is probably a good example of why a knee-jerk reaction isn’t appropriate but at this point I can’t see them trusting Jackson in the postseason if they do get there. Luckily for him, he still has a month and a half to change that perception.
Jackson’s 99 xFIP- is pretty fine for a mop-up guy. The problem is that he’s had truly awful HR/FB luck this season (123 FIP-). The bigger problem is that the Braves already have Jesse Chavez for long relief, and they also insist on doing stuff like using Aaron Bummer, Dylan Lee, and whichever Jimmy Herget-esque guy they have on hand for mop-up and long relief as well. If the Braves weren’t carrying any of those guys, Jackson would be a fine option for that role, with the possibility to grow back into the low-90s xFIP- guy he was earlier. However, they are carrying so many of those guys, pretty much all the time, so he’s basically redundant and only useful to keep someone like Hernandez on the 40-man but not the 26-man.
How does the front office tolerate the game day decisions of Brian Snitker?
There were a ton of questions about Brian Snitker in our comments section so I’m just going to address a few here. First, the Front Office and the dugout are in sync. There isn’t a situation where the Front Office cut a player just to prevent Snitker from playing him. Those decisions are discussed. Yes, Alex Anthopoulos goes out of his way to say that Snitker has the final say, but the dugout isn’t on its own little island with the Front Office shouting instructions at them through multiple panes of glass on a plane circling high above.
One comment suggested that the Braves talked Snitker out of retirement after last season which is a rumor that is based on nothing. At Snitker’s age, he probably evaluates his situation after every season, but it isn’t like he had to be talked back to the bench or that the Front Office wants him out. That is fan fiction that might be out there on the internet somewhere but has no basis of truth.
Snitker is under contract through next season. He isn’t getting fired after this one. If he wants to keep managing, then he will be back in 2025. If he wants to continue beyond that, I won’t be surprised if he is given an extension somewhere around Spring Training.
To get to the question more directly, in a way we’ve answered repeatedly before: the Front Office believes that there are benefits to Brian Snitker that more than compensate for poor in-game tactical decision-making. If they didn’t, he wouldn’t be the manager. But it’s clear that there is a long and consistent pattern of de-emphasizing tactical efficiency that goes back over half a decade now, and while that hurts much more this year because of the never-ending and severe injury-drama, the calculus for the Front Office hasn’t changed at all.
The Braves have to explore what Jorge Soler can get on the trade market this winter right? Hopefully he continues his recent power surge and we’re able to at least get off the contract
The Braves have money coming off the books so I don’t think they have to “get off Jorge Soler’s contract.” Will they, though, is another question. I have a hard time seeing how the pieces fit. I’m expecting Marcell Ozuna to return after the season he has had. I don’t know that Ronald Acuña Jr. will be ready for Opening Day so maybe there is an opportunity for Soler there. They don’t appear to be thinking about giving up on Jarred Kelenic. Juggling four guys, not counting Ozuna, isn’t something we have seen them do a lot. This is still an open question and we will have to see how they handle it during the offseason. I will say again though, the only people that ever bring up the Braves payroll are members of the media and the fans.
Who might the Braves call up when rosters expand in a few weeks? Are either AJ Smith-Shawver or Hurston Waldrep close to being ready to just create rest for the primary pitchers?
This is my annual opportunity to express how much I hate Major League Baseball’s new roster rules for September. Adding one pitcher and another position player that will never play isn’t my idea of roster expansion. It punishes teams that have depth in the name of fewer pitching changes.
I think Smith-Shawver is ready and available. I still believe that he was going to be given a shot when he hurt his oblique in his start at Wrigley Field earlier this season. Waldrep, I’m not as sure about for this year, which is fine. He got pushed quickly last year and that created some unfavorable expectations. It was clear when he made his major league debut that he wasn’t ready. As we talked about earlier with Ian Anderson, we will have to see how closely the coaching staff sticks to the five-man rotation for the stretch run.
My guess, right now, is that they bring up another reliever and maybe Eli White or Chadwick Tromp to sit on the bench.
Finally, some personal news
If you hung on until the end of this, I truly appreciate it. Writing these mailbags has been one of the most fun things I have done on the site over the last couple of years. However, this is going to be my last one. Last month I was promoted to Editorial Manager for baseball at SB Nation. That means I am now responsible for all of the baseball team sites. That also means that there is going to be a new Producer in place for Battery Power soon.
This isn’t goodbye. I’m still going to be around doing other SB Nation things and I may even pop in and write something every so often. I promised myself back around 2012 that I’d stop doing this when it wasn’t fun anymore and I am still going strong. I joined Talking Chop in 2015 and all I can say is that it has been a privilege to be part of this site and this community. I am proud of what we built here. A huge thank you to everyone that has written here and been part of our team while I have been here. Another huge thank you to this community who displays its passion each and every day. You guys show up through the good and the bad and that keeps us going.
Thank you!
<img alt="Atlanta Braves v San Francisco Giants" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/AZIxWE2bwJiRzMzdzv1LNInXgGo=/0x0:4500x3000/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73525857/2166826887.0.jpg">
Photo by Lachlan Cunningham/Getty Images
This week’s mailbag touches on a variety of topics surrounding the 2024 Atlanta Braves A big thank you to everyone that took the time to send in questions for this week’s Atlanta Braves mailbag. We have some great questions this week so let’s dive right in.
Does this season change your overall outlook at all for the team going forward or are you leaning more towards the idea that all of the injury bug came home to roost and next year almost certainly can’t be this bad from an injury standpoint?
I thought this was a really great question. It is hard to believe now, but coming into the season, this Braves team received one of the best preseason projections that we had seen in a long time from multiple projection systems. I do think that this season is an outlier for this roster. Injuries happen to every team and we will talk about them more in a minute. But, one of the biggest things that Atlanta has battled is notable offensive underperformance. Entering Thursday, the Braves as a team, have the third-largest gap between their wOBA and their xwOBA. Only the Pirates and the White Sox have underperformed more. As a team, Atlanta still leads the majors in average exit velocity and are second in hard-hit rate and barrel percentage. The problem has been that so many of those hits with good contact have gone for outs.
Is it bad luck or something else? Probably both. There is an element of luck to baseball that is more present than other sports. The offensive environment is directly impacted by the baseballs that the league uses and there have been enough questions about them in the past that I believe that it is fair to question what exactly is going on. Some players have already done so. Whatever the reason, the Braves simply haven’t gotten the offensive seasons they were expecting from Austin Riley, Sean Murphy, Matt Olson, Michael Harris II, and Ozzie Albies.
Injuries have no doubt played a part. Murphy missed two months after getting hurt on Opening Day and has seemingly been trying to catch up the rest of the season; even now, his seasonal line is tanked by what seemed like Spring Training-level PAs immediately after his return. Albies has had two different stints on the shelf while Harris just returned from a two-month absence. That time on the sidelines limits the opportunity those players had to turn things around.
Then of course, there are the two biggest injuries. Atlanta lost the Cy Young favorite in Spencer Strider just two games into the season. They lost the reigning National League MVP in Ronald Acuña Jr. on May 26. Some might point out that Acuña wasn’t having the same type of season as in 2023, but I’d point out that he still leads all Braves outfielders in fWAR and hasn’t played since the end of May.
After last season, we just all expected the Braves to win no matter what the obstacles were. The reality is that you’d be hard-pressed to find a team that could lose their top pitcher and top position player and still hang in contention as long as they have. Then, factor in long injury stints for their starting catcher, starting center fielder, starting second baseman and others. The Dodgers have dealt with a number of injuries themselves, but take Bryce Harper and Zack Wheeler off the Phillies and see what you have. (While not fully intended to be used this way, an analysis by Dan Szymborski at FanGraphs suggests that the Braves and Phillies could be something akin to tied atop the NL East if their injury luck were normalized.)
Time will tell what happens to the 2024 Braves. I think when we look back on it, we will probably view it as a disappointing season, but that is mostly because of the high expectations that were built up coming in. For that reason, this season just feels like an outlier to me and I’m still confident in their future. They will have things to address during the offseason, most notably in the rotation. Still, this core is locked up and I think they will be primed to bounce back in 2025.
Since he’s had an inconsistent season, is it possible Max Fried may sign a high-salary 1-year deal with the Braves and try to reset for 2026?
Not a chance. I wouldn’t call Fried’s season inconsistent either. He had two tough starts to begin the season and then put together a stretch where he was among the best starters in the league. He hasn’t looked like himself in two games since returning from the Injured List for forearm neuritis, but the reality is that he probably should have taken a rehab start before returning. He says he feels good physically and if that is true, I expect him to round into form for the stretch run.
Fried is 30 years old. Among the 148 starters with the most innings right now, he’s 50th in fWAR despite the IL stint. He’s 38th in ERA-, 48th in FIP-, and 26th in xFIP-. Even if those numbers don’t improve, he still stands to gain more by hitting the free agent market a year sooner; there’s no guarantee he’ll pitch better than this next year. Last offseason and the Trade Deadline in July showed that the price tag for pitching is still sky high. There will be teams lined up looking to sign him and I don’t believe he gains anything by signing a one-year deal.
Do the Braves have any idea why Sean Murphy and Matt Olson have had such less production than last season ? Has the NL adjusted to them and they need to counter adjust?
Let’s talk about Murphy first because I think the situation with him is fairly obvious. He got hurt in his first at-bat on Opening Day and then missed about two months of action. He got off to a slow start once he did return, but has a 112 wRC+ since the start of July. Hell, if you take out only the few PAs he had after returning in May, he has a .341 xwOBA. He isn’t immune to the power outage that everyone else on the roster not named Marcell Ozuna has experienced. His average exit velocity, barrel percentage and hard hit rate are all down considerably over last season. He’s underperformed his xwOBA but it isn’t by a wide margin. You also have to factor in that his playing time has been a little more sporadic due to a good season by Travis d’Arnaud, which has limited his opportunities. He’s up to a 97 wRC+ for the season though and while he won’t reach his preseason projections, he’s starting to look more like himself.
As far as Olson goes, I think he’s been the most disappointing player in the lineup. I didn’t come into the season expecting him to hit 50+ homers again, but to go from the best season of his career to the worst was unexpected. Olson and the Braves have been searching for answers so much that it might have been unproductive. He is a player that has always had peaks and valleys. I think there was an enormous amount of pressure on him to produce when the lineup began struggling and that just magnified things. His numbers are down across the board so it is hard to pinpoint on any one thing, but his struggles against the fastball have been notable. Olson hit .316 and slugged .630 against fastballs in 2023. Those numbers are down to .240 and .449 in 2024. The good news is that he has a 153 wRC+ in August and is starting to look like himself again, so maybe some of the adjustments are taking hold.
Honestly, you could probably write a whole thing about Olson that would be longer than this mailbag, and it’s hard to confirm a lot of it without a real heart-to-heart with the man himself, which isn’t the sort of thing he’s likely to engage in given that he’s a fairly reticent guy. Olson suffered from a substantial xwOBA underperformance on fastballs in April despite actually hitting them at an elite clip; the inability to loft a higher-drag baseball in colder temperatures out to left may have thrown him for a loop. It looks like he started focusing more on breaking pitches after that, a throwback to what he did early last year, but pitchers continuing to pound him with fastballs made that an awkward plan as he kept falling behind. He’s back to killing fastballs in August while taking a more selective approach overall, so that might be part of the story, but it’s only been two weeks of August so we’ll have to wait and see.
Does Ian Anderson have to have great results in Triple-A or is he close to being called up?
I think Ian Anderson is available if needed, but I don’t know that he has been back on a mound long enough to say he is ready. I think every start he makes at Gwinnett is valuable in that he continues to work on his command and his curveball. Brian Snitker said before the Giants series that the Braves were mostly done with using six starters and would try to just leverage off days to give guys extra rest. I’m not sure I completely believe that and I will be surprised if we don’t see Anderson before the end of the season. However, with the impending return of Reynaldo Lopez and Spencer Schwellenbach pitching well, there really isn’t a spot for Anderson unless someone gets hurt or does need an extra day.
Whether we see him or not, hopefully he can get to the end of the season healthy and can have a close to normal offseason. Next Spring Training should be a big one for him as he will be among the group of pitchers competing for a spot in the rotation.
With A.J. Minter injured and Aaron Bummer erratic, is claiming Kyle Muller to be a middle reliever in low leverage situations a consideration?
The Braves haven’t closed the door completely on Minter, who is headed for hip surgery, but it seems unlikely we will see him again this season. That is a tough break for him as well because he is headed to free agency this winter. Atlanta still appears to be in decent shape in the bullpen with Dylan Lee back and with Aaron Bummer. I wouldn’t characterize Bummer as erratic. He has a 3.74 ERA but a 2.02 FIP. His xFIP also shows that his FIP isn’t just an artifact of a low HR/FB. He has a 59.5 percent ground ball rate yet opponents have a .423 BABIP against him, which is a ridiculous number. Sometimes guys that allow hard contact but not fly balls can end up with weird pitching lines because screamers past the infield aren’t accounted for in FIP and xFIP if they keep being yielded by the same pitcher, but Bummer’s xERA, which does account for those things, is also below 3.00. It’s kind of funny, because Bummer is actually having his best full season ever at age 30, but the Braves largely use him in low leverage and he’s had to deal with absurdly bad ball-in-play luck to boot.
Kyle Muller isn’t available because he cleared waivers and was outrighted to Triple-A after being designated for assignment by the Athletics.
Why is Luke Jackson still on the roster?
I’m only including this question because I wrote as much last Sunday after that loss in Colorado. The answer is depth. Jackson finally logged a scoreless inning Wednesday night so maybe he can give them something down the stretch. Another thing to consider that I didn’t write last weekend is that Daysbel Hernandez has been optioned four times this season. If the Braves bring him up again, then they can’t send him back down without exposing him to waivers. The Minter injury is probably a good example of why a knee-jerk reaction isn’t appropriate but at this point I can’t see them trusting Jackson in the postseason if they do get there. Luckily for him, he still has a month and a half to change that perception.
Jackson’s 99 xFIP- is pretty fine for a mop-up guy. The problem is that he’s had truly awful HR/FB luck this season (123 FIP-). The bigger problem is that the Braves already have Jesse Chavez for long relief, and they also insist on doing stuff like using Aaron Bummer, Dylan Lee, and whichever Jimmy Herget-esque guy they have on hand for mop-up and long relief as well. If the Braves weren’t carrying any of those guys, Jackson would be a fine option for that role, with the possibility to grow back into the low-90s xFIP- guy he was earlier. However, they are carrying so many of those guys, pretty much all the time, so he’s basically redundant and only useful to keep someone like Hernandez on the 40-man but not the 26-man.
How does the front office tolerate the game day decisions of Brian Snitker?
There were a ton of questions about Brian Snitker in our comments section so I’m just going to address a few here. First, the Front Office and the dugout are in sync. There isn’t a situation where the Front Office cut a player just to prevent Snitker from playing him. Those decisions are discussed. Yes, Alex Anthopoulos goes out of his way to say that Snitker has the final say, but the dugout isn’t on its own little island with the Front Office shouting instructions at them through multiple panes of glass on a plane circling high above.
One comment suggested that the Braves talked Snitker out of retirement after last season which is a rumor that is based on nothing. At Snitker’s age, he probably evaluates his situation after every season, but it isn’t like he had to be talked back to the bench or that the Front Office wants him out. That is fan fiction that might be out there on the internet somewhere but has no basis of truth.
Snitker is under contract through next season. He isn’t getting fired after this one. If he wants to keep managing, then he will be back in 2025. If he wants to continue beyond that, I won’t be surprised if he is given an extension somewhere around Spring Training.
To get to the question more directly, in a way we’ve answered repeatedly before: the Front Office believes that there are benefits to Brian Snitker that more than compensate for poor in-game tactical decision-making. If they didn’t, he wouldn’t be the manager. But it’s clear that there is a long and consistent pattern of de-emphasizing tactical efficiency that goes back over half a decade now, and while that hurts much more this year because of the never-ending and severe injury-drama, the calculus for the Front Office hasn’t changed at all.
The Braves have to explore what Jorge Soler can get on the trade market this winter right? Hopefully he continues his recent power surge and we’re able to at least get off the contract
The Braves have money coming off the books so I don’t think they have to “get off Jorge Soler’s contract.” Will they, though, is another question. I have a hard time seeing how the pieces fit. I’m expecting Marcell Ozuna to return after the season he has had. I don’t know that Ronald Acuña Jr. will be ready for Opening Day so maybe there is an opportunity for Soler there. They don’t appear to be thinking about giving up on Jarred Kelenic. Juggling four guys, not counting Ozuna, isn’t something we have seen them do a lot. This is still an open question and we will have to see how they handle it during the offseason. I will say again though, the only people that ever bring up the Braves payroll are members of the media and the fans.
Who might the Braves call up when rosters expand in a few weeks? Are either AJ Smith-Shawver or Hurston Waldrep close to being ready to just create rest for the primary pitchers?
This is my annual opportunity to express how much I hate Major League Baseball’s new roster rules for September. Adding one pitcher and another position player that will never play isn’t my idea of roster expansion. It punishes teams that have depth in the name of fewer pitching changes.
I think Smith-Shawver is ready and available. I still believe that he was going to be given a shot when he hurt his oblique in his start at Wrigley Field earlier this season. Waldrep, I’m not as sure about for this year, which is fine. He got pushed quickly last year and that created some unfavorable expectations. It was clear when he made his major league debut that he wasn’t ready. As we talked about earlier with Ian Anderson, we will have to see how closely the coaching staff sticks to the five-man rotation for the stretch run.
My guess, right now, is that they bring up another reliever and maybe Eli White or Chadwick Tromp to sit on the bench.
Finally, some personal news
If you hung on until the end of this, I truly appreciate it. Writing these mailbags has been one of the most fun things I have done on the site over the last couple of years. However, this is going to be my last one. Last month I was promoted to Editorial Manager for baseball at SB Nation. That means I am now responsible for all of the baseball team sites. That also means that there is going to be a new Producer in place for Battery Power soon.
This isn’t goodbye. I’m still going to be around doing other SB Nation things and I may even pop in and write something every so often. I promised myself back around 2012 that I’d stop doing this when it wasn’t fun anymore and I am still going strong. I joined Talking Chop in 2015 and all I can say is that it has been a privilege to be part of this site and this community. I am proud of what we built here. A huge thank you to everyone that has written here and been part of our team while I have been here. Another huge thank you to this community who displays its passion each and every day. You guys show up through the good and the bad and that keeps us going.
Thank you!
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