The latest move was the trade of shortstop Andrelton Simmons to the Angels for a commodity the Braves desire-young pitching. That being said, he’s a year removed from back-to-back All-Star campaigns, also picking up MVP votes in 2013 and 2014.
Advertisement
Eventually. If everything goes according to plan. If they picked the right players. After all, Coppolella, Schuerholz and company have promised that the Braves will not see another 90-loss season.
Instant reaction: Good move by the Mariners. “So I don’t think that you need somebody to accept. I think that so far we have successfully identified a group of players who were significant losses for the teams they were leaving and were high enough quality that they could bear the burden of draft-choice compensation in the market and still get a good contract”. The downsides to Gordon are his age (32 next season) and he would cost the Angels a draft pick.
In the National Basketball Association, this would be called “tanking”, and as mentioned here many times before, there is something ugly about that.
The qualifying offer salary is determined by the average of the highest 125 contracts in the major leagues. Joe Maddon and Andrew Friedman, armed with that great talent, had success and established reputations, for which they have been paid handsomely. Maybe this will be a reverse-brilliant trade after all. If he doesn’t, he’s still a three-win player who’ll make $53 million over the next five years, underpaid in every year but possibly the last one at $15 million, and he makes the Angels a couple of wins better for 2016 (especially with several ground-ball pitchers in their rotation).
But for the Braves, that should not matter too much. They’re asking for patience, but that’s in short supply around Atlanta – especially with the Braves leaving Turner Field after next season for a new stadium in the suburbs, funded with a hefty contribution from taxpayers. If the Angels lose out on the big boppers such as Davis and enter next season with a still-shaky offense, it’s possible this deal will wind up a net loss. Still, Aybar is only under contract for this year, and the Braves don’t have a ready replacement in their system. Now it’s up to the Braves’ minor-league and major-league staff to do what the Mets have done successfully with their pitching prospects – help Newcomb and the others realize their potential.
If that happens, the disaffected Braves fans could have reason to climb aboard the bandwagon again in 2018 or 2020. This past season, he put up an OPS+ of 81. All around, they will be getting an upgrade at the position. The Angels are constructing an outstanding defense. As ESPN’s Buster Olney pointed out, since 2012 he leads the league in defensive runs saved by a fairly large margin.
Joel Sherman reported as news of the trade broke that there is concern within the Braves organization Simmons reached his ceiling and, heading into his age-26 season, had already begun to regress.
Advertisement
And now if Simmons goes to L.A. and plays another six, eight or even 10 years, which he definitely could, there’s a good chance that he’ll be regarded more as an Angel than a fearless when folks look back and talk about the greatest shortstops who ever played. 238 with a career-high 25 homers and 61 RBIs in his first season with the Astros. Newcomb and Ellis were rated the Angels top two prospects, and Newcomb is MLBPipeline.com’s No. 19 overall prospect. But it’s certainly no sure thing that he or Ellis will avoid injuries and become frontline major league pitchers, and if they do, then how many years will the Braves get out of them before they trade them because they became unaffordable via arbitration?
