The B.J. Upton Saga – Will There Be A Trade
By Fred Owens
The Braves biggest off season story will be the fate of B.J. Upton. Fans want him traded or released but the reality is he may be the only Upton on the roster next year.
Will he stay or will he go?
If I ask 100 Braves fans what they wanted under the Braves Christmas tree I suspect 99 would say an alert from their favorite sports tracking service saying B.J. Upton has been traded to _____ for almost anything, Sadly for those fans the chances of a trade seem to be fading.
We’ve all heard the reports about the failed attempt to make a trade with the Cubs and seen various scenarios here and elsewhere about how such a trade might happen. Bad contract swap options are limited and assume another team would want BJ. So the question is, if you were GM would you trade for him?
No? Now you’re catching on.
Letting the fans know gently
A series of tweets yesterday afternoon from AJC’s Braves beat writer David O’Brien seem designed to get the fanes ready to see Melvin Emanuel Upton’s name to be on the roster on March 31st 2015.
When a twitter critter © me suggested they just swallow the contract and let him play golf instead, O’Brien quickly shot that down.
He wasn’t optimistic about a trade either.
That brought a response that seemed to contradict what he tweeted but apparently not.
"“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”Robert McCloskey"
HUH?
I think this means Hart has had discussions with the other GMs and not surprisingly they led nowhere. BJ is destined to remain a Brave unless we find another GM looking for a miracle or an owner who thinks like Arte Moreno vis-à-vis Vernon Wells contract. If you know someone who fits either description please contact John Hart at 755 Hank Aaron Way, Atlanta Ga. Knowing that a look at how this affects next season’s payroll is in order.
The next bit contains a lot of numbers to make it easier to understand why a trade involving BJ isn’t really financially viable without moving other large contracts as well. If such details bore you skip the next five paragraphs down to “So BJ Stays.”
What’s that mean for next season?
A week ago Ryan wrote about Hart’s comments on the Braves 2015 payroll. In a conference call with season ticket holders Hart opined that Braves payroll would be “north of $100M and south of $120M.” That’s not hard to understand. The largest expense for any MLB team is payroll and the drop in attendance last year has a significant negative impact on the money available in 2015.
Following the money
In 2014 the Braves payroll 2014 was $112,658,731 (Sportrac) including $13,350,000 is “dead money” for Dan Uggla and Reed Johnson (yes Reed Johnson, I didn’t know that either.) That dead money added to the salaries of BJ, Ervin Santana and Justin Upton meant that five players – two no longer helping the team – comprised 48.95% of the total 2014 payroll.
2015
As of this writing Sportrac shows Braves 2015 commitment at $79,677,231 in payroll and signing bonuses before arbitration increases. In order to estimate arbitration eligible player spending I assumed that:
- Ramiro Pena is nontendered and replaced by Phil Gosselin
- Injuries to Jonny Venters, Brandon Beachy and Kris Medlen resulted in nontender
- Kris Medlen signs for an incentive based contract as Venters did this year.
Beachy and Venters injury history makes them an expensive luxury at this point and while Pena was a fan favorite, his bat was imminently replaceable. With those adjustments and using MLB Trade Rumors very accurate arbitration projections, I calculated that the Braves will have about $14.7M in arbitration player salary.
The minimum salary this season is based on a cost of living adjusted figure of at least $500K. I estimated it will be closer to $525K and set aside of $5.25M for minimum wage players. Here are the numbers based on Sportrac information (membership required).
Hart’s estimate that the team will land near this season’s $112M payroll leaves just $12.4M to add bench players and a starting pitcher.
Assuming no trades, a free agent bench bat to hit lefties like Jonny Gomes will cost about $3.5M. Even a player like Gerardo Parra should the Brewers chose not to tender him a contract, will cost around $3m. MLBTR suggested that Ednison Volquez is a fit for the Braves. They also suggested he’d get a two year $18M contract. Suddenly all the money is gone. I expect an immediate outcry about how cheap Liberty Media is so let me address that now.
The Braves and Liberty Media take a lot of heat about their perceived payroll limitations. Objectively however the numbers present a different picture. According numbers provided by Sportrac, in 2014:
- The average MLB payroll was $113,677,635 and the Braves were 13th of 30
- The average for the NL – boosted by the drunken sailor numbers from Los Angeles – was $115,431,043
- However, the Braves $112,658,731 ranked sixth in the NL and would have been seventh in the AL.
More money doesn’t guarantee success. If not for the ill advised signing of a couple of players, the Braves payroll would be just fine. It’s not about spending more money, it’s about spending money wisely. All Liberty asks the Braves to do is pay their own way and when an emergency arises they step in to help. BJ is annoying, frustrating, and painful to watch. His contract was badly conceived and has become a burden but it does not constitute an emergency.
So BJ stays?
The Hart trip and golf expedition to chat with BJ and explain what’s expected and I assume what is not acceptable makes total sense. Given the size of his contract and his substandard performance no one in his right mind would BJ on without significant incentive in the form of cash and quality player(s). That being the case it makes real sense to see if new hitting coach Kevin Seitzer can get BJ back to something like the 2 WAR he needs to be to justify his contract. If he can do that there’s a small – make that tiny – chance that he can be moved midyear or next off season. So yes, BJ probably stays.
That’s A Wrap
The idea of a bad contract swap seems good but aside from being financially impossible the devil you know may be the lesser of two evils. How’s that for mixing metaphors? I do expect the Braves to make moves to create salary space. The size of Justin Upton’s contract makes him the most likely to move on. Our minor league system however is thin on prospects other teams might want in exchange for the kind of players we need. Some trades will happen but I suspect they will be small ones.
If we dismiss the likelihood of a Mike Minor trade, a rotation including – Minor, Julio Teheran, Alex Wood and David Hale with a pitcher to be named later – looks pretty good. If we can pick up a Volquez, or similar arm to fill it out and find a good LOOGY the staff should be fine. Keeping BJ limits Fredi Gonzalez to a 24 1/2 man roster unless he bounces back. It will be up to Hart and his staff to make sure those 24 men can cover the hole BJ creates; sometimes reality bites and you just have to live with it. It isn’t however as bad as it could be.
The Dodgers paid Andruw Jones $14.7M to provide –1.6 rWAR for them in 2008. They released him after that year but continued to pay him: $5M in 2009 to play 82 Games for Texas, then $3.2M a year from 2010 through 2014 to play for the White Sox, Yankees and in the last two season for the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles. That’s a total of $21M for nothing. Feel better now? No? Oh well, at least it made me smile.