Braves Non-tender Moves Clarified
By Fred Owens
A Ben noted yesterday the Braves non-tendered Kris Medlen, Brandon Beachy and Gus Schlosser. Meds and Beachy weren’t a surprise, both are recovering for TJ surgery and unlikely to pitch this season. Medlen in particular would have earned a good chunk of change. In the other hand, Schlosser isn’t yet arbitration eligible and there was no need to offer him more than the league minimum. The move had Alan suspecting some master plan in process by Jon Hart. He’s right but not for the reason’s Alan suggested – at least as far as we know now.
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This afternoon Baseball America (subscription required) shed some light on the subject. That post pointed out that the Braves aren’t the only ones letting people go for apparently no reason. They were able to fins an answer.
". . . the answer is that teams have figured out a nice quirk of the nontender deadline. It’s one time that teams can clear a player off the 40-man roster without having to designate the player for assignment. Players nontendered do not hit the waiver wire, they become free agents immediately . . .(it’s) a way to drop a prospect off the 40-man roster with a better chance of retaining him on a minor league contract . . ."
They are however players the team would like to keep without having them on the roster so they have time to develop. Schlosser was over matched in the majors and looks to have a ceiling as a roogy/ground ball specialist ala Peter Moylan or Cory Gearrin. Those guys are good to have but Gus isn’t ready for prime time yet. Since the players are free agents Of course these players can sign elsewhere but as BA says “. . .that’s often not as appealing as returning to the organization one already knows.”
Finding this kind of loophole is just a way of reducing the chances of losing the player by giving them a chance to say “we’re doing this but we’re also offering a minor league contract.” None of the players mentioned in the post are prospects of course, teams watch ranked prospects too closely to let a big prospect slip through. Just a peek at inside the front office maneuvers done to keep the franchise moving forward. So, that explains it . . . I suppose. . .