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Atlanta Braves Calculating With Baseball’s ‘New Math’

By Alan Carpenter

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Atlanta Braves pitcher

Cody Martin

against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field. Mandatory Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

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I am struggling to decipher this “New Math” that John Hart and John Copolella have now embraced as part of the Braves rebuilding program.  It’s… different.  It’s a series of equations in which it seems that spending money is at least as helpful as the players you give up.

As my friend Fred Owens pointed out to me earlier today, the Atlanta Braves have 2 kinds of currency they are using:  pitchers and cash.  Both are being accumulated; both are being spent.

The rest of this is attempt to explain what I believe I have stumbled upon that the Braves are doing – it’s an entirely new approach to building a team; both for now and for the future.

What I don’t quite understand, however, is the kind of spending that took place yesterday, for I do think some mistakes were made.

Trading Places

I won’t belabor the International Market news that we’ve previously written about.  If you’d like to catch up on that, then here are the links:

But let’s go through the specific financial arrangements that happened regarding the trades to obtain additional International signing Pool dollars – all around baseball, not just with Atlanta:

If you were to delve into the names involved here, something becomes pretty clear:  of all the transactions you see posted here, the Braves were using prospects that were a lot closer to being “real” than any other team obtaining pool space.

De Jong of the Blue Jays made an ‘honorable mention’ prospects list – that’s the closest to being a Top 20 prospect I found that was sent away from another club… but the Jays have a middling-poor farm system, too.  The other players involed were draft picks in rounds 20-27… not ranked or not thought much of.

With the Braves, however, Fulenchek was still in the Top 20… easily so on many lists.  Paroubeck was pretty close to that threshold as well.  Cody Martin, of course, is a major league pitcher… or at least AAA+.  Caleb Dirks wasn’t on the charts, but was pitching well and is thought by some as having the mentality of a future closer.

So right away, it’s fairly evident that Atlanta paid premium prices for the right to spend more money.  Did they need to do so because they needed so much cap space?  Others didn’t.

Certainly the Rangers and Blue Jays got much better deals for the amount of space they received from both of the Los Angeles clubs.  When you compare the pair of Dodgers’ transactions above, it’s obvious that the Braves got jacked by comparison.  This looks to have been a bad deal for the Braves.

More Ugly Math

Look at the case of Garret Fulenchek, for example:

  • Atlanta paid Fulenchek a $1 million bonus when drafted in 2014 (#66 overall), plus a 4-year college scholarship.
  • In one year, they sent him to the Rays for a $494K permission slip to spend more.
  • Now they will spend $494K more to obtain a second 16-year-old outfielder for $1.4 million who is light years away from the majors (the Braves could have afforded Cruz by himself without sending away Fulenchek)

Did this mean that Atlanta was giving up on Fulenchek already or that this Dominican teenager is really that good?

Answer:  There’s truly no way to know as yet, but the math tells me that the Braves have effectively spent the following to obtain Derian Cruz and Christian Pache:

  • $1 million (the bonus Atlanta paid to Fulenchek’s in 2014)
  • $750K (the bonus San Diego paid for Jordan Paroubeck in 2013)
  • The now-vacated draft picks for each player (#66 and #69 overall in 2014 and 2013)
  • $45K (Cody Martin’s bonus)
  • $3.4 million (the actual signing bonuses for Cruz and Pache)
  • The expenses associated with the scouting, plus both building a baseball academy program in the Dominican and building a set of relationships with the families of Cruz and Pache – necessary to earn their signatures.

Add all that up and you get something in excess of $5.2 million for two 16-year-olds who – by all accounts – are very good… but light years away from being able to prove that.

The good news?  Cruz and Pache grade out as if they are very high 1st-round draft pick equivalents.  Would they cost $5.2 million in bonuses?  Yeah – easily.  And teams just don’t get multiple first round picks every year.

Domestic vs. International Spending

With math like this, it appears that the Braves have made the calculations, and decided the following:

  • Pitching should come from the North American player draft (the Rule 4 draft); position players via trades, free agents and internationally
  • The cost of North American players via the Rule 4 draft is less than that of the cost of International players
  • It’s so much less, in fact, that the Braves are now willing to draft and then sell drafted players to obtain the better International players.
  • In general, growing your team from within is still going to be cheaper in the long term, and a re-newed focus on international stars is the way to get there.

This is not a subject in which you can look for definitive answers quickly.  It will take a decade or more to determine if this new philosophy pans out.  If it doesn’t, then it could also become a disaster as a lot of resources are obviously being thrown at these policies and practices.  But if so… that would put Atlanta way ahead of most teams in future team-building efforts.

I will give credit for what appears to be a really gutsy plan… but the risks are extremely high.  Failure will likewise have an extremely high price.

Next: The Risks of Banking on an International Player

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