The Atlanta Braves Would Like to Trade Erick Aybar… But Where?
Trade interest has supposedly picked up about Erick Aybar, but where could those inquiries be coming from?
It’s very difficult – perhaps even reckless – to judge the motivation of a player from afar.
For the first two months of this season, Erick Aybar has given all of the appearances of someone who just doesn’t want to be in Atlanta.
Since June began, though, he’s given all the appearances of someone who has realized that his only ticket out of Atlanta is better play so that the Braves can trade him.
That’s a pretty harsh assessment, but the numbers seem to back that up:
- April: .169, .391 OPS, wRC+ (-1)
- May: .200, .486 OPS, wRC+ 26
- June: .302, .790 OPS, wRC+ 113
- July: .318, .848 OPS, wRC+ 117
Before I saw this, I didn’t realize that a wRC+ score could actually go negative. But yes: in April and May, Aybar was the worst position player in baseball.
Looking back at his career, a slow start has never been an issue before – save for 2012, a year in which he started with a .223 average through April-May, but finished the second half with .326. So yes, that stretch was highly unusual.
We could go further here and discuss his fielding. It turns out that with 7 errors, Aybar is actually on pace to roughly match his career fielding rates over the past 10 seasons. Anecdotally, his fielding seems to have renewed energy lately, but he actually has 4 charged errors since June 15th.
But regardless, it seems the “old reliable” Erick Aybar has returned, and the improved play is supposedly generating the needed phone calls.
and yes, #Braves have received some trade interest in Aybar already, before today.
— David O'Brien (@DOBrienATL) July 4, 2016
So let’s do the breakdown – who could possibly be interested in Aybar’s services?
Next: Name that Caller!