Atlanta Braves Morning Chop: Dates Looming

This will be a significant week on the baseball calendar… and hopefully for good reasons alone, though there’s still work to be done.

Baseball’s calendar has two events of note for this week:

• Expiration of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement (Dec. 1)
• Deadline for tendering contracts to arbitration and pre-arbitration eligible players (Dec. 2)

For the Atlanta Braves, the first deadline may mean a significant slowdown in activity that could lead to a new Catcher or any other deal this week.

The second deadline probably has to be honored regardless of whether it technically matters.  Even if the CBA is allowed to expire before a new one is put into place, the team would not want to risk having an arbitrator suddenly declare a bunch of prospects to be free agents, so that task will get done.

Thanks to @BravesOptions for saving me the trouble of compiling this same list from the roster (I do not dispute having a bout with laziness).  Here are the players whose contract tender status will be determined this week:

• Ender Inciarte (Super 2 eligible, arb year 1)
• Ian Krol (same)
• Tuffy Gosewisch (same)
• Arodys Vizcaino (Super 2 eligible, 2nd arb year)
• Chris Withrow (same)
• Paco Rodriguez (1st arb year)
• Anthony Recker (2nd)

The Pre-arbitration players (all 40-man roster guys):

• Jace Peterson
• Adonis Garcia
• Mallex Smith
• Chase d’Arnaud
• Dansby Swanson
• Rio Ruiz
• Johan Camargo
• Mike Foltynewicz
• Aaron Blair
• Matt Wisler
• Chris Withrow
• Chaz Roe
• Shae Simmons
• John Gant
• Mauricio Cabrera
• Tyrell Jenkins
• Jason Hursh
• Jose Ramirez
• Akeel Morris
• Daniel Winkler
• Max Fried
• Lucas Sims
• Jesse Biddle

Of these, I would have to believe almost everyone will be tendered a contract.  Chase d’Arnaud is at some risk here, though being outrighted to Gwinnett is more likely in the coming weeks.

Back to the CBA

The heavy lifting is happening above the team levels, though, as Ken Rosenthal reported late yesterday:

On the International Draft issue

I understand that MLB wants such a thing to happen (and has for a while), but frankly, this is something that should have been under discussions with the players’ union for at least the past year.  Yet it was only in the last couple of months that MLB suddenly raised it as an issue.

Clearly, the owners want something in place before the next CBA – which could be another 5 years or so.  But it was a terrible idea to bring this up so late in the game with so many details that will have to be fleshed out.

If you wish to read more about the subject from someone who knows infinitely more about the issue, then please check Ben Badler’s writings… here is a good place to start.

Next: History Suggests an Extension for Swanson Soon

Meanwhile, everything else may grind to a halt… with the Winter Meetings of next week suddenly looking a bit less interesting… until the CBA gets done.