Atlanta Braves release Ryan Howard, Acquire Danny Santana
The experiment is over… the Braves will not have former slugger Ryan Howard with them as inter-league play begins this week.
Just because you have a good plan that has no risk doesn’t mean it will actually work. The Atlanta Braves have taken this to heart and opted to cut ties with ex-Philly Ryan Howard.
I say ‘former slugger’ because it was hoped that Howard might have been healthy enough and skilled enough to rekindle some of the production that brought him $190 million in salaries since breaking into the league in 2006.
It just hasn’t worked out like that.
Howard’s audition at Gwinnett started with good promise: a 2 for 2 night with a pair of walks and an RBI.
Unfortunately, there just wasn’t much to follow that debut: just 5 hits in the 10 games since then… a 4-for-36 clip that gave him an overall slash line of .184/.238/.263/.501.
Howard was making sufficient contact – 11 K’s in 41 plate appearances – but the hitting just wasn’t there, despite running into one homer along the way.
The Braves have no further financial obligations for releasing Howard, as his $750,000 deal will now not kick in. Somehow I think he’ll still be able to make ends meet.
The Trade
In the meantime, the Braves had been hoping that Howard would be a DH once the American League schedule hit. With the Astros and Blue Jays on this next road trip, something had to be done.
Or at least the Braves thought so.
First – the trade. The formal announcement can be found here, but left-handed reliever Kevin Chapman wasn’t a Brave for very long. He had bounced around the AAAA league for the Astros over the past 4 seasons and had been claimed from the waiver wire by Atlanta on March 13th.
For Gwinnett, though, he wasn’t doing that well: in 9 appearances (11.2 innings), he was giving up in roughly every other outing. So all of that added up to a 7.71 ERA with a 1.46 WHIP, despite striking out 10 batters. Ultimately he was just too hittable.
The Acquisition
Danny Santana wasn’t exactly tearing up the AL West for Minnesota, himself, so this is kind of a trade of poor performers… one in the majors and one at AAA. More on that in a bit.
Santana is a 26-year-old Dominican (not to be confused with Ervin Santana) made the majors in 2014 after being signed as a 16-year-old International free agent in 2007. He has played 6 different positions for the Twins.
2014 was a banner year for him on offense, as he hit .319 in 101 games with 430 plate appearances. Since then, though, his hitting has been a disaster in the majors, recording .215, .240, and .200 batting averages in the 3 seasons since and mostly negative fWAR numbers.
The Twins finally pulled that plug by designating Santana for assignment. The Braves have opted to trade Chapman – plus some cash – to take him out of that position of roster limbo.
Presumably, he will be in uniform in Houston on Tuesday night with a chance to contribute immediately.
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However…
One of the requirements of this transaction means adding Santana to the 40-man roster. That part was straight-forward as enough players are now on the 60-day DL to make space (adding Micah Johnson today).
However, the Braves have chosen to option Lane Adams back to Gwinnett to make space on the 25-man active roster for Santana.
That seems unfortunate since Adams has actually performed well for the cup of coffee he had received in the past week-ish in the majors: 3 hits in 9 plate appearances.
That’s better than most have done in that role.
That leads to an obvious question, which I’ll defer to Mark Bowman to answer:
Still, one has to wonder if performance truly matters here. If Bonifacio gets paid whether he’s on the team or not (he does), then perhaps he should be paid to go on vacation and allow Adams to improve the team instead.
Nonetheless, Danny Santana gets Adams’ major league spot – and Adams effectively goes back to replace Howard at AAA. Hopefully Lane will get a shot to return.