Atlanta Braves Shook the Baseball World – Now the Fallout

Trading Shelby Miller Was a Coup; Several New Tasks Now Emerge for Atlanta

It has been a long time since I lay awake at night being jazzed about something the Atlanta Braves just did.  That’s just the tip of the iceberg of thoughts running through my own head this morning about this now official trade.

There are numerous implications and thoughts about what has happened here… let’s go through a few of them.

Striking Fast

Note that the Cleveland Indians were being asked about their pitcher Danny Salazer while Arizona was also pursuing Shelby Miller. Cleveland – like Atlanta – wanted Pollock.  They were likewise turned down.

There are actually reasons to believe that Salazer would be a better ‘get’ for Arizona than Miller… more years of control, possibly higher upside.  But John Coppolella apparently took the initiative to figure out how to allow Arizona to keep Pollock while Atlanta would still get ‘overwhelmed’.  It was noted by several yesterday that Coppy and Arizona GM Dave Stewart had lunch together.  5 or so hours later, this deal was done.  And Coppy did it before Cleveland could react.

Finances and Payroll

The Braves even got ahead a bit on this front, even by adding Tyler Flowers to the roster (remember that signing yesterday?).  Here’s the updated payroll chart – projecting an Opening Day payroll of $80.375 million (click for bigger version).

Credit: TomahawkTake.com. Updated with corrections courtesy of @RVABraves06

40-man Roster space:  the count stood at 39 before yesterday.

• Add Tyler Flowers and Ender Inciarte
• Subtract Shelby Miller
• Neither Blair nor Swanson require 40-man protection yet.  Roster will stand at 40.

We’ll talk about this angle another day, but yesterday’s transactions should leave around $18 million in ‘payroll space’ at this point.  That’s a decent amount, but I don’t expect a huge effort to go out and find ways to spend it… however, I do have an idea or two:  we will explore that at the end of this breakdown.

Of note:  the contracts of Swisher, Bourn, Norris, and Aybar  are all done after 2016.  That’s $40 million dollars coming off the books.  Also, payments for Cameron Maybin and Trevor Cahill are done.  So there is a total of roughly $43 million in “extra” spending as a minimum for 2017, and possibly more depending on what else happens in the meantime.

Next: A New Look at Hitting and Pitching