Atlanta Braves' best off-season move - the one they didn't make

There’s always a bunch of trades or signings that are rumored. Most of these never happen. But it is nice to see something rumored… or at least suggested… that worked out better despite the absence of a deal.

Consider the Atlanta Braves 2016 post-season. There were multiple stated priorities for making changes to the team.

These priorities included starting pitching, the bullpen, the bench, and catching.

You can argue about how some of these have turned out, but let’s narrow the focus a bit… to just the catching part. Tyler introduced us to this topic last night, but I wanted to expand on his thoughts.

Here’s a quick review of what we were subjected to last Fall and Winter:

Sept 2016: Braves linked to Brian McCann, willing to pay half his salary.
Oct 2016: Deal for McCann nixed over Folty.
Nov. 2016: Cashman, Coppy ‘huddling’ over McCann, ‘price not reasonable’.
Nov. 2016: MLBTR reports Braves’ interested in Matt Wieters.
Dec. 2016: Braves ‘targeting’ Matt Wieters.
Feb. 2017: Scott Boras suggests the Braves take another look at Wieters.

Now of course, these headlines come with multiple caveats. On top of the fact that they all involve at least second- or third-hand information, there’s also the fact that they may not all accurately convey a correct level of interest.

So we don’t know just how close the braves ever were to any of these deals.

That said, it is still fair to say that the Braves went for quite a while – months, even – in exploring the catching free agent market this Winter…. at least until this happened:

"ATLANTA — The Braves officially announced Monday afternoon that they signed veteran catcher Kurt Suzuki to a one-year contract. Suzuki agreed to the one-year, $1.5 million deal on Jan. 21."

The Result

So the Braves had to ‘settle’ for a combination of Tyler Flowers and Kurt Suzuki after being unable to either execute a trade or find an acceptable price level for the best catching free agent.

Horrors.

Frankly, the consensus of Braves Country seemed to be a general “meh”. It seemed that most agreed that the prices were not worth it for the players involved… particularly when there was an expectation of less-than-All-Star performances from either McCann or Wieters.

At this point in mid-May, let’s compare offensive production.

TEAM OFFENSE, CATCHING POSITION*

Tigers, 11.3 (1st)
Orioles, 8.7 (that’s ironic)
Giants, 7.7
Dodgers, 6.4
Braves, 5.7
(7th) Astros, 3.0
(12th) Nationals, -1.9

Don’t like the fangraphs composite offense number? Let’s try weighted runs created (wRC+):

Braves 133 (3rd)
Astros 124 (5th)
Nationals 84 (19th)

Would you prefer OPS? Okay….

Braves .864 (3rd)
Astros .807 (9th)
Nationals .708 (14th)

– *All stats as of Sunday night, May 21

I could go on, but the point is getting clear: the Flowers/Suzuki tandem is working better than any catching tandem in the majors other than those for the Orioles and Tigers.

Seems like both the Yankees and Wieters’ agent Scott Boras overplayed their hands. Both parties ended up with something, but certainly not what they were after. Credit to John Coppolella for resisting their overtures.

Here’s the Bouquet

Now let’s concentrate on the individuals. When splitting out team stats and going to the individual players, the argument is still good:

INDIVIDUAL OFFENSIVE PRODUCTION, MIN 70 PA

Tyler Flowers: Off/wRC+/OPS ranks: 4th, 4th, 3rd (average rank 3.7)
Kurt Suzuki: 10th, 11th, 7th (avg. 9.3)
Brian McCann: 7th, 8th, 10th (avg. 8.3)
Matt Wieters: 16th, 9th, 14th (avg. 13.0)
“Oh, by the way…” Jonathan Lucroy: 10th, 12th, 10th (avg 10.7)

We know Flowers has been excellent this year… and ever since he found the ‘leg kick’ to be useful for him. But heck – even backup backstop Suzuki is holding his own with McCann, Wieters, and post-2017 free agent Lucroy!

Sustainable

More from Tomahawk Take

You might be thinking that there’s still no way that Flowers can keep up this pace, but first – check Mark Bowman’s piece linked just above. Then note that he’s already sustained this performance level for a nearly a full calendar year.

Even counting a month prior to the new batting style, Tyler Flowers is hitting .291/.389/446/.835 in the past year – a remarkable leap from his career numbers (1821 plate appearances) of .238/.311/.387/.698.

No, this Flowers has every bit the look of perennials, and having this kind of statistical bounce at age 31 – especially for a catcher – is truly something to applaud.

So did the Braves factor in the assumption that Flowers would keep trucking like he did in 2016’s second half when looking at the catching market this past off-season?

It’s hard to believe that anybody might have been this optimistic for his production, but if so, that was a gutsy call on their part.

So at this point, it’s looking like a contract extension might be the best play. Atlanta already has an option on Flowers for 2018 at $4 million. That is looking to be a no-brainer right now. Trying to tack on a couple more years might be good as well.

Next: No Knocks on this Podcast

It’s funny: sometimes the transactions you don’t make end up yielding the best results.

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Atlanta Braves’ best off-season move – the one they didn’t make

By Alan Carpenter | May 23, 2017