Atlanta Braves part ways with Peterson, Adams, Santana
It’s the non-tender deadline, and a lot of ballplayers were just handed their walking papers as teams choose which of their arbitration-eligibles to retain.
The Atlanta Braves have announced that three role players on their roster will not be offered contracts for the upcoming 2018 season.
Tonight marks MLB’s non-tender deadline – the last day for teams to offer contracts to their arbitration-eligible players.
Others being offered contracts via the arbitration process tonight: Mike Foltynewicz, Arodys Vizcaino, Dan Winkler, and Sam Freeman.
This week we heard that Atlanta was trying to make a deal involving Matt Adams. GM Anthopoulos was in the unenviable position of trying to get that done while still barely in town and juggling armloads of other priorities. On top of that, 29 other teams were facing the same kinds of decisions with portions of their own rosters.
In the end, we lose somebody who came to us in a time of need and held up his part of the bargain quite well – particularly during the absence of Freddie Freeman. While with St. Louis, he hit .292 with a smattering of plate appearances. It was .272 in Atlanta with a robust .858 OPS and 19 homers… ironically, his 20th happened at Sun Trust Park before the trade.
Jace Peterson had his own flashes of brilliance. He was at his best with runners in scoring position in 2017, hitting .273.
Unfortunately for him, this handwriting has been on the wall for some time as the Braves figured out that he wasn’t going to be a true everyday solution at second base. It clearly wasn’t for lack of effort, but when multiple veteran options were added last off-season, it was apparent that this was coming.
Danny Santana was the product of a desperate attempt to get some additional production out of a bench that produced virtually nothing at the start of 2017. Still, the role didn’t agree with him: a bad start led him to only a .202 average for the year… .203 for Atlanta. 3 homers were helpful, but they couldn’t hide a .602 OPS, and thus this decision was the most obvious one for this trio.
Today’s changes knock 3 names off the 40-man roster. With the new additions – including Chase Whitley today – the count stands at 37.
Watch the wires – that number isn’t likely to stay static for long.