Atlanta Braves and the off-season: (maybe) explaining the inactivity

Many fans have voiced their displeasure with the inactivity since the signings of Josh Donaldson and Brian McCann. I, myself may have even said a disparaging thing or two, but I’m going to sit back and look at the what ifs.

What if the Atlanta Braves are playing the long game here and waiting another year or two to attack and really try and build a super team?

MLB.com posted an article that analyzed the next few years of free agents throughout baseball. It’s a very impressive list and some of the biggest players in the game are bound to cash in very soon.

The people who have said they understand why the Braves may have been silent besides the before mentioned signings may be on to something. Maybe Alex Anthopoulos and the rest of the Braves front office truly want to see which prospects are gonna pan out and which one’s are gonna fizzle.

After all, our own Alan Carpenter did post an article recently noting that it’s going to be extremely tough to keep our highly touted farm system near the top of the rankings with all the international limitations and bans that the Braves still have a few years to serve.

So why trade the good prospects we have when its going to be extremely difficult to restock the shelf with more unless the Braves draft exponentially well the next few years (Heck, depending on the final disposition of a grievance, the Braves still may not even get the 9th pick this summer, but that’s for another day)?

Future Scoping

So getting to the basis of this topic, let’s look at what crazy ideas the Braves could draw up to build the team up for the future.

First, they can get extremely lucky and most of the prospects we still employ will turn out to be as good or better than imagined.

This would be a huge asset if say Kyle Wright, Christian Pache, Drew Waters, Austin Riley, Mike Soroka, and Ian Anderson all turn out to be stars. This would be the easy and cheap way to stay good for a very very long time. But let’s not kid ourselves. It would be extremely doubtful that all these players become stars.

The Braves could also just know they had no shot at the top names in this free agency class and have decided to wait a year and try again.

Check out some of the names in the next 2 years worth of Free Agents that could entice the Braves if they so desire (I’m going to leave it at 2 because I see no reason to get more than that ahead of ourselves).

Next Years Free Agent players that I could see the Braves interested in include:

Nolan Arenado
Anthony Rendon
Marcell Ozuna
Nick Castellanos
Aaron Hicks
Chris Sale
Gerrit Cole
Cole Hamels
Madison Bumgarner
Justin Verlander

Every one of those players are (A) Obviously really good and (B) Would fit a need the Braves need now and most likely still next year.

More from Tomahawk Take

The same goes for this list of free agents that are going to be on the market after 2020:

JT Realmuto
Justin Turner
Mike Trout
Mookie Betts
George Springer
Yoenis Cespedes
David Peralta
Jacob Degrom,
Trevor Bauer
Robbie Ray
James Paxton
and more good starting pitchers.

As you can see, that class is absolutely loaded. The 2 best players in the game are included.

The bottom line is maybe – possibly – the Braves and Liberty Media have a 3 year plan and it involves not going through any long term commitments this winter and seeing if the Braves can repeat with the mostly same crew.

Next. The Coming Famine on the Farm. dark

So this is a note to myself and everyone else who, like me, have been a little discouraged so far this winter to relax and take a calm calculated approach. Maybe in a few years we will be rewarded for our patience.

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