Atlanta Braves trade rumors – the chatter is increasing
The ‘70% agreement’ deal still isn’t done, but there are some things starting to thaw from this iceberg of an off-season market.
It has been a couple of days since writing on this topic, and a few thoughts have been gathering in what will likely become a stream-of-consciousness brain dump on the Atlanta Braves and the remaining market opportunities.
The meaning of the number
Fred gave us a run-down on his thoughts about the trade that was – as of Tuesday – about 70% in agreement. There’s something I’ve noticed since then… let me cite the quote from @SlmSolo (Stacy) again for us:
Funny, I used the iceberg metaphor above before looking up this tweet again… seems that Alex Anthopoulos is sharing our collective frustrations.
Note the nuance here: it isn’t that the parties are 70% done… it’s that about 70% of the overall deal is in agreement. Many – including me – read that the other way ’round.
That’s a fairly large distinction, and one that suggests that nothing is necessarily imminent to being completed. In fact, there’s some additional things we can understand from that reading:
- The headliners/centerpieces are probably agreed upon. Certainly, I would count such a thing as being ‘more than halfway’.
- It’s a fairly big deal in concept. If this were a one-for-one proposal, for example, it would be done already… there is no ‘70%’ milestone in such a thing.
- This quote was uttered on Tuesday morning, first thing. We can assume that there’s now at least 3+ days of time that has passed since the ‘70%’ mark was reached. That suggests that one of the parties is mulling and perhaps waiting for a better offer, perhaps without a sense of urgency.
So now we have to go back and see if we can guess – again – what might be going on…