Atlanta Braves work the details and make Dallas Keuchel’s contract official
The physical was slated to happen Friday, but as the hours ticked by in silence, you had to start wondering if there wasn’t a hiccup with Dallas Keuchel’s deal with the Atlanta Braves.
Dallas Keuchel‘s deal with the Atlanta Braves is now official. There were some technical considerations that had to be dealt with as part of the deal, but those nit have been dealt with and he will start for Gwinnett on Saturday as Step 1 in the plan to get him back to major league play.
It raised a couple of eyebrows during the telecast of the Braves win over Miami on Friday night as language like “pending” and “can’t assume it’s done” made it sound like the broadcasters were tiptoeing around the topic.
Happily, all that became moot just after the last out was recorded in Miami:
AS AN ASIDE: this same press release notes that Keuchel will be taking Darren O’Day‘s spot on the 40-man roster as they transfer the reliever to the 60-day Injured List.
That’s pretty must a technicality at this point since O’Day’s already been on that list for over 60 days, but it also suggests strongly that the prognosis for a guy that Atlanta had been hoping would help anchor an improved bullpen still isn’t even close to being healthy.
Time to Get to Work
Dallas Keuchel clearly needs some “real” gameplay to get ready, despite the workouts he’s clearly been doing during his extended hiatus from the game.
Normally, a team with an injured player will assign that player to some rehab starts in the minor league once he’s healthy enough to play again, but this situation isn’t exactly ‘usual’… and you can’t simply send him to the minors as you might an injured player.
In fact, the Atlanta Braves may have actually lucked out in this regard: Keuchel still had a minor league option available. That allows the Braves to send him to Gwinnett for his ‘getting ready’ games.
Without that luxury, Atlanta may have been forced to get Keuchel ready while pitching major league innings, which would have been tricky to manage in several regards.
Ah, but not so fast: even though they can now send him to AAA without designating him for assignment (which would have been a disaster for Atlanta), the Braves still weren’t allowed to do this without his express permission.
That’s because Keuchel has the major league tenure that gives him veto rights on such a move.
So… all of that had to be worked through in contract form, and a solution has been found. Keuchel has agreed to the arrangement for Gwinnett.
Here’s the other part not provided in the press release:
That last bit is important for 1 reason: money. Keuchel needs to be on the major league roster to get his $13 million, and that’s tied to a certain number of days of service.
Therefore, it sounds like the plan is for him to make two minor league starts, which would nominally be on June 8 and June 13.
That would put him in line for a major league start on Jun 18th – a Tuesday evening affair against the Mets at SunTrust Park.