Affordable third base options should Braves spend big on pitching

We know the Atlanta Braves need to address a few areas of concern heading into Cyber Monday. We have our catcher, Travis d’Arnaud, now we look to third base and starting pitching as our primary areas of concern.

Let’s play a game of hypotheticals that involves the Atlanta Braves signing two big-time pitchers. Think a Madison Bumgarner and Dallas Keuchel, a Hyun-Jin Ryu and Cole Hamels, make any combination you want, but for the purposes of this Cyber-Monday themed article, let’s say it leaves little to no budget space for a top tier third baseman.

FLASH FORWARD: Alex Anthopoulos is committed to starting Austin Riley off in Gwinnett and the staff has not fully regained faith in Johan Camargo after showing up a different player in 2019.

We have $30-35 million wrapped up in two shiny new starters. We have just enough to scrape the bottom of the barrel for a starting third baseman.

We have a little money and we need to find a steal. There is one rule, we will not sign a player on the top 50 free agents of MLBTradeRumors.com.

The 50th ranked player on the list is projected to earn $3MM/year. We are looking for cheaper than Tyler Flowers to be a productive bat at third base.

Remember, this is a scenario in which we have acquired the stud-pitching we are watering at the mouth over.

This is not an article advocating that this is the route we take, but more or less to shine a light on some of the potential values at third, should we go that route.

You may now proceed to the next slide.