Grading the offseason for the Atlanta Braves through November

With one month of the baseball offseason in the books, we look at how Alex Anthopoulos and the Atlanta Braves have done so far.

There is still a lot of time left in this offseason, but the Atlanta Braves have already been very active.

Let’s go back and take a quick look at the moves the Braves have made, give a grade for each, and then an overall grade for the offseason to this point.

And I’ll just be talking about the moves made in November, so I won’t be including those non-tendered on Monday. But I do plan to do this same type of article again after December and will grade those moves then.

Maybe the first big move of the offseason was the decision not to pick up the $12 million option for Julio Teheran.

Not that I think it was a bad decision, but for all of the gripes about Julio, he’s about as dependable as they come. Finding someone to replace those innings, and do so at the same level of Julio, will not be easy or cheap.

It’s really hard to grade this decision until we see who they get to replace him.

They also picked up the options on Tyler Flowers and Nick Markakis. Well, technically they re-signed them, but it’s all the same.

Personally, if you were going to let go of Julio and roll the dice at finding a better solution, I don’t understand why they didn’t do the same for Flowers and Markakis.

At the same time, both come cheap and are serviceable. Both could still be replaced at some point this offseason.

I’ll combine all these option moves into one grade and give it a B.

The first real move came when they signed Darren O’Day to a $2.25 million deal.

I actually really liked this move, and at the time I thought maybe this was the only move the Braves would make for the bullpen in the offseason … boy was I wrong.

O’Day has been one of the best relievers in the game when healthy. He proved healthy down the stretch in 2019 and if he can come back and do the same in 2020 he will be a huge weapon in that bullpen.

I give this move a grade of B+.

Maybe the biggest shock of the offseason came when the Braves signed Will Smith seemingly out of nowhere.

Apparently Smith and his agent told teams that if they wanted to sign him they had to do it before the deadline to accept the qualifying offer or he would take it.

AA and the Braves took the bait and signed him to a three-year, $39 million contract.

Smith was the best relief pitcher available and AA went out and got him. I give this an A.

Not long after the Smith signing, AA added to the bullpen again by re-signing Chris Martin.

AA and the Braves made a statement that they’re not going to mess around in the bullpen in 2020.

They made that mistake last season and it cost them a lot of games early.

Martin got about what was expected at two years and $14 million, so I give this deal a B+.

And the final move of November for AA was signing catcher Travis d’Arnaud.

After Yasmani Grandal went off the board to the White Sox, TDA was the best free agent catcher available. So AA went out and got him for two years and $16 million.

As our own Fred Owens points out in this article, this was a big risk for the Braves considering TDA’s injury history.

If he stays healthy then this could be a good deal for Atlanta, but that’s a big ‘if’ so I have to give this deal a B-.

Overall Grade: A-

I really think AA has done a good job of taking care of the little things to this point, hopefully setting him up to take care of the big-ticket items the rest of the way.

AA knew what he wanted this offseason and has gone out and got it to this point. I love the aggressiveness and it’s been a great start to the offseason for him and the Braves.