Atlanta Braves reportedly now offering four years for Josh Donaldson

The Trigger

While neither of this show’s analysts were ready to jump into the speculation about a third baseman like Nolan Arenado, his name did come up a few times this morning, since after all: getting Donaldson at $28 million per year makes a Nolan Arenado deal – perhaps making some sense to pursue.

Bowden – after suggesting that teams would go to Chicago (Bryant) or Colorado (Arenado) to ‘build leverage’ against Donaldson – initially dismissed the idea that Atlanta would even entertain such an idea of trading for Arenado, but after a break (and perhaps an off-air consultation with Phillips??) he seemed to thaw on the idea a bit.

Clearly, the opt-out clause – which Bowden indicated had been given to Arenado by the Rockies Front Office… it had allegedly not been requested – would be something the Braves would want waived as a condition for spending the prospects required to obtain Arenado.

Speculation made on the prior MLB Network Radio overnight show – Round Trip – suggested that no team wants to spend multiple top prospects for any other player these days, but with respect to Arenado, a package starting with Riley and pitcher Kyle Wright might at least get a conversation started.

Beyond that, Atlanta would clearly want some salary relief from Colorado, and that in turn would demand variously increasing levels of prospects returning to the Rockies… but we’re getting ahead of ourselves by quite a bit, so let’s stop right there.

In any case, it’s pretty clear that the bidding for Donaldson is getting to nutty levels… at what point does Atlanta declare ‘enough is enough’ and walk away?

As of this date… it seems we aren’t there yet.