Braves News: Dansby rejects QO, Braves made another trade, more
By Eric Cole
It was an eventful day for the Atlanta Braves on Tuesday with several important offseason developments precipitated by deadlines. First and foremost was that it was decision day for Dansby Swanson regarding whether or not he was going to accept his qualifying offer from the Braves or not. To the surprise of almost no one, Dansby did indeed reject the QO and is now officially on the free agent market.
The Braves also had to make some important decisions regarding their 40 man roster and which prospects they were going to protect from the upcoming Rule 5 draft. While it ended up costing Vibes King Guillermo Heredia his spot on the 40 man, the Braves ended up adding Darius Vines, Roddery Munoz, and Braden Shewmake.
More Braves News
You know it was a busy day in Braves country when the Braves making a trade isn’t a headliner, but here we are. Shortly after the 40 man roster madness and it was announced that Dansby had rejected the qualifying offer, the Braves announced that they had traded for reliever Dennis Santana from the Rangers for cash considerations. To make room for Santana, the team designated Jackson Stephens, who was a fun story for the Braves last year, for assignment.
The Manager of the Year awards were also handed out last night. It was a tight vote overall, not just in the top three, but Snit ended up finishing third in the NL side of the vote behind winner Buck Showalter and Dave Roberts.
Our season review series continued on with Marcell Ozuna who….certainly played some baseball for the Braves this season. We also had a piece go up that opined that the wrong Braves rookie won the Rookie of the Year race (don’t worry, we still love Money Mike). Finally, we continued to examine the current state of the Atlanta Braves roster and took a look at the in-house options they have to fill that pesky fifth rotation spot that appears to be up for grabs going into 2023.
MLB News
The Yankees had the biggest signing of the day yesterday as they were able to bring back Anthony Rizzo to the Bronx on a two year deal. Rizzo is a good fit for New York especially with that short porch in right and he should help provide some consistent power in that Yankees lineup over the next couple of years.
As for the big news items from yesterday (qualifying offer decisions and Rule 5 protections), it was a wild day in terms of parsing all of that on top of the Manager of the Year voting. Of the 14 players that received qualifying offers after the 2022 season, 12 of them declined it with only Joc Pederson and Martin Perez accepting theirs.
Regarding the Rule 5 roster stuff, there were also a TON of really good prospects across baseball that ended up getting added to their team’s 40 man roster. Fortunately, our friends over at MLB Pipeline collected all of that information in one easy to view spot.