Braves News: Braves stuck with Ozuna, Wright’s surprise season, more
By Eric Cole
It was another slow offseason day for both the Atlanta Braves and really the entire league on Saturday as the tension builds during the lead up to the Winter Meetings. We still don’t know the fate of Dansby Swanson (although there are some less than optimal signs there) or even about any of the top shortstops in this free agent class. Once one of those dominoes falls, though, then things could move quickly.
One thing that almost all Braves fans would love to be able to do is to shed the contract of Marcell Ozuna. While we did put forth some ideas for some bad contract swaps that could potentially work (at least for the Braves), the reality is setting in that the team is either going to have to just release him and eat that money or, as Seth argues, keep Marcell for the 2023 season and try to get some kind of value out of him.
More Braves News
We have been thoroughly enjoying rolling out our Tomahawk Take awards this past week and yesterday, we revealed the results of the voting for our biggest Braves surprise for 2022. Kyle Wright took home the award in fairly convincing fashion with Spencer Strider getting some love and a couple other players getting votes as well.
MLB News
We weren’t exactly betting on the Pittsburgh Pirates making a free agent move of note this offseason, but they did. The Pirates signed Carlos Santana to a one year, $6.725 million deal. It wasn’t THAT long ago that Santana was a good hitter, so he could provide some value to a Pirates team that sorely needs it. Of note, Santana is currently the third most expensive player that the team has under contract which…says a lot about the Pirates’ willingness to spend any amount of money improving their roster.
There are a lot of free agents to sort through this offseason. We have done a good bit to highlight the players that could be interesting for the Braves to add, but MLB put together a nice little tier list of all the notable free agents to give a good sense of who is out there at all positions and not just the ones that could interest the Braves.
It is also officially Hall of Fame ballot tracking season. First things first, you should absolutely use Ryan Thibodaux’s fine work over at his ballot tracking site as it is an invaluable resource. The first Hall of Fame ballot has been made public and it certainly has some…interesting picks for enshrinement in Cooperstown. At least they voted for Andruw Jones and Billy Wagner.