Atlanta Braves Trade Deadline Preview
Things are not good in Atlanta right now. The Atlanta Braves have one of the worst records in the league, fired their manager one quarter of the way into the season and have a lack of pieces to build around on their major league roster. But what can they do to change their fortunes at the trade deadline?
The Atlanta Braves are in the early stages of a complete rebuild. They do have a few young talented starting pitchers in Matt Wisler, Aaron Blair and Mike Foltynewicz, with the likes of Sean Newcomb, Touki Touissaint and Kolby Allard waiting in the minor leagues. The club also made a spectacular deal this past offseason to get 2015 number one overall pick, Dansby Swanson, from Arizona by trading away starter Shelby Miller. However, their young pitchers do need more seasoning and they need to get much better offensively if they hope to be competitive in the near future.
The Braves will no doubt be sellers this summer, just as they’ve been the past few seasons. In fact, the team has already made two fairly impactful trades recently.
Atlanta dealt reliever Jason Grilli to the Blue Jays and took on the salary of Orioles left-hander Brian Matusz in order to get their hands on the 75th pick in the draft, which will give them more flexibility on how they can spend on the players they select.
Even though the Braves have traded some valuable pieces in recent seasons, there are still some possible trade chips on their roster, including a few players that will be able to bring back more than a decent return. This is not to say that Atlanta will definitely be selling all the players that they can, but they should be willing to listen on pretty much everyone (excluding Freddie Freeman) because the club is so far away from competing.
The Braves will be making trades as July creeps ever closer and teams start to become more willing to make moves. But they should value their trade bait highly because they need to start accumulating talent for the next great Atlanta teams, and you can’t do that when you keep trading players that you could build around as they’ve done in recent years.
Next: Bench Guys