The Atlanta Braves are finally able to focus on offseason moves. How could their offseason look in a way that sets up the team for 2018 competition and leaves the future in good shape as well?
After a 90-loss season and the wait for the punishment to come down from the league that was laid down on Tuesday, Atlanta Braves fans can now finally start focusing on the offseason. What could the Atlanta Braves do this offseason to be a competitive team in 2018 while not hurting their team depth going forward?
First, we should look at the real impact of those punishments on the future of the Braves:
Atlanta Braves future sanctions
The focus on the sanctions levied upon the Atlanta Braves has been on the players lost by the team. While the twelve current players and two future players were all losses to the organization, the real loss was the future sanctions in the international market.
In 2017-2018, the Braves were already restricted to a maximum of $300K for a signing. They will carry that restriction into the 2018/2019 period as well. MLB added on two more years of restrictions – full amount of signing pool in 2019/2020 with a maximum signing of $10,000 and a similar maximum while reducing the signing pool for 2020/2021 by 50%.
Those seem like very tough penalties, and they certainly are, but right now, with names like Julio Martinez and Shohei Ohtani as well as the newly released prospects from their organization, the Atlanta Braves are positioned to take advantage of this by trading their bonus pool in exchange for other teams’ prospects. Willingness to take lower-level prospects would get them higher-talent prospects than many recent deals, where prospects near the majors were moved in exchange for funds.
So going forward, the Braves are going to be dinged for sure, but realize how far ahead of the game their farm system was – after losing 12 prospects that will mostly figure in their new teams’ top 30 prospect lists, MLB.com’s Jim Callis had this to say:
When I ranked baseball's top farm systems for @MLBNetwork for use during our last two @MLBazFallLeague broadcasts, I had the @Braves at No. 1. With Atlanta losing Kevin Maitan & Co., I would drop them to No. 2 behind the @whitesox.
— Jim Callis (@jimcallisMLB) November 21, 2017
So the system is still incredibly elite for the future; how does Atlanta address the “now”? That’s what we’ll take a stab at with the rest of this article…
Next: Current salary and free agents