Fin, fin, fin.
The lights come up on another season of Braves baseball, and the audience leaves to a happy ending – in the sense that “Titanic,†let’s say, had a happy ending. The Braves break a 6 game losing streak to finish at 72 – 90.
Kurt Suzuki‘s 19th home run of the season opened the Braves scoring in the 2nd; Freddie Freeman followed Suzuki’s 2 run shot with a triple, and scored on a Nick Markakis ground out to stake Max Fried to a 3 – 0 lead. Fried was sharp through 4 innings, allowing 2 hits and a walk, and striking out 7. However, 4 singles and a Dansby Swanson throwing error led to 4 Marlins runs in the 5th. Fried was charged with 2 earned and 2 unearned, and left after 4 and 1/3.
After the similarly blown lead on Friday and the blowout on Saturday, this series seemed destined to become the Mother Of All Barves, but Swanson singled and scored in the 6th to tie the game at 4, and his RBI single in the 7th gave the Braves the lead.  Adonis Garcia followed Dansby in the 7th with a pinch hit 3 run home run to break the game open.
Swanson went 2- 5 to finish at .232. Here’s what I wrote about him in May:Â .151
Marcell Ozuna homered in the bottom of the 7th off of Jim Johnson, making the game just close enough for Arodys Vizcaino to be eligible to pick up his 14th save. Giancarlo Stanton singled twice and finished the season with 59 home runs; Ichiro Suzuki flied out in his attempt to tie the MLB record for pinch hits in a season.
The Phillies come to town March 29th.
The 5th funniest thing I ever heard about Miami:Â http://www.miamiherald.com/living/liv-columns-blogs/dave-barry/article97208577.html
Good point from Klaw chat:
Jim: Braves J2 prospects from 2016 were high profile guys with big dollars – Maitan, Gutierrez, Severino – wouldn’t that open up the flood gates for other J2 prospects to leak tampering?
Keith Law: Every J2 player who signs on July 2nd had an illegal predraft deal in place. Could any of them come forward and demand free agency because the signing team broke the rules? Does MLB want to open that door, and thus find itself lying on the ground with a giant door on top of it? This metaphor isn’t quite working out for me, but yes, when the whole system is corrupt, then it could all collapse given the incentive the players have to take the money and then cry foul.
MLB, though, may decide it’s important enough to “clean up the streets” and decide to take on said stampede. There’s no real way for MLB to look bad in all of this, so they may go that route.
MLB will take the path that maintains the highest profit margins for MLB and MLB owners. That path will almost certainly involve whatever measures required to 1) put up a “moral majority” type bullshit front, while 2) preserving the plantation system of player acquisition from Latin America.
Agree 100% Sam
@502 and @503 Agreed and I suspect the punishment will be a slap on the wrist plus a little bit.
Much like the college basketball/FBI thing I think it will fade away a bit. Too much at stake over a few hundred K in a multi billion dollar business.
I expect most of the punishment to be things like “loss of future draft picks” and “fines.” Punishment that allow the other owners and teams to stroke themselves a little over giving Coppy a little of his own shitstorm back to him, but which doesn’t undermine the exploitative labor market itself by awarding players true free agent status.
For this case, MLB will need evidence to back up its punishments, and if players and/or agents don’t provide that evidence, then MLB will have to get it in other ways. Not sure what those other ways would be.
Regardless of how this turns out, MLB could revamp the international signing process if they wanted to. They could do it any time they like. They don’t need a scandal to force the issue.
I had a dream that the Braves hired me to work in the front office. Eddie Perez was the manager and I had to report to him twice a day. I also worked with Bobby Cox and Fredi Gonzalez.
Random.
What’s more likely?
1. We lose Maitan due to penalties and everyone freaks out
2. We keep him and he never pans out?
Of all the people to be in your dream…
The more I think about it, should the Braves want to pick up Dickey’s option? If you have around $30M to spend, and you have so many rotation spots, bullpen spots, and positions already committed, wouldn’t you want to commit more money to that rotation spot?
Which leads me to a little exercise I did. Using today’s team and finances, I used 2016 FAs (if I may, “sold comps”) to fill our needs and spend our money. I didn’t use players that end up being really good deals (if I also may, “low-side comps”), because that’s not fair (like Charlie Morton, tonight notwithstanding). But this is what I came up with:
Justin Turner – Age 32 (4 YR – $64M – $16M)
JP Howell (1 YR – $3M)
Andrew Cashner (1 YR – $10M) Sadly, not the best comp, but really, the best comp was Colon at $12.5M. But if I say that, you’ll throw oranges at me.
Jared Hughes (1 YR – $950K)
Inciarte
Albies
Freeman
Turner
Kemp
Acuna
Flowers
Swanson
(Lineup looks so much different with the 3B being a legitimate middle-of-the-order bat)
Suzuki
Adams
Camargo
Peterson
Teheran
Gohara
Cashner
Folty
Fried
Vizzy
Minter
Hughes
Howell
JJ
Ramirez
Morris
Winkler
Trade Matt Adams for the player who throws the fastest fastball of all the fastballs in A ball. Trade Matt Wisler, Aaron Blair, Jason Hursh, Sam Freeman, and Ian Krol for other guys who throw fast fastballs in A ball. Send some salary with Nick Markakis to get, get this, another guy who throws fastballs really fast… but this time, with a curveball too. Get ’em all.
New thread!