“We need Joc Pederson.”
“Braves are lacking leadership”
“The team acts like they don’t care”
“Ronald Acuna Jr. refused to talk to the media”
“What in the hell was Snit thinking leaving Bryce Elder in? And why Michael Tonkin?”
“Orlando Arcia needs to shut up”.
As I watched this team flail at balls outside the zone and walk away from the box with dead eyes, I found myself buying into all the narratives and, honestly, felt pretty ashamed when that final pitch was thrown. If you haven’t been paying attention to anything Jonathan F. has been preaching to us for years, for your sanity, it might be time to buy into this thought:
The MLB playoffs are a crapshoot.
Where Do We Go From Here? Manager
And while I agree with JF, I also noticed a distinct difference this year. Not only were the Braves severely outplayed, but they were severely out-managed. Brian Snitker is my favorite Braves manager in history. He’s a clubhouse leader, has led the team to 6 straight division titles, his players love him, and he’s provided stability in an org that was anything but stable during the Coppy era. But dammit, his playoff managing was backbreaking in game 3, a game that needed to be won. There were no innings to eat. In the playoffs, when most games come with an off day before or after, it is not the time to go to your worst reliever, or leave in your worst SP to pitch to their best player. Rob Thomson, who looks more like one of Peter Jackson’s dwarves than manager, understood that, brought his best and cooked our grits nightly. Needless to say, my opinion is that the playoffs are a crapshoot, but Snitker’s game 3 decisions made it less crapshooty and more crapshitty for the home team.
And while I’m not for putting Snit’s head on a spike, I want to see a manager that can adapt in the moment. However, Snitker utilized the same formula in a 5-game set as he did in a 162 and it blew up in his face.
Unless he retires, I hope that Brian Snitker manages this team next season. Managing egos is the hardest job a manager is tasked with and Snitker does it brilliantly. However, his inability to adapt in the moment, especially in the playoffs, is really problematic and it was more obvious in this year’s playoffs than ever before. Would the Braves have won the series had he not helped blown game 3? Honestly, I doubt it but it doesn’t excuse going to the worst reliever on the team in a critical part of a baseball game. Leverage isn’t measured by innings, but by circumstance and Snitker has a hard time buying into that train of thought.
Where Do We Go From Here: Starting Pitching
Assuming health and no trades, the Braves will have Spencer Strider, Max Fried, and Bryce Elder back for 2024. Charlie Morton, who will turn 40 in a few weeks, has a $16.25MM option that the Braves will definitely pick up should Morton want to continue pitching. From there, the Braves 40-man Roster is full of SP candidates, but the only strong candidate to stick is AJ Smith-Shawver. Hurston Waldrep and Spencer Schwellenbach are also 2 candidates that could be added fairly early in the 2024 season. Huascar Ynoa had TJ surgery in September of 2022, so he could factor into the second half. Fringe SP candidates run amuck on the 40-man, including Dylan Dodd, Jared Shuster, Michael Soroka, Yonny Chirinos, and Allan Winans. However, I assume that some of these guys, one way or the other, will be playing elsewhere come 2024.
I think Starting Pitching is a real need for the 2024 Braves. It becomes an absolute need if Charlie Morton decides to retire. Here are the big SP Free Agents:
Of this list, Sonny Gray makes a lot of sense. He’ll be looking for a 3 year deal and I think the Braves can afford to give him that.
Yeah, Snit got out-managed. But it’s also a lot easier to manage when you can just go to Jackson, Matzek, Minter, and Smith every freaking night for 3 rounds of playoffs. Oh, and Dylan Lee starts a World Series game and it actually goes well. And the guys the GM traded for at the deadline hit a total of 11 home runs in the playoffs, some of which were absolutely huge. Those are easy buttons to press.
So as part of the grieving process, I’m rosterbating wholesale changes:
Out:
-Morton
-Rosario
-McHugh
-Soroka’s contract (back on ML deal)
-Grissom
-Shewmake
-Smith-Shawver (I’m negotiable here)
-Shuster
-Dodd
-Elder
-Rob’s interest in baseball until July.
In:
-Choking the roster in the first half so you can spend big at the deadline, light a fire under the team, and get hot at the right time. Don’t spend $20M on Morton; spend $20M at the deadline getting 3 $20M players prorated for only a couple months. Win the Wild Card with 92 wins instead of paying to rack up CLEARLY meaningless wins in April, May, June, and July. Can anyone tell me why it’s good to win 100 games anymore?
-Middle of the order LF who can also play defense
-Top of the rotation, reliable starter
-2 shut down relievers
Rosario: On the fence. Still has value that that cost.
Morton: I’m 100% in if he wants to be here.
McHugh: Bye
Soroka: Trade
Grissom: Trade
Shewmake: Trade or Released
Smith-Shawver: In
Shuster, Dodd: Trade
Elder: Keep as back end starter
I think they keep Rosario.
I agree they absolutely need to add a starter or 2. With Wright out for the season, Jethro Tull out for most of next season, and Morton being old (and even if he does re-sign, Father Time is undefeated and at some point it will catch up), they need to pick up an additional top starter. This need becomes magnified with Fried’s looming free agency after 2024.
Elder is probably just a 5th starter (good chance that this was his career year). Winans and Vines might be viable 5th starters/depth pieces. Soroka looks like he should be a reliever. Shuster and Dodd don’t have major league caliber stuff.
I think AJSS needs more innings in the minor leagues.
Fried
Strider
Sonny Gray
Morton
Elder
AJSS
Vines
Winans
I’m fine with keeping Morton if it doesn’t mean we can’t sign someone else. I do not think he is a plus postseason starter at this point, and if you just want someone to eat innings, I think Winans might do that reasonably well. Problem is we have some kind of budget. Does Morton’s $20 million mean you can’t sign Bellinger to play LF or Gray as SP?
No to Rosario. I want Bellinger because he is one of the toughest outs in the league and plays gold glove caliber defense. He had a chase rate close to Betts’ I believe.
Also if we could trade Ozuna for Soler straight up to save a few million and get rid of Ozuna, I would do it. I would not dump Ozuna–he’s a great DH, but Soler is more patient and patience at the plate is the personality we need.
To krussell in the last thread, I totally agree. I have been angry about our playoff plate approach for decades with all different players and different management. The organizational philosophy is to sell out to hit homers, not to think with the pitcher and try to get on base. Nothing wrong with homers, but if you have a great pitcher living on the edge, you’re just not going to score that way. Seitzer I know does not like the homer approach. He has said it publicly many times. He wants them to hit to the off-field. I don’t know that he’s a walks guy, but he hates homer-ball.
Yeah I’m not saying homers are bad – just saying you don’t hit them when your approach is bad. Our lineup is so damn good that we should have guys nibbling and refusing to give in, which creates a lot of favorable counts and a lot of walks and a lot of pressure (kinda like all of Philly’s half-innings felt). Sometimes you just have to vent. I don’t know the answer. Just go watch all of Ozzie’s ABs in this series and I can say for certain that approach isn’t the answer.
We know the playoffs are a crapshoot, but since 2000 our failure to get past the NLDS is way too much crap and not enough shoot. Can we a least win half of these series? Or 40% of them? Or 33% of them? (kicks trash can)
I’m the biggest Morton fan there is, and I’m hoping he retires because he’s gonna fall off the cliff entirely next season if he returns. My uninformed take on our prospects is that the only truly untouchable ones are Waldrep and Smith-Shawver. We’ll likely see some of both in 2024. Elder is fine at the back of our rotation, but if he were part of a package to get something else we need, I wouldn’t cry about it. We can do better than Rosario.
Also, I agree with krussell, re: hitting adjustments, but it’s a hell of a lot easier said than done. I understand why some Braves hitters might just want to stick with their current approach.
We could go full wwf wrestling heel and sign Bauer. The rest of baseball already hates us anyway.
I’m hoping that the Braves will find a new left fielder. To his credit, Rosario was much better at the plate this year (100 wRC+) than in 2022 (62 wRC+), and his defense actually did improve, ending the year at +3 OAA.
That said, he’s sitting at -17 OAA for his career, so this year was a bit of an outlier. Personally, I don’t ever feel super confident whenever Eddie is patrolling LF, especially when the game is close in the 8th or 9th inning.
There are going to be a few notable left fielders hitting free agency this off-season. I wonder how feasible it would be get someone like Bellinger, or even Teoscar Hernandez from Seattle. Heck, maybe even bring Adam Duvall back for his third stint in Atlanta.
Hernandez is particularly interesting because of his offense (career 117 wRC+), and while he doesn’t have superb range, he at least has a much better arm than Rosario and hits better. I’m sure it wouldn’t be cheap to get him, though.
Misc Thoughts/Post Cards From the Edge:
The biggest revelation from the Philly series is the Braves need someone in the lineup with a different approach. Ozzie’s at bats killed us; just having someone who can get on base or put the ball in play at the top of the lineup would help tremendously in a short series when you’re facing much better pitching. Lemke wasn’t a great player, but he put enough balls in play and a lot of them happened to drop in October.
Eddie is now a replacement-level player and LF is the only open spot to upgrade the lineup. Harris should probably be a straight platoon but his defense is too valuable to sit. Grissom probably gets moved to accomplish this.
It’s a tough call but I would not pick up Morton’s option. The Braves absolutely need another SP, not just for next year, but the year after next when Fried likely walks via free agency. Signing Sonny Gray or Jordan Montgomery would be expensive and risky but depending on a 40-year-old Charlie Morton is riskier in my opinion. It’s also a hedge against one of the younger pitchers in the system not being ready by 2025.
I personally think Elder is a spent force but he’s too young to throw away, so he’s your fifth starter next year.
Bullpen: who knows? If Matzek is healthy/effective the back end is very solid with Minter and they probably resign Pierce Johnson. If it were my team I would tell AJSS now to prepare for a bullpen role next year. Our bullpen needs another guy with big velocity and I think he would thrive there.
Brutal honesty: the window isn’t as big as people think and I hope AA looks at this the same way.
In closing, thank you all for another great year. I love this community.
No to Teoscar. Better to go cheap with a platoon of Rosario/Duvall or Conforto/Duvall than to spend big on a 30 yo guy who had a .305 OBP last year. Conforto is one of the more interesting buy-low options. He missed a year due to injury, and he had an up-and-down year but posted a .355 OBP vs RHP.
Agree with Stampton, Bellinger is a pipe dream and something like Duvall/Rosario provides good enough production.
The rotation should get the most dollars to spend.
What really needs to be fixed is why Arcia, Murphy, TDA fell off a cliff in the second half.
Heck put Ozuna in left once in a while if you need to get Murphy and TDA some rhythm.
@Kip, why should Harris be a platoon player? He slashed .301/.331/.466 against LHP this year, with a .340 babip as opposed to .290/.331/.481 and .332 against RHP. Even allowing for some babip regression (which may not be likely, as his babip was higher in 2022), that’s acceptable production from a young CF with very good defense. He was bad against LHP in 2022, but it seems more likely that he has just improved.
I’d prefer to avoid Duvall, even though I enjoy rooting for him. He’s already turned 35, had his highest OPS+ season this year fueled by his second-highest-ever babip (still only .299, which I guess is what happens when you hit lots of fly balls), and has a fairly small career platoon split. Seems to me like Grissom could hit better in LF than either Duvall or Rosario, and I assume he’d be a better defender than at least Rosario and would be cheaper.
We could have really used Adam Duvall against all of those power LH relievers the Phillies threw at us. I will never forget we had Vaughn Grissom in the ballgame with the season on the line because he was the best matchup. One of the things that really worked well about having playoffs in 2/3 of our OF in the 2021 playoffs was that we could play matchups instead of just playing the same starters and keeping the status quo. I’d like to go back to that at one position at least next year.
Anthopoulus press availability from yesterday: https://youtu.be/6PzEq_HeH34?feature=shared.
He mentioned a RH power bat they were exploring at the deadline who ultimately didn’t get moved. Any ideas who that might have been? Duvall?
New thread.