Back in the late 80’s when I was a kid, baseball cards were everything, and common cards might as well have been firestarters. Nowadays, collectors can make a slight profit off of common cards from the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s by selling them in bulk.My father, who has an extensive collection of cards from the 80’s and 90’s, has been packing his common cards from that era and selling them in groups of 100 for about $20. Granted, that’s not a great deal of $, but selling 1,000 would bring in $200. Honestly, being still a bit invested in cards, I would have never believed this to be possible.

While Alex Anthopoulos isn’t playing with cards, he’s seemingly using an approach that felt hard to pinpoint for me…until the above analogy presented itself. Thus far in trades, AA has sent the following players to other teams:

  1. Riley Gowens
  2. Nicky Lopez
  3. Jackson Kowar
  4. Kyle Wright
  5. Nick Anderson
  6. Braden Shewmake
  7. Jared Shuster
  8. Michael Soroka
  9. Max Stassi
  10. Evan White
  11. Cole Phillips
  12. Marco Gonzales
  13. Tyler Thomas

If I were to take the above 13, put each face on cardboard, all but Kyle Wright would be a common card. Common cards don’t have a lot of value when isolated, but grouped together, they can land Jarred Kelenic and David Fletcher, two players that have a common card feel, but have potential to retroactively provide value to their cards of the past.

These trades not only netted Kelenic and Fletcher, but also netted 2 PTBNLs. While PTBNLs are mostly of the common card variety and are bottom of the barrel prospects (or almost prospects), the 2 deals that landed PTBNLs, the Braves sent a whole lot of cash…and no matter where you are in the world, cash has value.

In the Marco Gonzales trade to the Pirate, the Braves sent $9.25MM. In the Max Stassi trade, it’s been reported that the Braves are paying for most his $7MM contract. In both of these deals, the Braves received a PTBNL.

My question: Why would the Braves send so much money in both of these transactions? What is AA playing at?

I Have a Theory

Neither deal needed so much money attached. Some say it’s the cost of doing business. Bologna, I say. Marco Gonzales would have gotten a 1/$5-6MM deal on the open market. Max Stassi would’ve definitely went for more than $1-2MM. However, I think AA played his cards right, asking for a PTBNL…but not your normal PTBNL. I’m sure you all are aware of how PTBNLs work, but here’s a breakdown nonetheless.

The club sending the PTBNL away will provide the acquiring club with a list of players from which to select the PTBNL. In such cases, an agreed-upon deadline — by which the acquiring club must select the PTBNL — will often be set.

My theory is that Alex Anthopoulos has utilized these 2 deals to negotiate a list of PTBNLs that are better than the normal bottom of the barrel group to allow a future trade partner to pick a player from each of the Pirates and the White Sox. While these lists likely won’t be top prospects, they could very well be prospects in the 10-20 range and that definitely has value in trade.

Or… I could be 100% wrong and typed this all for nothing.

There’s been very little that has made sense in regards to some of these moves, but this feels like the one thing that computes.