A nominal post...

Call it posting for the sake of posting (or a preemptive strike, as you will see later), but I wanted to add something, particularly since my favorite team, the Atlanta Braves, just traded for the best first basemen available. Instead of actually writing a post, I thought I would just copy and paste an email that I wrote to a co-worker when he emailed me to ask about my thoughts on the trade. We've had other email conversations before (the last one was about whether or not Andruw Jones, the Braves CF, was the most overrated CF in the history of baseball, which a baeball writer from ESPN had written). As usual, when it comes to writing about baseball, my email was too long, when a short answer would do. So as to continue that tradition, I feel that this post should start with a little background.

First, the Braves started this season having acquired two great pitchers to pitch late in games--Rafael Soriano and Mike Gonzalez. Gonzalez has since been injured (out for the year) and the Braves have had no one in the bullpen that is left-handed (except for one guy who is left-handed, but, curiously, terrible against left-handed batters). It's important to be able to change up between RHP and LHP so as limit the batter's ability to recognize pitches quickly. In addition, the Braves have had a frequent problems at first base this year, after trading Adam LaRoche to Pittsburgh in the aforementioned Gonzalez trade. As a result of this and the absolute failing of once reliable 1B Craig Wilson, the Braves have been forced to use, at various times, a rookie from Canada (Scott Thorman), a rookie catcher (Jarrod Saltalamacchia, the Braves best prospect and record holder for having the longest last name in the history of baseball--seriously!), and a 49-year old Julio Franco (this guy was on RBI Baseball--the first one with teams from 1986 and 1987).

Anyway, we've needed help in three areas: 1B, left-handed reliever, and an extra starter. This results of this trade were that the Braves gave up Jarrod Saltalamacchia (or Salty), Elvis Andrus (a SS in the minors who was projected to take over SS in a few years), and two minor league pitchers (one of which is a great pitcher named Matt Harrison who pitches for AA Mississippi Braves) for Mark Texiera (a Gold Glove, switch hitting 1B) and Ron Mahay (a LH relief pitcher). So we have filled two of the needs, while sacrificing three young players (I don't know who the other pitcher will be, so he could be a career minor leaguer), all of which were slated for the majors in the next two years. Without further delay, here's the email after the jump, which was prompted by this email:

Looks like the braves got their man. How do you feel about this?

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/index

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Excited, but kinda conflicted. Tex will be great, but I hate to lose Salty (a switch hitting catcher for a two year rental) and Andrus (a young shortstop expected to take over when Renteria falls apart in the next two years). The real meat to this trade, at least in the minds of Braves fans, is the pitchers. The Braves badly need a left-handed reliever (we just designated Wilfredo Ledezma, our only LH RP, for assignment today), though I think everyone had CJ Wilson (or even Eric Gagne, though he’s not LH) in mind as the pitcher coming back. Mahay will definitely give us that LHP out of the bullpen. It was heavily rumored that Texas wanted Salty, Andrus, and a pitcher for only Tex, so I’m glad Schuerholz held out for a pitcher when Daniels was trying to get everything into a bidding war.

The other side of it is that the Braves are giving up two minor league pitchers, and Matt Harrison is rumored to be one of them. Harrison is a big pitcher with an ideal pitcher’s body (think a 6’5” Chris Young out of San Diego) with supposedly ML-ready stuff. The other pitcher will probably be Kyle Davies, our #5 starter for most of the year, who seems to either 2-hit the Mets or give up 5 runs in 3 inning to the Pirates. He’s another big bodied pitcher who I think can be good, probably a #3 or 4 starter at the worst, but he’ll probably go and we’ll sell low on him.

The real decision on whether this was a good trade or not will happen at the end of this year, when we’re trying to decide whether to re-sign Andruw (who always says he loves Atlanta and wants to play here all of his career). If we re-sign him, it’s unlikely that the Braves can re-sign Tex. If we lose Andruw, then we’ve got another Scott Boras headache, er…I mean client, in Tex (who has already talked about how great it would be to play in Baltimore, where he’s from). It’ll be a real balancing act, but I think Schuerholz has a plan and is way too secretive for a guy like me to know what will actually happen. In the short run, it’s a great trade—we’ll have one of the best line-ups in the NL and we can drop Andruw from batting 4th to probably 6thor 7th. However, I’m concerned about the future, but I’ll put my trust in Schuerholz.

Probably more than you wanted,

Caleb

The other point of this post is to let you all know that it is likely that Tricia will come on here claiming that I own the movie Planet of the Apes (the one with Marky Mark) and have watched it thrice in my lifetime, but I'm sure our readership is much to intelligent to give in to such falsehoods. Seriously, Planet of the Apes?