Atlanta’s Incoherent Offseason

After years of winning division titles — 14 in a row from 1991 to 2005 — it’s been something of a slow decade for the Atlanta Braves. They’ve rarely been bad, losing 90 games just once since the streak ended, but they’ve also won only two playoff games and zero postseason series in nine seasons. After a disappointing 79-83 finish in 2014, good for second place but also 17 games out of first, the Braves fired GM Frank Wren, a move that club president John Schuerholz admitted had been a consideration for several seasons.

A change in regime would seem to be the perfect opportunity to start fresh and re-position the organization toward a successful first season in its new suburban stadium in 2017, a goal that team officials have quietly admitted is important. With two star outfielders entering the final years of their contracts (Jason Heyward, Justin Upton) and more holes than a team on a limited payroll could fill in order to put up a fight in 2015, a new front office with a little bit of creativity and without the baggage of the recent past could easily make moves to limit the rebuilding period and get a competitive team back on the field in Atlanta as soon as possible. After all, just look at what new GM A.J. Preller has done in San Diego in just a few months on the job.

The Braves traded both of those final-year outfielders, sending Heyward to St. Louis and Upton to the Padres. If, at the end of the season, you had known both had played their final games in Atlanta, you might have expected that a full rebuild was in the works. But that’s not what’s happened. The Braves have weakened their 2015 roster while failing to fully commit to a rebuild, and the moves they’ve made symbolize a team that can’t figure out what it is or where it’s going. Welcome to baseball’s most confounding offseason.

If we’ve learned anything about major league baseball, it’s that an organization must have a development plan in order to assess its current state of affairs as well as to determine short- and long-term goals and how to go about achieving them. It’s not important that every club do it the same way, because there’s merit in the slow, complete teardown of the Astros, the overnight transformation of the Padres and the one-year hiccup of the Red Sox. However, it is important to have an accurate viewpoint of what your franchise is capable of. It’s the lack of that understanding that doomed the Phillies, who are only now accepting that it’s time to start over, at least two years after most of baseball understood that fact.

The Braves’ offseason moves this winter seem to represent those of a franchise stuck in the middle, one unable to compete in 2015 but unwilling to fully commit to the rebuild it hopes will create a winner when it moves into its new stadium.

Recent departures

For example, four of the team’s most notable players have departed this winter, including Heyward (traded to St. Louis), Upton (traded to San Diego) and starting pitchers Ervin Santana(free agent, signed with Minnesota) and Kris Medlen (free agent, signed with Kansas City).

Each move made a certain amount of sense for a team not looking to compete in 2015. Swapping Heyward, who is regularly worth four to five wins above replacement(WAR) thanks to a combination of above-average offense and elite defense, for pitchers Shelby Miller and Tyrell Jenkins is likely going to make the Braves worse in 2015; however, getting 10 years of team control for the one year that Heyward had left made sense in the long term. You could say exactly the same for Upton, because the 2015 Braves will be weakened without him. But with one year left before free agency and the prospects of extending him unlikely, the package of Padres prospects Atlanta received made sense.

This departed foursome is projected by Steamer to be worth slightly more than 10 WAR in 2015, and, remember, that’s from a team that lost 83 games last year with those players (not including Medlen, who missed the year due to injury). Atlanta’s 573 runs scored last year topped only that of San Diego, and were the third-fewest runs scored in a non-strike season since the team moved to Atlanta from Milwaukee in 1966.

With those moves, the Braves have removed two of the four above-average hitters (Freddie Freeman and Evan Gattis being the others) from an offense that has been terrible in recent years, which is why the 2015 Steamer projections see them as being the second-worst offense in baseball, ahead of only the Phillies. Without Santana or Aaron Harang, two of the team’s three pitchers to top 195 innings in 2014, or the recovering Medlen and Brandon Beachy, the rotation is full of questions, though certainly not without talent. The bullpen has lost useful righties Jordan Walden and Anthony Varvaro. Overall, Steamer projects a 73-89 season, which is consistent with an 83-loss team that has unquestionably taken steps backward.

New arrivals

This would all be fine if the club was planning for the long term and not set on competing in 2015. The problem, however, is that this seems to be a series of half-measures.

The Braves have reportedly refused to even entertain the idea of trading Craig Kimbrel, even though bad teams don’t need closers and the assumption that the increasingly expensive Kimbrel will still be dominant by the time 2017 rolls around goes against decades of closer volatility. Meanwhile, the moves they’ve made to import players (chart below) seem to do little more than plug holes:

Markakis’ deal in particular is difficult to understand, since he’s 31, an overrated defender and over the last two years has barely qualified as a league-average hitter (plus, he recently had neck surgery). Combined, this quintet is projected to contribute slightly fewer than 5 WAR next year, numbers that are accounted for in the above 73-89 record projection. You have to fill out a lineup, certainly, so no one’s saying the Braves should have done nothing at all. It’s just that there’s nothing here that is going to move the needle in 2015, and Markakis isn’t likely to be a top contributor on the next good Atlanta team as he ages into his 30s.

Rebuilding or competing?

If there’s a plan here, perhaps this is it: There’s an argument to be made that with the Nationals appearing to be far and away the favorites in the NL East, the Braves need only to shoot for the 88 or so wins that getting into the wild-card game usually requires. As the Royals and Giants just proved, merely getting into the lottery that is the postseason could be enough. But then again, this Atlanta team wasn’t really close to getting there in 2014, and it’s almost indisputably further away in 2015.

It’s not too late, of course. Gattis has been rumored to be on the trading block, and getting talent back in return would be a nice boost; while Gattis is older than you think (he turned 28 in August) and isn’t much of a catcher or a left fielder, teams have been paying high prices to satisfy the buzzword of “right-handed power,” which Gattis has in spades. Being without Gattis — or worse, letting him kick balls around in the outfield — would make a bad 2015 lineup look worse, but overall wouldn’t be the difference between making the playoffs or not. However, trading him for younger, controllable talent would not only help the future but would open up space for highly-regarded 23-year-old catcher Christian Betancourt. (Presumably, this is why Pierzysnki was imported.)

Limited by payroll concerns and the failures of the Wren era, the Braves would have had a difficult time competing in 2015 regardless of the moves made. But they may be limited by their own lack of creativity as well. Other than trading Upton and Heyward, little we’ve seen from the Braves this winter has made sense. Until that changes, don’t expect them to turn things around. As such, 2015 could mark the beginning of several down seasons in Atlanta.