Every Friday, for a couple of hours, I host a FanGraphs live baseball chat. Yesterday, I held my first chat in the aftermath of the winter meetings. The previous Friday, I held my last chat before the winter meetings. Within that chat, here’s a question that popped up:

We might never know Tom’s true identity. But, Tom, if that is your real name — good going. You came awfully close.

With five players involved, this is a big trade for two teams to make. But then, if we’re going to be realistic, this isn’t about the players at all. This is a swap of money, or, more accurately, this is a swap of debt. There is short-term debt, and there is shorter-term debt.

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Two weeks ago, commissioner Rob Manfred announced the punishment for Atlanta following illicit efforts by former general manager John Coppolella to avoid exceeding bonus-pool limits in international free agency. At the center of that punishment: the dissolution of contracts for 12 players acquired by means that violated league policy.

Today, one of the more promising ex-Braves has signed with the Royals. MLB.com’s Jesse Sanchez reports:

The signing by Kansas City of right-hander Yefri Del Rosario is notable for a couple reasons. One, because he represents the first of the former Atlanta prospects to sign with another team. And two, because Del Rosario’s deal might provide clues as to the bonuses likely to be received by the 11 other players in question.

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Jeff Sullivan has found that framing data is going insane. Jeff has also previously written about the rise of the framing floor. And perhaps none of this should comes as a surprise. As the value of pitch-framing has become more apparent, clubs seem to have valued the skill more, emphasizing catcher presentation both in development and in their assessment of players. The narrowing of the advantage for some clubs was probably inevitable.

Still, there remain some players with a consistent year-to-year individual advantage at the position. Players like Yasmani Grandal and Yadier Molina and Buster Posey. And in 2017, there remained a sizeable gap between framing Haves and Have Nots.

After signing Matt Wieters to be their primary catcher last offseason, the Nationals suffered a 30-run decrease in framing runs from 2016 to 2017. Last season, only the Rockies were worse than the Nationals by that measure among postseason teams.

Readers of this site are likely familiar with Wieters’ framing issues. This author alone has addressed them at least three times: prior to last offseason, prior to the trade deadline, and during the postseason. And even though Wieters exercised his $10.5 million option earlier this offseason, the Nationals could still stand to upgrade at the position.

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Following the final game of the regular season, Jose Altuve told a small group of reporters that once October rolls around, “everybody starts with zero wins and zero losses, and everybody’s average is zero.”

Nearly a month later, the Astros are even-steven with the Dodgers in the World Series and Altuve’s average (.322) is farther above zero than anyone’s in the postseason (minimum 20 at bats). That’s hardly a surprise. The 27-year-old second baseman captured his third American League batting title this year, hitting a career high .346. He doesn’t consider it his biggest personal accomplishment to date.

“That would be the Silver Slugger,” Altuve told the scribes, citing an honor he was awarded last year. “With the batting title, they only care if you hit .300/.320, but the Silver Slugger is all around — doubles, triples, home runs — and I’m 5’ 5” and 160 pounds.”

His numbers have been anything but Lilliputian. Over the past four seasons, the Venezuelan spark plug has a .334/.384/.496 slash line and 254 extra-base hits. And while he leads MLB in one-base hits over that same period, it’s not as though singles are a bad thing. Read the rest of this entry »

This season, 144 players reached the 502-plate-appearance threshold necessary to qualify for the batting title. On the opposite end of the spectrum, there were 190 position players who tallied between one and 99 PA for the season. In between, there were 291 position players. Some of these were starters who simply missed time due to injury (Bryce Harper, for example) or the nature of their position (Salvador Perez) or because they weren’t major leaguers yet at the start of the season (Paul DeJong), but some of them are what we’d call true part-time players. At this time of year, we generally focus on the very best players. It’s awards season, after all. Part-time players get less shine. So let’s focus on them today, at the very least.

I’ve done this exercise once before, back in 2012. Now, as then, I’ve parsed the list to give us a clear picture of who is really a part-time player. My favorite tool for this exercise is the “Lineups and Defense” pages on Baseball-Reference. When they redesigned the website recently (I think it was recently? Maybe it was last year? I don’t know, I don’t even remember what I had for dinner on Thursday.) I experienced a few panicky minutes when I couldn’t find the pages, but fortunately they’re still there. Phew.

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So much for a boring Monday with no baseball news.

BREAKING: #Braves GM John Coppolella expected to resign today, sources tell The Athletic.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) October 2, 2017

Resignation of Coppolella believed to stem in part from issues with #Braves’ talent acquisition in Latin America.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) October 2, 2017

Special assistant to the GM Gordon Blakeley also involved in issues #Braves are facing, sources tell The Athletic.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) October 2, 2017

Jeff Passan adds a little detail here.

Sources: Major League Baseball has been investigating Braves GM John Coppolella in recent weeks. @Ken_Rosenthal says he plans on resigning.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) October 2, 2017

And then the Braves confirmed it.

#Braves confirm Coppolella resignation, citing breach of rules in international market.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) October 2, 2017

Obviously, with this little information out there, it’s impossible to know what went down, but if it really leads to Coppolella resigning as GM, it has to be pretty serious. MLB has punished teams for breaking rules surrounding international signings before, but it hasn’t led to a high-level executive being pushed out since 2009, when Jim Bowden resigned in the wake of allegations of a host of improprieties under his regime.

For the Braves, this is obviously not how they wanted their offseason to begin. John Hart seemingly remains as the team’s president of baseball operations, and will likely handle the regular GM duties until the team finds a replacement, but with the team just recently bringing in several new assistant GMs and restructuring the front office, it will be interesting to see how the new front office will operate. An outside hire would likely want to bring in their own staff, so I wouldn’t be surprised if Hart just served as the team’s de facto GM for 2018.

Either way, the Braves are going to have to make more decisions now than they had planned on, and it will be interesting to see whether any course direction is made coming off a disappointing season and now a resignation of the team’s GM.

Below are the updated summer top-10 prospect lists for the orgs in the National League East. I have notes beneath the top 10s explaining why some of these prospects have moved up or down. For detailed scouting information on individual players, check out the player’s profile page which may include tool grades and/or links to Daily Prospect Notes posts in which they’ve appeared this season. For detailed info on players drafted or signed this year, check out our sortable boards.

Atlanta Braves (Preseason List)

1. Ronald Acuna, CF
2. Ozzie Albies. 2B
3. Kyle Wright, RHP
4. Luiz Gohara, LHP
5. Kolby Allard, LHP
6. Kevin Maitan, SS
7. Ian Anderson, RHP
8. Mike Soroka, RHP
9. Joey Wentz, LHP
10. Cristian Pache, CF

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At 48-57, the Atlanta Braves are nowhere near this year’s playoff race. Braves fans can look forward to a brighter future, however, as Atlanta placed nine prospects on KATOH+’s most recent top-100 list. Ozzie Albies, who is arguably the most promising of those prospects, made his big league debut last night, starting at second base.

Although he’s a 20-year-old who was born in 1997 (!), Albies’ minor-league performance suggests he’s ready for another challenge. He slashed .285/.330/.440 at Triple-A, with an exciting 21 steals. Despite his small stature, Albies popped nine homers in Triple-A, resulting in a respectable .156 ISO. Albies’ offensive performance would be compelling for any infield prospect. And coming from a 20-year-old middle infield prospect, it’s extremely compelling. Read the rest of this entry »

Below is a ranking of the prospects traded this month, tiered by our Future Value scale. A reminder that there’s lots of room for argument as to how these players line up, especially within the same FV tier. If you need further explanation about FV, bang it here and here. Full writeups of the prospects are linked next to their names. If the player didn’t receive an entire post, I’ve got a brief scouting report included below. Enjoy.
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Monday’s non-waiver trade deadline is a mere five days away. As it nears, we’ll be treated to all the rumors and hypothetical proposals the internet is capable of providing. Many of them will be nonsensical. Some won’t. In every case, though, we’re likely to evaluate the likelihood of a prospective deal based on the same sort of variables considered by Dave Cameron in his annual Trade Value series — variables like projected WAR, salary, team control, etc.

But those aren’t the only factors at play when real people from real front offices attempt to work out a trade. There are other questions to ask. Which teams link up often and which teams avoid each other? What’s the role of familiarity in trade deals? Does it matter if the teams belong to the same division?

With the help of crack data and visualizations man Sean Dolinar, I went to work trying to answer some of these questions. Below are five statements supported by the historical data.

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