FG on Fox: The Braves Win the Trade Lottery
For the last few weeks, the Braves have been fielding calls from teams who wanted to trade for Shelby Miller. And for good reason: Miller is just 25 years old, is coming off a strong season in which he reminded everyone he was one of the game’s best pitching prospects coming up through the Cardinals organization, and he won’t be a free agent until after the 2018 season. With the price of pitching exploding in free agency, three cost-controlled years of a quality young starter is a valuable asset, and with the Braves in full rebuild mode, trading Miller to acquire players who could be core pieces of their long-term future made a lot of sense.
But when they discussed trading Miller as part of their rebuilding process, they could not have imagined the outcome that resulted tonight. After reportedly talking to the Cubs and Dodgers without securing the kind of impact young talent they were looking for in exchange, they ended up striking a remarkable deal with the Diamondbacks. The trade brings in major league outfielder Ender Inciarte along with minor league prospects Dansby Swanson and Aaron Blair.
Except, these aren’t just any minor league prospects. Dansby Swanson was the #1 overall pick in the draft just five months ago, a shortstop who shows quality offensive skills for a middle infielder. MLB.com currently rates him as the #10 prospect in baseball, and that’s after just collecting 100 plate appearances in his professional debut this summer. With a reasonable performance as he climbs the minor league ladder this summer, he’ll likely be in the mix to be considered the best prospect in baseball at this time next year.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
Piling on much?
This post was written Tuesday night when the trade went down. The timing of when it went up on Fox was out of our control.
So this “Related Posts” thing is new. Is it automated somehow by keyword
Great, I reached for the mouse to scroll up and accidentally clicked “Post”.
Is it automated by keyword search, or input manually, or…?
It’s there for old posts, so it’s not inputted manually. I would guess, based on my experience looking at HOF posts, that it’s either by an internally tagging system we don’t see (not likely) or it’s done by keywords.
Hey, how did I get back on the Braves?
Sitting right above a “Puig: Clubhouse Cyanide” article on FOX as it does, I do believe that this articles take is far from HOT enough!
I keep on rage clicking on your Avatar and nothing is happening!! RUDE
You mean sitting right about a blatant plagiarism of Scott Miller’s surprisingly good piece about Puig being a clubhouse cancer… There’s not a single quote in the FoxSports “article” that they didn’t lift from (of all places) BleacherReport, but they only attribute it twice. That’s pretty bunk.
BEEP BOOP BEEP
This seemed awfully redundant (yes, I realize you actually wrote it Tuesday), but as a Braves fan I did not mind reading about this again at all!
This pudding has been officially over-egged!
Interesting to note the consensus that the Braves were robbed in selling an elite defensive shortstop, but then robbed the diamondbacks in buying an elite defensive center fielder. Might just be that fielding is still considered a rather fungible asset by some MLB teams (probably including the braves).
A 25 year old pitcher with 575 innings in three years, a 3.22 ERA (how many innings does it take for ERA to be considered a stable indicator?), decent health record and three years of cheap team control. Seems like something you’d pay through the nose for. How many comparable pitchers are really available at a lesser price?
ERA by itself is never a stable indicator. You still have to factor in league, ballpark, and defense.
But by random variation plenty of guys will decently outperform FIP over 575 innings. It’s not nothing, but you can’t bank on it.
Hmm. Weird that you didn’t mention Mallex Smith. He’s already got over 300 PAs at AAA and, given that the Braves are absolutely not going to let Michael Bourn’s option vest with them, he was extremely likely to be the starting centerfielder by May, prior to this trade.
Now the Braves have the option of sliding him into one of the corners, or moving Inciarte to the corner, or trading either Mallex or Inciarte. They’ve already had lots of offers for Inciarte.