Very early stab at Braves 2018 Opening Day Roster

Man, I wish the braves would get good again... soon!

Moylan? Winkler? wtf? I know you said you were making bold guesses, but there's nothing really bold there.

I actually agree that Johnson may start out on the roster in a much lesser role than he is used to. I read an article where Coppy mentioned that they feel strongly that he will have a bounce back year.

Pen: Viz, Ramirez, Minter, Morris, Freeman, Sims (if he isn't traded, which I think he might be), Newcomb/Fried
SP: Darvish (my BOLD guess of the exercise lol, and i say it knowing full well that Coppy said we probably wouldn't go after a big time arm like that now), Teheran, Folty, Gohara, Newcomb/Fried

In fact, I think you could potentially have a 3 man SP/RP rotation between Gohara, Newcomb, and Fried. All 3 will probably still be on an IP plan, and I'd like to see them all continue to get MLB experience while limiting innings rather than see them go back to AAA and throw 4 or 5 innings per start.

Lineup:
OF: Kemp, Inciarte, Acuna (I think Acuna needs to start Opening day if they are able to trade one of Kemp or Markakis. If they can't pull off a trade THEN you can think about bringing up Acuna a tad bit later in the season)

IF: Moustakis, Swanson, Albies, Freeman

C: Flowers/Kurt

Bench: Lane, Camargo, Matt Adams, Rio/D.Peterson

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Moylan? Winkler? wtf?

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Winkler has been very good and has not satisfied his Rule 5 obligations yet.

Coppy indicated they would likely add multiple relievers from the FA market. Reed would be somewhat pricey, though young and valuable. I don't think you'd want to spend big on the second guy and they are very familiar with Moylan and he has had a good year and could be had pretty cheaply.

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I will be pretty pissed if they throw away a full year of Acuna's service time by not waiting two weeks to bring him up.

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If he is what we think he is then he needs to be in Atlanta his entire career. So, the difference in one extra year of big pay doesn't matter much to me in that regard I guess.

Also, Coppy has made it pretty clear they don't care about it either. So, we'll see.

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The problem is that kind of thinking (and that's the way the front office seems to think as well so you aren't alone there) winds up limiting our windows of opportunity an not allowing us to sign other players during the years those players should be cheap if we didn't waste a year of control for no reason.

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I agree in theory, but if Acuna is what everyone thinks he is.......and he shows up in Florida and is clearly a major league player, I think it sends a bad message to keep him down for basically a gap year of less pay that we might can turn into an extra year on a new contract with somebody else. Not to mention that will mean either keeping around Markakis/Kemp or starting somebody who the world knows shouldn't be starting (Jace, Adams, D. Peterson, etc) while Acuna is in AAA again in April.

If this was 2015 and we were at the start of the rebuild without an realistic expectation of competing for things? Sure, I'd agree. But I think next year is the year we start showing things are here, and if Acuna is the best OF in the system he needs to start on day 1.

That's my hope at least.

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We are going to be a fringe playoff team next year at worst and games in April count the same as the ones in September.

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We are about to finish the season with low 70s wins, and our team next year is going to be mostly the same as it has been for the last month and a half (and our record during that month and a half has sucked, even with us playing crap teams like the Mets, Philly, and the Marlins).

We aren't going to be fringe anything until we fix the starting rotation, and that's not really going to start happening until Soroka and Allard come up at the middle/end of the year. I think we have a decent chance to be a .500 team next year given average luck, but our odds of sniffing the playoffs are immensely low. And if Snitker is our manager next year still our chances are pretty much zero.

Minnesota Twins
2016-59 wins
2017-84 wins

Position Players
Byron Buxton(23 yr old)-470 plate appearances before 2017
Eddie Rosario(26 yr old)-3rd year
Miguel Sano(24 yr old)-3rd year
Jorge Polanco(24 yr old)-270 plate appearances before 2017
Max Kepler(24 yr old)-450 plate appearances before 2017

Other starters include Brian Dozier, Joe Mauer, Jason Castro, and Eduardo Escobar

Starting Pitchers
Jose Berrios(23 yr old)-58 innings before this year
Adalberto Mejia(24 yr old)-2 innings before this year

Other starters are Ervin Santana, Kyle Gibson, and Bartolo Colon

Pen
Trevor Hildenberger(26 yr old)-rookie
Taylor Rogers(26 yr old-2nd yr. 57 innings as rookie
Alan Busenitz-(27 yr old)-rookie

other major contributors in pen are Brandon Kintzler(closer), Matt Belisle, Dillon Gee, Ryan Presley


If a team that is constructed like that can win 25 more games this year than last, the Braves can improve by 10 to 15 wins with the amount of young talent we have.

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If a team that is constructed like that can win 25 more games this year than last, the Braves can improve by 10 to 15 wins with the amount of young talent we have.

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Yeah, because a couple teams every 6-7 years manage to do it then it's totally likely the Braves will, good logic. I feel like I could find these same exact predictions for winning seasons from you and others if I cared enough to look back to the last offseason.

It's possible everything goes right and we turn into an 85 wins team, but it's certainly not likely in any way at all. It's extremely rare for teams to make 15 win jumps, not commonplace.

I'm not as confident as you are.

In lots of ways, this team kind of mirrored last year's Phillies. The mere 72 wins might very well have been a mirage. We haven't seen young guys really break out yet. Which is a problem.

Next year is going to (at least hopefully) be the first year in which it relies on a lot of kids. That can either work out decently well (like the '15 Red Sox), or lead to a dumpster fire caliber first half before the kids start putting it together, like this year's Phillies seemingly did.

I'd sadly lean more toward the likely outcome being the latter because the young pitching has mostly looked pretty horrible. A "hand the keys to all of the kids and wish them luck" season is likely not going to be pretty for at least the first half of the season. But if this FO can be patient it'd be good for the big picture.