Greeson: Braves' new word is 'prospects'

Atlanta Braves logo
Atlanta Braves logo

It's official. Las Vegas has made its calls for the 2015 baseball season, and the news is hardly good for Atlanta Braves fans.

Vegas estimated the Braves' win total to be right around 73.

photo Atlanta Braves logo

Yep, 73 and a half, to be exact. It's the total that Vegas offers gamblers to bet over or under on, and it seems fine if you understand gambling and downright silly if you don't until you remember that if anyone could figure out how to lose half a game it's Fredi Gonzalez.

Truthfully, 73.5 seems like a fair number for a team that is rebuilding from the bushes inward.

After clearing the deck in the front office in late September, Braves president John Schuerholz made it abundantly clear that the club was going to rebuild its farm system. The Braves were obscenely depleted of potential future stars, ranked by one service as having the 29th collection of prospects among the 30 teams.

So Schuerholz and new general manager John Hart started dealing off pieces for potential.

Jason Heyward? No extension for you, and while we're at it, why don't you go to St. Louis?

Justin Upton? No place for your salary, so why don't you pack for the Padres? And you stay classy, San Diego.

Evan Gattis? No position for you, and since no one would pull the trigger of a Gattis and B.J. Upton deal, Atlanta maximized the allure of Gattis' sheer power and sent him to Houston.

The Braves were clear and direct in their goals this offseason. Well, other than being in complete rebuild mode and then signing Nick Markakis to a four-year, $54-million contract that will carry him beyond age 35.

Markakis is by all measure a tremendous leader and teammate, and maybe the front office was attracted to adding an experienced professional to work with the soon-to-be-arriving wave of new talent.

It's a common practice across all of sports and makes sense, especially for a team like the Braves, who were closer to middle of the pack than elite, and it would have been a re-creation of the 1991 magic for the pre-overhauled bunch to make a Royals-like run to the World Series.

So they dealt and dealt, peeling cards from the top and sending three of their four most productive offensive players elsewhere to rebuild.

Mission accomplished in that regard. Most baseball analysts now view Atlanta's list of future MLB contributors among the deepest in the sport, especially the pitchers.

According to Baseball America, as many as five of the Braves' top 10 prospects were acquired in the two-month firesale from November to the middle of January.

Among that group are potentially elite pitching prospects in Mike Foltynewicz, who came in the Gattis deal, and left-hander Max Fried, who was part of the Justin Upton trade.

So help is on the way, but it means a very bleak summer forecast for this bunch that makes it easy to see the lack of confidence coming from the oddsmakers.

When the highlight of the offseason is an overhauled farm system, that means two things: (1) the long-term future seems in much better hands; and (2) the short-term now could be quite bumpy.

To make matters worse, in the ever-accurate view of Vegas, National League East foe Washington is the best team in baseball. Vegas puts the over/under for Nationals wins at 93, the most in the majors.

It's fair to point out that even before the massive deals, Atlanta was 15 games behind Washington in the standings, a gap that was only going to widen considering the Nationals added free agent pitching ace Max Scherzer.

So the 20-win gap between the two seems fair. It also seems fair to assume that building for the future will shrink that divide in the years to come.

Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6343. Follow him on Twitter at @jgreeson@timesfreepress.com. His "Right to the Point" column appears on A2 Monday, Thursday and Saturday, and his sports columns run Tuesday and Friday. Read his online column "The 5-at-10" Monday through Friday starting at 10 a.m. at timesfreepress.com.

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