Justin Upton contract is probably about what it'd take to lock up Heyward. Probably a tad bit less, but close.

Awesome, congrats. I'm jealous. Murph is my all time favorite. My idol as kid.

It looks like pitchfx had him at like 89.9 mph avg fastball. 89.7 avg for the season now.

Also keep in mind that in his career he's always lost velocity as the season went on.

He's even walking more people. So it's not like he's sacrificing velocity for better control. The only positive i can find is that he's inducing more groundballs...but even that is meh because our infield defense is so awful.

It ain't lookin good fellas.

hmm 6 years 51 mil..i wouldn't mind that at all.

http://www.talkingchop.com/2012/5/8/...-in-play-BABIP

Good post talking about how terrible our infield defense is and how awesome the OF is.

Yeah, Uggla and Rev gotta be WOAT middle infield range

Then Chipper is 40 and Freeman is overrated

Pretty sure Upton contract was after two years of service as opposed to three, so we would be buying out one more year of FA. Think it was also considered pretty team friendly. Doubt that would get it done. Would be pretty happy with 6 years/$60 million. Would be fair, just don't know how risk averse Heyward is going to be considering he will start making significant money through arbitration after this season. Think something like $60 mill might get it done TODAY, but not if we pussyfoot around for much longer.

Holy sheeeeeeiiiiittttttttt!!!! Bourn has kinda quietly already accumulated 2.1/2.3 WAR this season. Too bad it looks like we have little chance of keeping him this offseason. Gonna rage when he signs with the Nationals.

At least if he does that, he's guaranteed to get hurt right away.

sure is nice watching the FIRST PLACE BRAVES back at home.

lol @ brandon phillips batting 4th instead of bruce. <3 dusty

yea he's playing himself out of our price range if he keeps it up probably. really really sucks because we have no one ready to replace him in the system...except for Constanza or Durango i guess. god help us if we have to put one of those guys in CF all season.

maybe put Heyward in center..Prado in right..Gattis is left or something. *shudders*

please resign Bourn somehow. Pretty please.

Simmons hitting .304/.388..11% BB 8.1% SO

just thought you guys should know

^^^ that is hot

hey look chad durbin in another high leverage situation.

this has to start biting us in the ass eventually right?

I hate these obv letdowns after big games/series. so annoying.

Ah, whats up with Venters this year. Peripherals are still nice, but he has been getting knocked around.

looks like hitters have been making better contact on balls hit in play and they're getting really lucky at the same time basically

but all his other peripherals are fine. i think it's just variance

come back here we go! Let's go McCann and Chipper!

ah sH*T... Chapman...

chapman vs heyward isn't exactly the best matchup for us lol since heyward can't seem to catch up with 90+ much less 98+

Should definitely have pinch hit Diaz for Heyward. That is the one reason he is on this roster. Heyward has like zero chance vs Chapman (he'll walk more than Diaz, but don't think it'd be that significant of a diff).

agreed 100%

We should have a pretty good amount of money to spend this offseason (I feel like I say that every year and I'm always wrong) as you said earlier.

Chipper and Lowe are good for $24M off the books, BMac has a $12M option and Hudson has a $9M option so they're pretty much at the same price if we decide to keep them.

Bourn is already making around $7M so a $3-5M raise should be doable for us. There aren't a ton of elite leadoff hitters that play premium positions so he might be in the $15M+ salary range, I don't think we can afford that if we re-sign BMac.

Maybe we can afford 3-4 years of Bourn though at $15Mish, we still have a lot of good players on the cheap, I'd just like to use some payroll to lock some of the young guys up long-term.

I'm trying to think of recent FA OFs with Bourn type stats but I'm coming up blank. Maybe Johnny Damon?

JJ's $5.5m could definitely be off the books too. We'll have some money, but we'll def extend (or at the very least try really hard to) one of our young studs. Also Prado will get a raise, all those bullpen arms will get a raise, JHey raise, and we'll probably need to bring someone in to play LF or 3B unless we go with Francisco next year.

I think Bourn will end up in the $13-15m a year range, but I don't see him getting more than 5-6 years. Not really sure, though, since there aren't really a lot of comps as of the past few years. I'd say it's more reasonable to compare him to Furcal's first deal with Dodgers. Both play a premium defensive position and have the same offensive skillset basically (Bourn is a better base stealer, but Furcal had more power). Furcal got 3 yrs 39m in his first deal, so I wouldn't be surprised to see something like 5yr 65-70m for Bourn.

I'd feel pretty good about giving Bourn 5Y/$65M after looking at a list of available FA CF:

Alfredo Amezaga (35)
Rick Ankiel (33)
Michael Bourn (30)
Marlon Byrd (35)
Melky Cabrera (28)
Mike Cameron (40)
Curtis Granderson (32) - $13MM club option with a $2MM buyout
Scott Hairston (33)
Angel Pagan (31)
Corey Patterson (33)
Cody Ross (32)
Grady Sizemore (30)
Ryan Spilborghs (33)
B.J. Upton (28)
Shane Victorino (32)