Definitely right in the long term. TV deal is just going to kill us. We do have a good bit of money available tho right now. Coppy has to time it right and sign or trade for 4-5 good players just as the influx of talent from the farm is ready to contribute.

What i'm afraid of is Coppy blowing his wad early because of outside pressure from fans etc. Like, there's just no way we should try to compete next year. Maybe we could if everything breaks our way and that would be amazing, but to increase our window of competing we need to wait til the full wave of prospects comes up imo. Especially the pitching. Our stable of young pitchers is seriously ridiculous..but they need more time.

And I'd also keep Swanson and Albies in the minors until next May or June after Super Two. But that ain't happenin

And who the hell is A.J. Minter? Holy mother of god

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx...284&position=P

Happy Dansby Swanson Day everyone! weeeeeeee

And no more Aybar!

Hope Dansby debuts more like Aaron Judge or Jason Heyward did than Alex Bregman.

Fortunately I think the FO is smart enough and apathetic enough about this season to keep running him out there no matter how bad it might be.

But with his eye and advanced approach I think he'll hold his own from the start.

He'll probably struggle a bit on offense but his defense should be solid. I hope Albies gets the call soon...he was more deserving of it than Swanson tbh

.389 BABIP and singles-driven production is a good argument that Albies' line was way less believable than Swanson's

I think our best team next year has Swansby in the opening day lineup, and if you are going to do that then you may as well call him up now. Coppy's job of trying to put together a real team next year is already going to be complex enough that we don't need him worrying about a short-term stopgap at SS next year too just to play around with Swanson's service time. Plus we got a middling prospect for Aybar, are saving money on the remainder of Aybar's salary this year and we would have to pay a decent stopgap something too.

Albies will probably called up in September.

Maybe. Southern League playoffs could go thru Sept 20

Man, I could see Frenchy thinking back to his glory days as the crowd cheered Swanson's line out

Written all over his face

Man this team is tough to watch. Even Swanson is suckin it up

Foltynewicz is so maddening

He's got the stuff, easy 95+ with good secondary pitches. When he's striking people out and locating he looks great

He just walks every 4th batter or gives up too many homers.

I think he'll be good if he ever learns to be a pitcher and not a thrower

chuck n chernoff were saying that the 16 year old kid is now #100 on the top 100 minor league prospects

So I want to talk about the long term plans for the Braves.

We have eleventy-billion pitchers so I think our SP and RP will sort itself out as we climb back to contention.

Freddie's the face of the franchise at 1st.

Dansby and Ozzie (when he arrives) up the middle.

Inciarte, Mallex, Kemp (on-base, speed, and power, respectively) ... and Markakis playing out the string... in some combination in the outfield.

D'Arnaud, Jace, and Beckham are imminently expendable place-holders to me at this point.

The question I want to ask... Is Adonis our long-term 3B? If he's not, who is?

He has pop, but not much on base skills. Having watched him all year I'd say his defense is pretty bad, but he's made improvements and some nice plays lately.

Be forewarned that I tend to over-rate players I watch every day, so take it with a grain of salt.

Adonis is trash. Jace should be a keeper which means he won't be.

Jace can put up a .350 OBP with good defense at hard positions, and he's 26. That's miles ahead of D'Arnaud and Beckham, who are replacement level or worse, and 29 and what, 35?

Jace has been our third best hitter this year behind Freddie and Flowers. He doesn't play everyday because the Braves are the ******ed Braves.

We are still worse than most of the league at all decision making aspects. We are like 30th in pitcher development, the same or close in hitter development, bottom half in playing time decisions and bottom half in roster construction and drafting

Kemp is probably the worst defender at any position in the league and might never OBP over .300 again.

Honestly Freeman and Inciarte are the only position players who are pretty much guaranteed to be nice contributors next season imo. Swanson, Albies, Smith, Peterson are all youngins who could do well but who knows. Definitely would like to see Jace given a chance at the 3rd base job. Adonis is ok? but is also 31 years old. He should have no place on a decent team.

Kemp is a question mark. Markakis is what he is.

We'll trade for or sign a catcher. I wouldn't be surprised if we bring in a vet at 3rd too. Rio Ruiz needs more time at AAA and even then might not be a long term option.

Loads of elite pitching potential still a few years away. Newcomb/Sims/Whalen/Wisler/Minter etc are a good start but the tsunami is still in rookie ball and A/A+. As is the next wave of elite position players.

Basically, I think it would be reasonable to expect contention in 2018...maybe. This offseason, if the Braves front office wants to make a couple moves for good players who will anchor the team over the next 5-6 years....while at the same time making the fans happy that they're 'trying to win'...then go ahead. When the Cubs signed Jon Lester the thinking at the time was that yea they weren't competing that year but they'll need him for the following years. They just happened to actually compete in his first year...

Braves can do a similar thing. Unfortunately, the free agent market this offseason is going to be horrible...so either overspend or dip down into our pitching depth for trades.

But really I don't think even the Braves front office can **** this up. Yea, they might make some silly trades or signings over the next couple years but the talent and depth in the system is so insane that we'll be a legit contender in 3-4 years at most imo

I just don't see it. I don't think we have half the depth of talent on the farm as we did in the years we had guys like Furcal and Marcus Giles down there, to be generous.

We aren't like the Astros were or the Cubs were recently. We are more like the Pirates were for 20 years. Tenth is a generous ranking of our farm. Everybody is a lottery ticket. There's no young phenom. I'm not convinced we don't take another lottery ticket first overall next year.

How do you come up with tenth? Are you not counting Swanson and Albies as prospects? If so, are you taking out every other team's call-ups/likely call-ups from their systems.

higher win % this year - braves or falcons?

Dunno much about the Astros but yea the Cubs were pretty ridiculous in terms of elite position players. However, they were kind of bare in regards to pitching. The only good prospect to come out of that system has been Hendricks. The Cubs went out and got pitchers through free agency and trades.

The Braves went in the other direction. They built the best stable of pitching prospects in the game (truth) through the draft and trades. Now, the problem is that legit-great pitching prospects also have a much higher rate of not making it than the elite position players. However, the sheer quantity of top 100-200 type prospects the Braves have acquired makes it likely at least 4-5 of those guys turn out to be pretty good imo. Yea, they're lottery tickets but there's a **** ton of them

In terms of position players, after Dansby and Ozzie there really aren't any impact guys in AA/AAA imo. Dustin Peterson and Rio Ruiz have been solid but meh. The elite guys (Pache, Ocuna, Riley, Maitan, Cruz) are still in their teens, but they do exist and 2 (Maitan and Ocuna)..maybe 3 (Riley? Pache?) of them should be top 100 in preseason next year. I think a few of those guys could be considered 'young phenoms'

Prediction - Braves will have #1 or #2 farm and 8-10 top 100 prospects in Baseball America's next preseason rankings (assuming Dansby and Ozzie count)

13 game losing streak, Twins going HAM for that top spot.

Matt Kemp has -0.9 WAR on BBall Ref in one month since joining us, didn't even know that was possible... Not to mention he has seemed okay to me.