Braves News: Braves trading a catcher?, Mets lose deGrom, more
By Eric Cole
Yesterday was a fine day for the Atlanta Braves. Not only did a member of the organization get some much deserved recognition, but we got some bona fide Braves rumors about at least one thing they are considering this offseason AND the Mets lost arguably the most talented pitcher in the entire leagues to free agency.
The Braves have a tough needle to thread this offseason as they do need to bring in a quality shortstop, they will have to move into the luxury tax to do that probably, and they would probably like to upgrade their roster in other places. One idea that they seem like they are entertaining is trading one or more of their catchers to help elsewhere on the roster. They have also asked about catcher Sean Murphy from Oakland presumably to see if he would be a fit in a world where they trade more than one catcher.
Elsewhere in the division, the Mets officially lost Jacob deGrom to free agency as the Texas Rangers signed him to a nutty five year, $185 million contract. We are certainly quite pleased that deGrom isn’t in the division anymore, but it is pretty wild that he managed to get a five year deal at his age with his injury history of late.
More Braves News
Elsewhere in the world of the Braves, general manager Alex Anthopoulos has been a godsend for the Braves since he arrived and has been, frankly, criminally underrated when it comes to getting awards recognition for his work leading the front office. Thankfully, our friends at Baseball America noticed and gave AA there MLB Executive of the Year award. It is well-deserved.
The Winter Meetings are mere hours away and with the market now heating up in the a big way, here are the big Braves storylines that you need to keep an eye on at the meetings. Spoilers: what they are going to do at shortstop remains the biggest one.
Finally, we have a look at the players who could be realistic candidates for NL Comeback Player of the Year for the Braves in 2023. It is pretty wild that the Braves were as good as they were in 2022 when they were very clearly not firing on all cylinders at nearly any point during the season.
MLB News
The biggest news was mentioned above with deGrom’s five year deal with the Rangers, but we also had a nice little trade between the Brewers and the Mariners. The Brewers had been one of the more interesting teams on the trade market with Kolton Wong and potentially Willy Adames on the table. Wong ended up being dealt to Seattle for Jesse Winker and Abraham Toro. Immediately after the trade, it was reported that the Brewers do NOT plan on trading Adames this offseason which takes one more option to replace Dansby off the table.