Wren Doesn’t Need to ‘Respond’ To The Jose Reyes Deal

December 5, 2011 at 2:58 pm by Franklin Rabon under Atlanta Braves, Florida Marlins, NL East News, Transaction Analysis

A lot of Braves fans have been burning up Twitter with the news of the Marlins apparent signing of Jose Reyes. The main theme is “how is Wren going to respond to this move?! How will we compete?!” My answer is “the same way we were going to in the first place, by making smart, long term sustainable moves.”

First, let’s briefly address the Marlins by making the obvious pun, something is really fishy here. I don’t think the Marlins, in their wildest dreams, believe that things are really going to turn around attendance wise in South Florida. Sure, their will be an initial bump, as curiosity about the new ballpark and weird conglomeration of new faces causes a few people to pack the stadium early on. It’s also hard to make out exactly what will come of the SEC investigation on Loria’s ripping off south Florida Taxpayers creative public financing for the new stadium.

My belief is that Loria is looking to build some appearance of value based upon the fleecing of the taxpayers for a new stadium and a few big gate seasons and then sell the team before the bottom falls out. That’s just speculation obviously, but a lot is going on here that we’re not privy to, and the Securities and Exchange Commission is taking a look, which is never a good thing.

Even with Reyes, the Marlins have a lot of holes. Nobody is exactly sure of how healthy Josh Johnson is going to be, and even with him, their pitching is shaky at best. The Marlins could field a very dangerous lineup, with their young power talent plus Reyes and Hanley. But that won’t really matter if they get the same pitching they had as last year. Sure, they could contend, but these moves aren’t made at an angle of trying to contend, they’re made at being flashy, generating headlines and publicity.

Another telling sign was the lack of no trade clause. Not because that, in and of itself means much, but because historically the Marlins have handed out no trade clauses. If this had been the Braves, nobody would have thought twice about the lack of a no trade clause, because that is just how the Braves operate. But with the Marlins, it was a deliberate change of strategy. They’re clearly not willing to commit to this ‘spending plan’ for the long haul.

At best, the Marlins and Mets are just switching places right now. Now, if they go out and sign C.J. Wilson and Albert Pujols, then we’re perhaps talking a different scenario, but I still see that as unlikely. I think because of the trouble the Marlins give the Braves at times, we tend to forget that the Marlins were actually the last place team in the division. They finished 17 games behind the Braves.

Thus, I believe that the notion that the Braves have to “respond” to the Marlins moves is absurd. Will the Marlins be better this year? Absolutely, it’d hard to be a whole lot worse, they lost 90 games last year. However, I don’t really see a world in which they make a quantum leap forward to contention just because they made one splashy and stupid move (Jose Reyes’ contract) and one just plain stupid move (Heath Bell’s contract). The chances are much higher that the Marlins are looking to dump those contracts this season than they are actually contending.

The Atlanta Braves just need to worry about following the long term plan to building and maintaining the club that they’ve been so disciplined with over the past few years. This team needs a couple of nice moves to patch up a few holes, and they’re back in the playoffs, with a shot at winning the world series for several more years. About the only thing that could mess that up is if they tried to “respond to” the signing of Jose Reyes.

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Series Thoughts: Mutts / Series Preview: Marlins

May 6, 2009 at 4:03 pm by Capitol Avenue Club under Atlanta Braves, Florida Marlins, New York Mutts, Series Preview, Series Thoughts, Transactions

Well, at least the Braves will be nice and rested for the Marlins series, because they completely took the day off on Monday and Tuesday.  I’m not even going to talk about the Mets series because it’s just going to piss me off.  I’ll just leave you 2 quotes.  First is from Matthew Pouliot of Circling the Bases:

The Braves rewarded Garret Anderson’s refusal to go on a rehab assignment by inserting him right into the cleanup spot in his return from the disabled list. He went hitless — against Livan Hernandez of all pitchers — but he did make it through nine innings without being charged with an error.

We don’t know the circumstances surrounding Garret’s alleged refusal to go on a rehab assignment, but we do know that he sucks and shouldn’t be starting.

The second is from our back-up catcher, David Ross (per the AJC):

Ross said, “Schafer isn’t the only one struggling. I’m struggling. It’s a team unit. Schafer was getting some hits early. Everybody struggles at times.”

Ross makes a great point.  I’ll take it a step further.  Everyone on the offense is struggling.  Our offense is just absolutely pathetic.

Looking forward, which is an easy thing to do given our pathetic preformance so far, we’ll be facing the fish down in South Florida for another 2-game set.  It’s a quirky thing with MLB scheduling, but every team had a 2-game series on Monday and Tuesday and everyone has a 2-game series on Wednesday and Thursday.  The people that do scheduling are a lot smarter than I so I’m sure they have a good reason for doing so.

Anyway, we’re sending Derek Lowe and Jair Jurrjens, our 2 best starters, to the hill for this series.  They’re sending Graham Taylor and Anibal Sanchez, their 2 worst starters, to the hill for the series.  If you’ve never heard of Graham Taylor that’s because he has a grand total of 8 and 2/3 major league innings under his belt.  He’s taking the place of the injured Andrew Miller, who beat us at the Ted earlier this season.  We need to win both games and you would think we’d be favored, but if our offense doesn’t start putting pressure on them EVERY INNING as opposed to 10% of the time, we won’t win 75 games.

We need another bat.  We should’ve pulled the trigger on that Ryan Ludwick deal a long time ago.  I supported it at the time and I still say not acquiring Ludwick was the biggest blunder of the off-season.  Here’s how I would’ve approached the off-season if I were in Wren’s shoes.

Start with 45 million dollars.  Non-tender (or trade for a box of baseball cards) Francoeur and Diaz for another 4 million.   Trade Diory Hernandez and 2 other minor-leaguers for Scott Olsen and Josh Willingham before the Nationals can pull the same trade.  Trade Kelly Johnson and Rafael Soriano for Ryan Ludwick and a minor leaguer.  Sign Derek Lowe for 4 years 48 million (no way any other team is going to match that).  Sign Orlando Hudson for 2 years 16 million to replace Kelly Johnson.  Match the Red Sox offer for Smoltz (1 year, 10 million).  Sign Kerry Wood for 2 years 22 million.  Sign Will Ohman at 2 years 5 million.  Sign David Ross, Infante, and Norton as Wren did.

Bullpen:

Ohman, Wood, Gonzalez, Carlyle, Bennett, Moylan, and someone.

Rotation:

Smoltz, Lowe, Jurrjens, Olsen, Hanson/Reyes/Morton/Campillo

Line-up:

Schafer, Willingham, Chipper, Ludwick, McCann, Hudson, Escobar, Kotchman

Bench:

Norton, Infante, Prado, Ross, and Josh Anderson.

That team is a lot better than this one.

But hindsight is 20/20, and I do think Wren did a fairly good job of putting the team together.

We need to win some games.  Starting… Now.