Braves wary of overpaying for top-tier starting pitcher
The Atlanta Braves entered baseball’s Winter Meetings as one of the teams to watch in the market for available aces, but the front office appears unwilling to pay exorbitant asking prices for Chris Sale, Chris Archer or Sonny Gray.
“This step is one I think that deviates from what we’re doing,” Braves president of baseball operations John Hart said on Monday. “ … Does that guy take us to where we now become the team to beat? I don’t think so. Does it make us better and give us a batter chance to compete? Absolutely. But at what price?”
No team in baseball focused more on starting pitching than the Braves in November. The franchise walked out of the 2016 season disappointed in the development of multiple young pitchers and quickly added Bartolo Colon, R.A. Dickey and Jaime Garcia to the rotation. At the “right price,” a fourth starter is a possibility, but that price has not arrived thus far. If the top potential sellers — the White Sox, Rays and A’s, among others — are seeking an even bigger haul than last season’s blockbuster Shelby Miller deal, Atlanta is wary of playing the opposite role.
“We’d all love to make the big deal and get the great player and we win the Winter Meetings and there’s high-fives and all that, but we’ve gotta be conscious of the long pull. We’re in this for the long pull,” general manager John Coppolella said. “We don’t want to have a window. We want to have waves.
“When you meet the asking prices that are out there for these pitchers at this current time, it’s gonna put a hole in your system. It’s not going to be easy. They aren’t just going to hand these guys over to the Braves.”
The front office views Chris Sale as a clear-cut No. 1 starter — Coppolella even threw him into the “best pitcher in baseball” discussion — with Archer and Gray a tier below. With all three pitchers providing at least three years of club control at team-friendly prices, the Braves remain interested, but there seems to be a hesitancy to uproot a two-year rebuilding effort — a plan geared primarily toward landing elite pitching prospects through the draft and trades.
“We’re probably never a club that’s gonna go out and compete for that No. 1 guy out there, at least not for the near-term,” Hart said. “We’ve taken these pitchers because we feel that we’ve got guys that have that kind of upside — that are quality, bright young prospects.”
In Colon, Dickey and Garcia, the Braves believe they have filled 500-plus innings without any long-term repercussions. (The front office has also exhibited a propensity to trade veteran arms, such as Bud Norris or Lucas Harrell, midseason when opportunities present themselves.) This could all very well be public posturing as the market develops, but the front office’s public comments consistently resembled something like this from John Coppolella: “The last thing here I want to do is just blow it up so we can get one guy.”
“They are wants,” Coppolella continued, “they aren’t needs.”
