Results tagged ‘ Ryan Ludwick ’
Furcal Not A Brave
Well if you haven’t heard now, Furcal isn’t going to the Braves. After we had an agreement, he went and signed with the Dodgers. It isn’t looking to good for the Braves considering this is the third time this has happened…
Wednesday
Apparently Yahoo’s Tim Brown said Furcal is “nearing an agreement with the Dodgers.”
This isn’t good.
Tuesday
According to Ken Rosenthal, shortstop Rafael Furcal has reached an agreement with the Braves and just needs to pass a physical. It is a 3 year deal with a 4th year vesting option. This would be good news to the Braves considering he was a fan-favorite here in Atlanta and came up with up with the Braves. He also considers Bobby Cox someone like a father. As most of you know, he declined a 4 year 36mm from Oakland and is probably going to decline their 4 year 40mm deal as well.
There was lots of talk about him coming here during the Peavy talks when we considered moving Escobar to San Diego. A couple of things could happen here
1. We might continue talk with the Padres and send Yunel to SD.
2. We might trade Yunel somewhere else to get another player.
3. We might trade Kelly Johnson to the Cardnials for Ludwick or Ankiel
4. We might trade Kelly Johnson to SD in the Peavy deal.
5. We might trade Kelly Johnson to another team for other players.
6. We might keep both Kelly and Yunel and move Key back to left field, move either Yunel or Furcal to SS, and move the other to 2nd base.
The last one seems the most likely, but I am not sure what will happen. Prado might end up having to be the backup 2nd, 1st, and 3rd baseman. Gotay and Infante might not see as much playing time as well. Either Infante, Escobar, Prado, or Johnson will be traded most likely. Norton will most likely not return as well.
Furcal is a good lead-off hitter and hits for average. He is NOT a power hitter, but if we can get a power hitter behind Chipper, we will be a good team (well at least if we get some more pitching). Oh and he will bring back one of the things that we thrived on during the 14 consecutive playoff years, Speed. We haven’t had that since he left.
ESPN’s Jerry Crasnick has a source saying no agreement has been reached, but there is interest. I am hoping Rosenthal is right. We will have to play the waiting game for now.
Crasnick now says the Braves have a preliminary agreement with Furcal.
Apparently Yahoo’s Tim Brown said Furcal is “nearing an agreement with the Dodgers.”
This isn’t good.
Burnett a Yankee
Yankees signed A.J. Burnett to a five-year, $82.5MM deal. We essentially did nothing over the last week, and that may cause our season to already be over. You may say we had no chance to sign him, but we really did. Right now we are 1-4 with pitchers this offseason (Tazawa, Peavy, Burnett). We seriously NEED to steep it up right now.
Sheets is the next thing on our agenda. We could possibly bid for Derek Lowe, but it’s very unlikely. Right now I wished we would have keep Hampton. We also need to get a power-hitting outfielder. Since we aren’t gonna have that awesome rotation, we might as well get some major offense to heal the pain.
Someone like Ludwick might help, if he does prove last year wasn’t a fluke. We also need Sheets and another pitcher such as Garland. We night have to throw Smoltz in the rotation just because of experience and the fact we might end up with a rotation similar to
Vazquez, Jurrjens, Campillo, Morton, and Hanson. Throw Smoltz in for Morton and it might be a 3/5 star rotation. Maybe. Chuck James just got non-tendered, so he is a free agent. Didn’t see much in him anyway. He was just a trading chip at the best. Plus we freed a couple of thousand dollars and gave us back couple of extra wins that he would have made us lose.
Parr, Redmond, and Reyes are the other starters we have, so we are seriously screwed if we don’t get Sheets or just Anybody!
Come on Wren! Make something special happen!
Maybe we will be good in ’11 or ’12.
Braves Interested in… Everything?
As you can tell, the Braves have been in many trade discussion, with the addition to a couple of free agents. I thought we were mostly going to focus on the free agent market with the exception of the Peavy deal and a couple of others. Speaking of Peavy, it looks like he will not become a Brave this season. It’s not impossible, but it looks like Towers wants to be, well lets just say stupid for the sake of the kids, and only trade him to the Cubs.
Well anyway the Braves have their eyes on Ludwick, Ankiel, Dye, Hart, Hermida, and Ibanez for the outfield. The also are exploring the possibility of sending Frenchy to the Royals for Zack Greinke. That would be a steal for the Braves, but I really don’t want to trade him. Every player has a bad year, maybe not as bad as his, but they all have one. Let’s give him one more chance Atlanta! Especially since he’s always got that smile on his face, even if he screwed up, you never see him frown. That’s a god attitude.
Plus he’s a fan favorite
I say keep Frenchy.
The Braves have also been in a lot of talk with Burnett and many other pitchers. I just hope we have a solid rotation, Peavy or no Peavy. Wren, I wanna hear some Smoltz talk. Everyone knows he is going to pitch, so please just talk to him about a contract, preferably a cheap and short one. No Glavine either. Thanks.
Well anyway the Braves do need to start releasing/trading/doing anything to get rid of a couple of players, mostly Corky Miller. We need to start reducing the payroll from the not-as-good players so we don’t end up paying millions for players who have a 10.70 ERA or a .100 average. Yes it sounds childish, but we need to get some stuff done
I guess we can pencil in Escobar as the SS of next year and so forth. Thanks Towers.
By the way, We need to work on a new contract with Huddy and Chipper. Maybe even JJ, Esco, Johnson, and Prado. Again Childish, but it needs to get done, especially the first two.
-Darion
Well Now What?
We finally did something positive this offseason by trading for Javier Vazquez. He is due for 11.5 per year. We started with 45 million and we will definitely have to use it all. Don’t forget we signed Eric O’Flaherty to a 400,000 per year contract as well. We probably lost around 400,000 with the players we traded for Vazquez, but Vazquez is going to get paid 11.5million
a year.
This leaves around 33.5 million left. We still have some major needs though (Dye/Ankiel/Ludwick, Renteria/Furcal, Peavy and Burnett) and we may have to settle with the cheap options. Ludwick looks more likely now than Dye does since Ludwick makes 500,000 a year. If we sign Furcal or Renteria, it can’t be higher than 11 million a year. Peavy will make 15 million next year I think, but I’m sure I’m wrong. Burnett will likely make 17million a year.
I’ll say
500,000 Ludwick
10,000,000 Furcal
11,000,000 Peavy
That’s 21.5 million leaving us with around 12 million left. We will obviously lose some of our salary with the players we trade for Peavy and Ludwick, but we still need to sign Smoltz and possibly Ohman, Norton, and Glavine. I’m hoping we only sign Smoltz, Norton, and Ohman though.
We will have to trade a couple of other players now if we want to fill in our needs. Matt Diaz looks like with his 1.25million salary last year.Escobar and Boyer also will most likely be included in the Peavy deal and they will make around 1 million.
We will just have to see what Wren has up his sleeves. If we can trade off a couple of players and sign a shortstop to less than 10million a year, we might be able to fulfill our needs. We will most likely have either Burnett or Peavy this year. I don’t think we will get both. 
What do you think we should do?
UPDATE!
Braves are apparently close to signing David Ross to a 2 year contract. It is worth around $3.5 million. This would be great, but that would almost currently mean either the Peavy deal or the Burnett signing are not going to happen. I still say the Peavy deal is most likely to happen because Burnett might not sign with us even though we are going to offer him a 5 year contract.
Anyways, David Ross would be a great backup catcher and would be a significant upgrade to both Sammons and Miller combined. Corky Miller is almost certain to either get traded or released if Ross signs. Sammons will likely stay with the Braves organization and will be called up as the backup when he is ready.
-Darion
Will the Braves go for 5?
A.J. Burnett will not sign a contract unless it is a 5 year deal. The Yankees have declined to do that, opening a huge doorway for the Braves. But do the Braves want to go 5?? Burnett, as most know, is injured ALL THE TIME. Out of his 10 year career, he has only pitched over 200 innings 3 times. Pretty scary.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/b/burnea.01.shtml – this site can show you all his stats over his career. He does have a 3.81 ERA and is usually lights out when he isn’t injured. Sheets is another option and will most likely sign a contract for 2-3 years. He is also lights out when he’s healthy but I don’t know what kind of chances Wren wants to take because of last year’s injuries. I actually want to take a chance on Burnett and the Blue Jays look likely to do that too. It is a huge sign of relief if the Yanks don’t bid on Burnett so we don’t have to compete with a 20 million a year contract. These are our most likely options for next year’s rotation in order: Peavy, Hampton, Glavine, Burnett, Lowe, Tazawa, Garland, and Sheets. I think we can get 2 of those players. The other players on our team to fill in spots in the rotation are Campillo, Parr, Morton, Reyes, Hanson, Redmond, Carlyle, and James. I doubt we will do much this offseason with the outfield. If we don’t trade for Ankiel or Ludwick or don’t sign Ibanez, then look for a Schafer/Diaz, Anderson/Diaz, and Frenchy outfield.
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