The Atlanta Braves completed a swap for St. Louis Cardinals starting pitcher Jaime Garcia last night, sending a package of 3 fringe Major League prospects to Missouri. The deal is an interesting one, but not the type of franchise-altering swap to which Braves fans have become accustomed. If you’re a casual fan, you probably aren’t entirely sure who this Garcia guy is, and that is the most puzzling part of the deal for me. The Braves just clogged up their rotation with another #4 starter.
Off the Bench once ribbed the Red Sox for fielding a rotation full of #2 starters. There is likely no verb strong enough to adequately condemn a rotation full of #4 starters, but here we are. Atlanta just added their third veteran starter of the offseason, and is now on the hook to pay these old guys $36 million in 2017. For a rebuilding team still treading water and waiting on the full calvary of prospect talent to arrive, this is the type of deal that can disrupt the years-long plan.
But let’s get into this deal for a moment before I talk Braves fans back off the cliff.
Just one year ago, Garcia posted a 2.43 ERA across 130 innings, but he’s always been injury prone; a casualty of his high-stress delivery. Garcia was less effective in 2016: 4.65 ERA in 170 innings, while walking more batters per 9 than he had since 2010, and giving up homers at a higher rate. The big problem here? This 2016 season was the second most valuable season in his last 6. He simply doesn’t pitch that often, and didn’t pitch well in his most recent campaign.
The Braves will pay him $12M in 2017 and I suppose there’s a decent chance that he pitches well. There is definitely a higher chance that he pitches poorly, or doesn’t pitch often enough to be meaningful. So that’s effectively a $12 M bet with little chance of upside, taken for no real reason.
The Braves already had a set of 5-7 pitchers set to battle it out in Spring Training. Julio Teheran, Bartolo Colon, Mike Foltynewicz, Matt Wisler, Aaron Blair, and RA Dickey all likely deserve rotation consideration. Adding Garcia to the mix does little but stunt the development of the young guys.
There is good news, though. The Braves didn’t give up much to get Garcia. Jon Gant is likely the best player going to St. Louis and he proved in 2016 that he couldn’t get by on pure funk. He needs to improve as a pitcher in order to be even an effective middle reliever. He’s still under team control for 5 more years though, and I would bet that he pitches more innings for St. Louis than Garcia does for Atlanta. I’m not sure if that will be a good thing or bad thing (or, to be honest, if that’s more a reflection on Gant or an indictment of Garcia). I would bet the other two prospects heading back to St. Louis, Chris Ellis and Luke Dykstra, don’t contribute much though.
There’s even more good news: The offseason is not over and the Braves are likely not going into 2017 with the roster as currently constructed. On a pure “value” basis, they probably won this deal. It positions the team to deal for the “Ace” that they have been rumored to be seeking. David O’Brien, the guy who has been covering the Braves since I was in middle school, suggests that Julio Teheran could be included in a deal for Chris Sale. That would sure be fun.
The Braves added a lefty pitcher who might turn out to be valuable, and they didn’t give up much for him. And they made their if-everything-goes-right MLB roster even better. The Braves will only make the playoffs in 2017 if they hit that everything-goes-right lottery ticket– and I’m OK with the front office optimism and planning for that best case scenarios. Bottom line: The team is very much “meh,” and Jamia Garcia’s presence or absence doesn’t do much to change that. But, just as I preached in November of last year: “Patience.” The trade is certainly puzzling, but somewhere in there it makes sense. Let’s let the full vision come to fruition before we go grabbing out pitchforks.
-Sean Morash
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