Why haven’t the Braves looked outside the organization for pitching?
· Yahoo Sports
Relax. This is not a scathing post about the Braves’ trade deadline plans. The trade deadline won’t be for another eight days. This is more about my curiosity about where the Braves have gotten their bullpen help to date.
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By this time last year, the Braves had acquired seven pitchers via trade. This season, Victor Mederos is the only in-season pitcher acquisition. They had also four others via waiver claims last year. Now, this season you wouldn’t expect the Braves to acquire a lot of players from a waiver claim. That’s one of the (only?) downsides of having one of the best records in baseball for much of the season. They grabbed catcher Maverick Handley from the Orioles, who has largely been injured much of the season. But not a ton of players have flowed their way.
The Braves, for the most part, have been promoting and optioning their minor leaguers and placing players without options into the DFA/minor league deal/selection loop. And hoo boy, with volume and repetition this season. Seeing yet another roster tweet from the Braves is like one of those early morning life affirmations, just like my ankles cracking and seeing streams of work emails. Walt Weiss is more than a little annoyed, as he told Chad Bishop prior to last night’s game. I would reprise it here, but we’ve been over the how annoying the roster rules are with respect to size and number of pitchers.
So why haven’t the Braves looked outside the organization for pitching? Maybe they have and there’s nothing there. I’m not so sure. The Dodgers acquired Sean Halvorsen and his 99 MPH heater and stashed him in Triple-A. Good for the Dodgers, but acquiring Rockies relievers is kind of the Braves thing. Oh well, maybe they’re not interested in bullpen help so much getting an actual number two starter in a week.