The Braves Player Pool was announced on Sunday and was covered at Braves Journal yesterday. Today’s piece, “Braves Player Pool: Options”, will look at the entire pool and options for each player. Considering the strict circumstances for removing a player from the Player Pool and the limitations that a 40-man roster can bring in such a bizarre season, flexibility is going to be key when discussing players to add to the 30-man roster which becomes 28 after the first 2 weeks, then 26 in 4 weeks.
Braves Player Pool Options: Players on MILB Deals with 0 Options
- Charlie Culberson
- Rafael Ortega
- Peter O’Brien
- Felix Hernandez
- Josh Tomlin
- Tyler Matzek
- Yonder Alonso
- Pete Kozma
- Yangervis Solarte
Braves Player Pool Options: MLB Players with 0 Options
- Luke Jackson
- Adam Duvall
- Adeiny Hechavarria
- Will Smith
- Cole Hamels
- Shane Greene
- Mark Melancon
- Darren O’Day
- Travis d’Arnaud
- Tyler Flowers
- Marcell Ozuna
- Ender Inciarte
- Nick Markakis
- Freddie Freeman
- Mike Foltynewicz
Braves Player Pool with 1 Option
Braves Player Pool with 2 Options
- Jeremy Walker (Moved to 45-Day IL)
- Jacob Webb
- Patrick Weigel
- Bryse Wilson
- Kyle Wright
- A.J. Minter
- Chad Sobotka
- Sean Newcomb
- Johan Camargo
- Mike Soroka
- Touki Toussaint
- Huascar Ynoa
- Alex Jackson
Braves Player Pool with 3 Options
- Ronald Acuña, Jr.
- Ozzie Albies
- William Contreras
- Austin Riley
- Dansby Swanson
- Cristian Pache
- Jasseel De La Cruz
- Tucker Davidson
Braves Player Pool: Options Not Initiated
- Jared Shuster
- Jonathan Morales
- Logan Brown
- Phil Pfeifer
- Ian Anderson
- Kyle Muller
- Shea Langeliers
- Drew Waters
- Braden Shewmake
Wrapup
After placing Jeremy Walker on the 45-Day IL, the Braves have 39 players on the 40-man roster. Of those 39 men, 14 have no options.
These 14 players are locks for the roster.
There are also players who are MLB locks, especially for a shortened season, who have options but likely won’t use them. Those players are Fried, Martin, Newcomb, Camargo, Soroka, Acuña, Albies, Riley, and Swanson.
That makes 23 players locked into the roster.
When looking at potential early swaps and/or DFA candidates to create room for players on minor league deals (see Felix Hernandez, Charlie Culberson, Josh Tomlin), it’s important to look at players on the 40-man that are:
- Lacking Options
- Org surplus
Players that match those criteria are Grant Dayton, Chad Sobotka, Alex Jackson, Huascar Ynoa, Jacob Webb, Jeremy Walker, Touki Toussaint, Bryse Wilson, and Patrick Weigel. If any players from the pool get traded that are on the 40-man roster, I’d expect it to come from this list but I’ll also add one more player that could be shopped if the Braves go after a big target: Drew Waters.
Thanks for reading. If you’re interested in pieces like this, check out our entire Offseason Analysis here.
Dusty Says:
You can add Ian Desmond to that list and if you have time, seek out his moving instagram post. Really worth everyone’s time.
Thanks for that, Dusty — I just read his post, I hadn’t before. What a moving piece.
Thanks, Dusty. Very powerful.
We get the announcement that baseball is back and every Braves Journaler goes missing. Did y’all get kindnapped by Melky?
Can’t speak for others, but I’d say right now I’m just holding my breath.
@5
I’m glad you feel that way because I do too. Cases in FL are going crazy and no one is wearing masks. We’ve had about 150 in our small area this past week. As a school teacher and as a parent of a soon to be kindergartener, I don’t want to do distance learning and I don’t want Murphy Jo to do it either. Because it was such a small sample, I cannot measure it’s success, but I feel it’s about 50% as effective as physical classrooms, especially for the K-6 classrooms.
I’m tired. I’m overwhelmed with 2 kids at home and a wife working from 6 in the AM until 8 at night, and I need to see an ending to this sh*t. Unfortunately, I don’t. I want people to be responsible, yet everywhere I go there’s people everywhere that are taking 0 social distancing precautions.
Ryan, kids and grands invaded. Noise and distractions now gone. Noise missed. Wife and I visited cemetery today. It’s livelier than our empty nest.
Ryan, I feel your frustration. I’m all about individual freedom, but my gosh, I wish people would just honestly give social distancing and masks a shot.
Also, in other news, if you want to stream cable and get MLB Network, then YouTube TV is pretty much the only game in town. And it just went up to $65/month. Poop. It’s starting to approach the cost of cable, but with the ability to stream it on any device that can stream, it makes it infinitely more valuable.
Were people this stubborn about not using seatbelts when they were invented? I imagine they were since only like 70% of people actually wear seatbelts.
I honestly think the season has a 50/50 chance of happening. I also am worried about college football.
We’re taking actions orders of magnitude greater than anything we’ve ever done before, and I think to buy in, people need to feel like we’re facing a situation orders of magnitude greater than anything we’ve ever seen before. It’s a big ol’ country, but it seems like in a lot of places people don’t have that feeling.
I feel like we’re living in “The Lottery” (spoiler alert.) Everybody knows that somebody’s going to die, but nobody believes it’s going to be them.
Ryan, as far as on-line schooling goes, I’m with you. My wife teaches 5th and 6th grade and she taught the last 2.5 months of school online. She worked extremely hard and it was a challenge, but doable for that age. It also helped that it was at the end of the year and not the beginning. IMO 3rd grade and younger is almost impossible to have any type of effectiveness online.
The strange thing is that for over 99% of the kids, getting this thing will be very light and some won’t even know they have it. It would almost be better for them to get it and build up an immunity. However, it puts teachers, parents, and especially grandparents at high risk. If we do have school, I think a lot of kids will be out an extended time and schools will be shutting down for weeks at a time.
I’m of the opinion that the first lockdown was too soon. Every city and state were treated like Seattle, LA, and NYC. The public got burned out on lockdown when there was not really a high concentration of the virus in most places. In South Carolina, we had ~100 cases a day during the lockdown and now we’re approaching 2,000 a day. I think the virus should have been allowed to get a little “hotter” before shutting things down.
I know the moderators have asked us to tread lightly as feelings run pretty hot regarding the state of our world right now. I agree with you, sdp — there certainly was a feeling of burnout. But timing was always going to be a bear because the numbers lag about a month behind reality, between the long incubation period (and period of asymptomatic transmission) and the testing delays. It’s like the delay between conception and actually seeing a baby bump.
So it’s no surprise that the report of the massive rise in cases started a few weeks after Memorial Day — the spread clearly started right on Memorial Day weekend, and then after the lag, it started showing up in the numbers.
@13: I live in the Philadelphia area, and certainly don’t think the stay-at-home orders were issued too soon. Looking back at the case, hospitalization, and death data now, I shudder to think how much worse it would be now if the SAH policy had been put off by even a few weeks. But we’re a big country, as someone already said, and there’s a lot of “room” for the virus to move around in, so, the timing was not going to be equally effective everywhere.
@5: I’m holding my breath, too, and wouldn’t be surprised if there’s no MLB season. But I’ve been struggling with something else, kind of an ethical dilemma. Back in March, when there was a massive shortage of tests, I decided I wouldn’t feel comfortable consuming baseball if the players were given tests daily (or bi-daily) when tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of other Americans couldn’t get one (or couldn’t get one quickly enough to be useful). Later, it seemed that capacity increased enough to allay my concerns. Now, however, there area again signs that there aren’t enough tests to go around.
This is, of course, on top of my previously stated concerns about how meaningful this season would be, given the small sample size of games, etc.
Part of me really, REALLY wants baseball. But the other part of me just can’t easily enjoy it.
Thanks for mentioning this AAR. Looks like everyone is being respectful and if we can continue down a productive path discussing this, we’ll be the first community in history to do so.
That’s a challenge, Braves Journalers! Up for it?
Happy Bobby Bonilla Day, everybody. Today’s the day Bobby gets his $1.2 million from the LolMets. After today, only 15 more years to go.
@16 I think we’ve done well so far.
@17, honestly, Jonathan, I don’t know how I can ever repay the Mets for the amount of joy that they provide me in my daily life.
This is years old, but I’m just going to post it because it brings me pure unbridled delight.
@19
LOL…never seen that before. That is pretty epic. Best part is Michael Kay’s reaction when he goes completely off the deep end and claims the Mets “killed Gil Hodges.”
I think my favorite sentence in all of it was “JERRY KOOSMAN WAS A TWIN!!!”
New thread!
https://bravesjournal.mystagingwebsite.com/2020/07/02/braves-needs-for-2020-left-handed-bat/