As we speak’s an off-day for the Atlanta Braves and it’s additionally a kind of uncommon days the place nothing appears to be happening. No strikes have been made, no person’s gotten injured (or suspended) and no person’s mentioned or accomplished something that made the group’s famous person hop on Twitter, publish a tweet after which delete it in a while. Briefly, it’s been a easy and boring day up to now and also you received’t be listening to me complain about that, in any respect!
With that being mentioned, it’s time to speak about one thing that fell by the cracks not all that way back. Again on April 16, Tyler Kepner of The Athletic posted an article that ranked the entrance workplaces throughout baseball primarily based on the opinions of 40 MLB executives and coaches. It’s one thing that they’ve accomplished frequently throughout all of sports activities and if you happen to haven’t checked it out but, I extremely advocate that you simply do.
As you possibly can think about, Alex Anthopoulos and Atlanta’s entrance workplace has ranked extraordinarily extremely over time — efficiently constructing a core for the long-term and wining a World Sequence within the course of will have a tendency to try this for you. Nevertheless, the sheen could be beginning to put on off only a tiny bit, because the Braves entrance workplace ended up taking a slight slide on this 12 months’s rankings in comparison with the place they have been in 2024.
The Braves slid from being ranked at No. 3 in final season’s ballot to being tied for sixth on this 12 months’s ballot. Right here’s an excerpt from the article:
…They’re clearly nonetheless among the many majors’ most envied entrance workplaces, led by the decisive and opportunistic Alex Anthopoulos.
“They’ve accomplished an amazing job after the primary spherical in getting guys like Spencer Strider and Michael Harris and so they’ve accomplished an unbelievable job of preserving guys with long-term extensions,” mentioned one baseball operations president. “They’ve additionally accessed high-end gamers in trades, like (Matt) Olson and (Sean) Murphy, and prolonged them, too. They usually’ve constructed such a superb state of affairs there that they’re now capable of exist close to the highest of the payroll mountain.”
Whereas the Braves might have truly slashed payroll a bit of bit when in comparison with what they have been spending final 12 months (even though Alex Anthopoulos instructed the media within the early phases of the offseason that payroll could be going up), they’re nonetheless solidly within the high 10 of all of baseball in relation to spending cash on their group, so it’s not as in the event that they’ve gone into full penny-pinching mode like some groups have accomplished. Plus it’s exhausting to argue with the truth that every time this group has its full praise of gamers at its disposal, they’re fairly daggone good.
Nonetheless, I’d think about that a number of us would’ve favored to have seen the beginning rotation shored up as a substitute of counting on inner choices whereas additionally searching for a shortstop resolution that’s higher than “Simply hope that Orlando Arcia or Nick Allen occur to have it on their days to start out.” You may’t actually blame them for the tough outfield state of affairs, although it’s simple to think about that that’ll definitely look higher as soon as Jurickson Profar returns from suspension and Ronald Acuña Jr. returns from damage. For now, the Braves are making do with what they’ve obtained and so they’re hanging proper on in there as they’ve not less than began to make some progress on getting out of that seven-game gap to start out the season.
Additionally, Alex Anthopoulos has accomplished a fairly strong job of patching issues up on the fly, even though they clearly now not have a number of prospect capital to take care of. By way of dealing with the playing cards he’s been dealt, issues might definitely have ended up worse and it seems that each AA’s status and Atlanta’s rep as a entrance workplace remains to be intact with the group nonetheless being extremely regarded — even with this gradual begin to the season.
For what it’s price, the Braves have been tied at sixth place with the Phillies and each organizations acquired an equal quantity of first place votes. To completely no person’s shock, the Dodgers have been voted as having the very best entrance workplace in baseball proper now and the margin between them and second place (the Rays) wasn’t significantly shut, both.
So, what do y’all consider these rankings? Do you suppose the Braves are rated too extremely on this regard? Do you suppose they’re nonetheless a bit underrated as a entrance workplace? Or do you suppose they have been correctly rated. I’m certain there are some sturdy opinions on the market on this one, so tell us what you suppose.
