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BRAVES NEWS
Sean Rodriguez and his family were involved in car crash
One of the newest Atlanta Braves had an extremely rough weekend, as Sean Rodriguez and his family were involved in a car crash on Saturday. The sad news is that there was a fatality — the driver of a stolen police car crashed into the Rodriguez family’s vehicle was killed in the accident. Fortunately, the Rodriguez family survived the crash. Let’s keep the family in thoughts and prayers as they recover from the incident.
Sean and his wife are OK, which is great. best to his 2 kids, who are said to be in serious but stable condition. https://t.co/Zy5mD7Hggl
— Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) January 30, 2017
Plenty of Braves make MLB.com’s Top 100 Prospects list
Over the weekend, MLB.com released their list of their Top 100 prospects ahead of the 2017 season and to the surprise of nobody, a bushel of Atlanta Braves prospects made the list. Seven Braves made the list, ranging from Ian Anderson at number 86 to Dansby Swanson at number 4. Jonathan Mayo even noted that there were a couple of Braves prospects that he’d place in the 101-110 range, so it confirms what we already knew — This farm is loaded.
Will Adam Walker break through to the big leagues with the Braves?
Wayne Cavadi of Minor League Ball recently took a look at one of the latest players that the Braves took a minor league flier on — Adam Walker. He may have finished last season with the Twins, but he’s bounced around from team to team until being claimed via waivers by the Braves. Now the main question is whether or not the outfielder with solid power but a penchant for striking out can make it into the major leagues this season.
It is a good landing spot for Walker. The Braves took Adonis Garcia — a 30 year old "prospect" — out of the Yankees farm system and have made him a functional place holder on their ever-evolving team. Perhaps they could do the same for Walker.
That is, assuming Walker sticks around longer than his last two spots. The Braves starting outfield is set, so his shortcomings in the field as a fourth outfielder won’t be as glaring. Perhaps his power would be most effective in a limited role, taking the time to finally learn how to lay off breaking pitches. The Braves could always use an extra power bat in a lineup that has finished dead last in baseball in home runs the past two seasons.
How good can the Braves bullpen be this year?
Assuming that those rumors of a possible trade to the Mets are complete malarkey, Arodys Vizcaino will once again play a major role in the Braves bullpen in 2017. The tail end of the bullpen could be solid if Jim Johnson has another decent season as well. But just how good can the rest of the bullpen be? Greg Goldstein of Call to the Pen tried to figure it out.
Overall, the Braves are filled with high potential hurlers in the bullpen, but that comes with a fair amount of risk, too. Jim Johnson should be able to bring some much-needed veteran consistency to a bullpen that lacks experience and is marked by some clear red flags. But the young arms of Vizcaino, Cabrera, Krol and Ramirez all have had their bright spots as well, which should add some intrigue when this revised starting rotation gives way to the later innings.
MLB NEWS
Brandon Moss signs with the Royals
After spending a couple of seasons with the Cardinals, Brandon Moss is on the move again. Our friends over at Beyond the Box Score made a case for all 30 teams to sign him, and one team who apparently “listened” to the advice was the Kansas City Royals. KC will be paying Moss $12 million over the next two seasons, and he’ll likely be a source of a decent amount of power for the Royals next season if all goes well.
Details from Cardinals/Astros hacking gets released
Over the weekend, some filings from the case that saw former Cardinals exec Chris Correa convicted were unsealed and released to the public. The significance of this is that we’ll probably see MLB actually take some action against the Cardinals since all of the information is out there. I doubt that we’ll see MLB deliver some sort of major punishment, but it’s clear that Correa was trying to help the Cardinals get an inside scoop on the competition’s intel. Here’s just a little bit of the information that our friends at Bucs Dugout gleaned from the reports:
Among many other things, Correa studied Astros’ reports on a number of players the Astros were considering for the draft, including left-hander Marco Gonzales, whom the Cards drafted with the 19th overall pick in 2013. Interestingly, Correa also studied the Astros’ reports on infielder Erich Weiss, drafted by the Pirates in round 11 the same year.