Atlanta Braves news: More on Santana, Tucker and McCarthy

BRAVES NEWS

Atlanta brings back Santana for 2018

Despite non-tendering Danny Santana earlier this offseason, the Braves have decided to bring the utilityman back into the fold on a minor-league deal. This was actually a savvy bit of business as the Braves were able to avoid going to arbitration with Santana by bringing him back in this manner. Of course, it’s not the most exciting deal in the world and there’s definitely no guarantee that Santana (who finished 2017 with a -0.2 fWAR) will make the squad coming out of spring training. However, he’ll have every opportunity to do so thanks to this invite.

What to expect from Tucker

Meanwhile, the Braves added another player for depth purposes as they traded for Preston Tucker. Again, the expectations aren’t going to be too high here as he’ll probably be utilized as a bench player for the most part and Eric made sure to outline exactly what should be expected out of Tucker.

Learning more about McCarthy

Gabriel Burns of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution gave us five things to know about Charlie Culberson earlier this week. Now, he’s back at it again as he’s now given us five things to know about Brandon McCarthy. This is a bit of a spoiler, but Burns did note that McCarthy’s Twitter game is pretty good and I suggest that you follow him over there.

Yet another look at the Braves-Dodgers trade

If you haven’t gotten enough of reading about the big trade that went down last week, then Issac Gamboa from Off The Bench still has some thoughts for you to digest. He breaks down the how and why of the trade for both sides and (surprise, surprise) he thinks that both teams made out well in the wake of this deal.

MLB NEWS

Is Baltimore really “moving on” from trading Machado?

While the Orioles have actively been shopping and listening to offers on Manny Machado, they’ve also taken the stance of trying not to look desperate to trade him. In fact, Baltimore declared that they would be “moving on” from trading their star third baseman. Camden Chat is a bit skeptical about this whole angle.

The wisdom of all of this is something that will be debated for some time. Not knowing what kinds of offers teams were making, it's tough to say for sure whether the Orioles should or shouldn't have made the trade, but with or without Machado, the team still has just two starting pitchers and many of the good options for pitching in their price range are gone.

Reality will catch up to the Orioles eventually. For now, they can pretend. In another month when we know who they have and haven't signed, we'll know how long they plan to keep pretending about next season.

New York is ready to make a move on Cole

Elsewhere in the AL East, the Yankees are continuing their aggressive offseason activities by making a run at Pittsburgh Pirates starter Gerrit Cole. There were reports that the talks had cooled down, but yesterday saw rumors emerge that the talks were heating up and that a deal could be struck in the imminent future. Our friends over at Bucs Dugout believe that the talks are “going strong,” so don’t be shocked if we see this thing happen in the near future.