Atlanta Braves news: Braves are North Port bound for spring 2019

BRAVES NEWS

Atlanta falls to Washington in series opener

The final homestand of the season continued on Tuesday with Luiz Gohara making the start against the Nationals. Although Gohara had a creditable appearance, things didn’t go quite as well for the Braves as they did during their last showdown with Max Scherzer. Instead, Washington played well enough to put four runs on the board and limit the Braves to just two.

Braves set to move into new spring training home for 2019

It appears that the Braves’ are finally set to move to the North Port area in Florida after the city voted to go ahead with building the Braves’ spring training complex there. Now that the city has given its approval, 2018 will be the final year of spring training in Kissimmee for the Braves, and they’ll be moving to a much more convenient area of Florida starting in 2019.

Upton trade is really starting to pay dividends

Justin Upton is now with the Los Angeles Angels after stints with the Detroit Tigers and the San Diego Padres. While Upton has been bouncing from team-to-team and could be on another squad by the time 2018 rolls around, the Braves are still reaping the benefits from the trade that sent him to San Diego. David O’Brien talked about it in his latest blog post for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The Justin Upton trade was the impetus for getting all of the above players [Max Fried, Luiz Gohara, Dustin Peterson, Jace Peterson, among others] to the Braves organization. In effect, the Braves gave up one year of Upton and got a potential 30 years of major league service (before free agency) from the group of pitching prospects Gohara, Fried and Toussaint and utility players Jace and Dustin Peterson. And saved $4.5 million in the process.

If, say, two of the starting prospects Gohara, Fried and Toussaint turn out to be as good as many project, and Dustin Peterson becomes at least a solid major league fourth outfielder, think about what the Braves will have gotten in return for trading one year of Justin Upton.

A glance at the Braves’ 40-man roster

With the season winding down, now appears to be as good of a time as ever to check out the 40-man roster so we can get an idea of how the team will look as they head into another interesting offseason. Kris had the details on how the roster is looking at the moment.

MLB NEWS

A new single-season home run record is set

In the top of the eighth inning of Tuesday night’s game between the Royals and Blue Jays, Alex Gordon hit his eighth home run of the season. It was a solo shot and didn’t have much effect on the game itself, but it was a pretty important home run for the league as a whole. That’s because it was the 5,694th home run of this season, which broke the record that was set back in the 2000 season. There’s still plenty of time to add onto that number, and with the way the ball is flying out of the park this season, there’s no reason to believe that the record won’t rise significantly by the time the season ends.