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It’s been 24 days since the Braves last made a meaningful move, as they signed Cole Hamels back on December 4. It’s been 15 days since the Braves last made a minor move, in this case re-signing Charlie Culberson, who was non-tendered earlier in the offseason, to a minor league deal. Most of the hot stove news in Braves-dom for the past fortnight has been erstwhile Bravos finding new homes, including Julio Teheran in Anaheim, Dallas Keuchel on Chicago’s South Side, and most recently, Francisco Cervelli in Miami.
That relative dearth of Braves-specific action has caused some media types to fill the nature-abhorred vacuum with various bits of fluff. One particular dust bunny has been Jon Morosi reporting this non-morsel:
Sources: #Braves have inquired to #Rockies on a Nolan Arenado trade, although discussions between the teams have not been active recently. Atlanta is said to be wary of the salary commitment but has the sort of prospect group Colorado wants in any Arenado deal. @MLB @MLBNetwork
— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) December 27, 2019
This is about the sleepiest late December tidbit possible — the Braves “inquired” at some unspecified time, though nothing has been active “recently,” another unspecified time that presumably comes after the date of inquiry. So, nothing doing on the Braves front, but at least you may have seen that the Big Air event taking place at SunTrust Park damaged the field. Oops. I’m sure it’ll be fine in time for Opening Day, though.
MLB News
The Phillies are signing former Brave Christian Bethancourt to a minor league deal. Good luck with that, Phillies! Bethancourt is a fairly intriguing novelty of a player as a catching prospect who’s played all over the diamond and even pitched some, but he actually hasn’t been any good in the majors (-2.1 fWAR in around 400 PAs and 5 1⁄3 innings pitched) and has struggled to hit basically everywhere, including Korea last year.
Since it’s been a pretty quiet baseball day, check out this random assortment of fun stats some folks at MLB.com have compiled. I learned from this link that Jacob deGrom’s average slider velocity was just half of an mph off of the average fastball velocity across the majors.