Braves sign Drew Smyly, 1 year $11 million

[Buehrle5687 21]

12 minutes ago, southsider2k5 said:

Hopefully this is more of a situation where the Braves wanted their guy versus this is what the market is going to look like.

Yep, hopefully he didn't get any other offers anywhere close to this.

[thxfrthmmrs 616]

Who were they bidding against? Themselves?

This is a strange development unless Braves saw something in Smyly others didn’t.

[CaliSoxFanViaSWside 2,061]

22 minutes ago, ChiSox59 said:

I think its pretty clear, at least on the pitching side, that these bargain basement AAVs aren't going to happen like some projected.  

I still think we see plenty of bargain basement deals. Sure guys signing early are going to jump on good deals when offered but 80% or more of the players will be waiting and waiting. The market will be flooded come Dec. 2nd.

[bmags 5,277]

One thing that happened though is when Stroman and Gausman signed their QOs the b-tier pitching options suddenly went from somewhat plentiful to much less attractive.

Is there a dependable pitcher after Bauer? It's basically Morton and Tanaka, two pitchers very much, uhm, mature.

[fathom 5,472]

1 minute ago, bmags said:

One thing that happened though is when Stroman and Gausman signed their QOs the b-tier pitching options suddenly went from somewhat plentiful to much less attractive.

Is there a dependable pitcher after Bauer? It's basically Morton and Tanaka, two pitchers very much, uhm, mature.

I believe they trade for a starting pitcher more and more each day

[shakes 115]

42 minutes ago, bmags said:

Hence the one year deal. People were outraged at length for pomeranz and now money for Smiley. Both indicated competition. This didn't come out of no where.

I don't watch the giants ever, but his curve usage goes way up, becomes a huge swing and miss generator, the giants figured out some tunneling thing or something with him and that's repeatable.

Zaidi's choices in SF have been confusing, but they have had some decent wins in player turnarounds with smyly and gausman.

I think you could see teams paying a premium for 1 year contracts, instead of getting into a multi-year bidding war. I like that model....there's still a lot of unknowns about how next year shakes out, how last season was so different in prep and usage,  if there is going to be a full spring training, and does all of this carry a different type of injury risk.