You can puzzle and puzzle over the Braves' offseason for hours, but it will never make sense, from the Jake Peavy trade talks all the way to Tuesday's agreement of four years and $60 million with Derek Lowe.
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When the talks between San Diego and Atlanta finally stalled in November, the two sides were down to haggling over the identities of the last players in the deal, whether the package going to San Diego would include
Blaine Boyer or
Jeff Locke.
And sure, there was this hurdle to overcome: The Braves don't give out no-trade clauses, and Peavy has a no-trade clause he wanted extended through the duration of the contract. But that easily could have been finessed. The Braves could have gone to their most prominent player who has never received a no-trade clause,
Chipper Jones, and asked him how he would feel about their
acquiring a player with a no-trade clause. Undoubtedly, Jones would have screamed, "What, are you kidding? No problem at all! Go finish the deal!" And then the Braves could have told the Padres, "Look,
we don't negotiate no-trade clauses, but if
you were to negotiate the no-trade clause in order to get him to accept the trade, well, we can still say we don't negotiate no-trade clauses."
But there was no agreement, no trade of Peavy to Atlanta, and in the end, the Braves wind up with Lowe, a fine pitcher who:
• Is much older -- eight years, almost to the day (Lowe was born June 1, 1973, while Peavy was born May 31, 1981).
• Is not as good as Peavy. Over the past two seasons, Peavy is 29-17, with a 2.68 ERA and 406 strikeouts and 315 hits allowed in 397 innings. Over the past two seasons, Lowe is 26-25, with 3.55 ERA and 294 strikeouts and 388 hits allowed in 410 1/3 innings. Lowe, at his best, can be very good, but we're talking about pitchers at very different levels.
• And -- here's the capper -- Lowe actually will be a little more expensive than Peavy over the next four seasons. The average annual value of Lowe's contract is $15 million. Peavy is set to make an average of $14 million each of the next four seasons. Now, if Peavy had wanted his $22 million club option for 2013 exercised in order to approve a deal to Atlanta, he would have made $78 million over the next five seasons, for an average annual value of $15.6 million.
The Lowe signing must be viewed in context, of course. The Braves hadn't finished the Peavy trade talks, they missed out on
A.J. Burnett, and they tried to sign
Rafael Furcal but, whether it was the agent's fault or not, they didn't get the player. And then last week,
John Smoltz decided to walk away, and the Braves took a public-relations pounding. They had to do something, and they got Lowe.
But you wonder why they didn't pick up the phone and re-engage the Padres on a Peavy deal. They could have signed
Orlando Cabrera to a market-friendly contract -- and this would have cost them their second-round pick, rather than their first-round pick, because of their 2008 record of 72-90 -- to play shortstop, and then packaged
Yunel Escobar,
Gorkys Hernandez and Locke, and finished the Peavy discussions.
But it didn't happen that way. If you were to put Locke up for sale on the open market, you probably would get $300,000 or so in cash -- and yet, in the end, he seems to have been a major stumbling block, a deal-breaker, in a series of events that led to the Braves' spending $60 million on a pitcher in whom they had no interest two weeks ago.
And it's unclear why the Braves went to $60 million, when the Mets appeared to be the only serious competition for Lowe while sitting at around $40 million. Scott Boras, Lowe's agent, waited and waited, and this time, it paid off in a big way. "You've got to hand it to Boras," an American League general manager said. "This is why he has the reputation. He sat and waited, and a team got desperate, and he got the money."
It's unclear why the Braves didn't stick to an offer of three years and $45 million, knowing that the fallback -- an
Oliver Perez for $30 million, or a
Jon Garland on a one-year deal -- might have been preferable to overpaying for a pitcher who will be 36 years old this summer.
But the decisions have been made. The Braves will go into the season needing Lowe and
Javier Vazquez to lead them, and as with everything in baseball, if the team wins, the offseason moves suddenly will make sense. If the team doesn't win, well, we'll be left to wonder how differently the season might have played out had the team chosen a different path.
The
Braves also outbid other teams for
Kenshin Kawakami, David O'Brien writes.
The failure to sign Smoltz has a
prominent comedian angry at the Braves.
Around the majors with Buster Olney
Buster Olney
