Friday Roundup: Braves Add Streaming Option, Sign Minor Leaguers, and More

The Atlanta Braves have settled their dispute with Diamond Sports Group, withdrawing their formal objection to the bankruptcy plan

Happy Friday, y’all!

Something I’ve noticed since starting the substack is there’s a lot of news that happens during the course of the week that isn’t right for a full 1500-word deep dive but is still relevant to know.

So let’s do a news roundup. I’ll put it on Fridays, for now, but it may expand to multiple times a week if enough small stuff happens that Friday would either be irrationally large or it just needs to get out sooner.

Braves add a streaming option for 2025

Way back in the yesteryear of last week, the Braves and MLB formally objected to Diamond Sports Group’s bankruptcy plan, citing “grave concerns” with the future viability of the company were they to emerge from bankruptcy under the proposed plan.

That objection has been formally lifted. At the same time, the court announced some changes to the deal: Atlanta was now included in the streaming option.

Diamond announced a multiyear agreement with Amazon’s Prime Video for direct-to-consumer access to the sixteen regional networks, which will now include the Atlanta Braves. It’ll be an add-on subscription for people living in that team’s specific geographic area, and we don’t know a lot about the exact format (inside Amazon Prime or a standalone thing) or price¹, but any additional ways to watch this team is a good thing.

Braves add some minor leaguers

Varying levels of “does this matter” here, but the Braves brought in four players on minor league deals: C Yohel Pozo, RHP Enoli Paredes, and 3B Charles Leblanc are the official adds and initial reporting is that infielder Kobe Kato is joining them.

Paredes is the big one here, as I discussed on Twitter/X/The Bad Place when the news broke: Pitched to a 1.66 ERA in 21.2 combined innings for the Brewers and Cubs last season, but with an elevated walk rate and suppressed strikeout rate (11.5% BB, 18.4% K). In the minors, those numbers were much better (9.5% BB, 38.1% K) and the advanced data was somehow even stronger: His 4S FB got a 66.7% GB rate and that’s not a small sample size thing - he threw it 51.2% of the time, totaling 212 of his 414 total AAA pitches last season. Here’s the full snapshot of his arsenal:

I’d expect he likely makes the bullpen out of spring training, although they’ll probably use him towards the lower leverage end of it as of now.

Pozo and Leblanc both feel like AAA depth for me - as the team just lost a whole host of talent in Gwinnett to minor league free agency, both Pozo and Leblanc can fill out that roster and be emergency depth options.

Pozo hasn’t been back to the majors since a 21-game cup of coffee with the 2021 Rangers - last season in Las Vegas, the AAA affiliate of the Athletics², he hit .324 last season with 15 homers and 54 RBI in 90 games. Despite the healthy conventional stats (which might be a product of the Pacific Coast League), it’s not a super encouraging profile: He chased 44.5% of the time, resulting in a minuscule 1.9% walk rate. Only his aggressiveness in the zone (77.1% Z-Swing) and corresponding 90% Z-Contact rate kept his strikeout rate below 10%, but that feels like a tenuous profile that we’ve seen collapse against better pitching.³

I don’t know what to make of Leblanc: His career AAA batting average is .259, which is decent, but he hit .263 for Miami in a 48-game sample in 2022 and they still moved on from him after the season. This one feels like more of a standard utility profile for me - he can run into a homer here and there (two homers in 11 games/28 PAs for the Angels last season) but he’s there to be the last man on your bench and play multiple positions in case of injury. He’s covered every non-shortstop infield position in the majors while adding 57 games at shortstop and 46 in left field in the minors.

He’s Luke Williams, essentially.

Kato is the one that’s not official by the team but has been reported - a former 13th-rounder of the Astros, they released him early this season and he parlayed a 64-game stretch in the independent Atlantic League into getting picked up by the Mariners. He’s mostly a second baseman (92 career starts) but has covered third, both corner outfield positions, and even three games at shortstop in his minor league career.

If you’re asking me to rate these off of potential big-league impact, it’s:

Paredes
Leblanc
Poho
Kato

And everyone outside of Paredes probably never sees the majors barring injuries.

Travis d’Arnaud confirms he’s a good d’ude

Wrapping up the news is some more reporting from veteran catcher Travis d’Arnaud joining the Los Angeles Angels on a multi-year deal after the Braves declined his $8M club option for 2025.

He met with the media today after officially joining the club and MLB.com beat writer Rhett Bollinger relayed this anecdote of Travis’ first step once agreeing to the contract:

That’s the veteran leader that Travis is.

I’m really interested to see who steps up in the Braves clubhouse next season. That room was dominated by Freddie Freeman, and then Dansby Swanson sort of took over after 2022. Once Swanson left for Chicago, Travis was the de facto leader in the room. My money’s on some combination of Matt Olson and Austin Riley, at least on the position player side.

(Side note: If you want more on the 2025 catching plan now that Travis is gone, I did a whole show on it earlier this week.)

1. The Hawks are available on streaming for $19.99/month or $6.99 a game, which comes out to $573.18 for a full season when buying individually. IF MLB is the same pricing structure, and I’m not convinced it will be because you get double the number of games with baseball, what that monthly figure comes in at will be very important because the per-game cost would come out to $1132.38 for a season.

2. Are the Aviators going to move when/if the Athletics open their new ballpark? Because there’s nowhere else where the MLB team and the minor league team are literally in the same city - Atlanta and Gwinnett are closest, I think, but that’s still over 35 miles (and about 70 minutes of traffic) between Lawrenceville and The Battery. The Las Vegas Aviators and the Athletics ballpark location (the old Tropicana site) are roughly 12 miles apart.

3. See Aaron Judge in the playoffs