News Roundup: Schwellenbach gets paid, Braves continue to add depth
The Atlanta Braves signed an outfielder...just not one you were expecting
The Atlanta Braves have continued to be quiet since the season ended, mostly making internal moves and adding some depth pieces to the organization.
Here’s what you may have missed from this week:
Spencer Schwellenbach gets paid
In the last CBA negotiations, the league and the players’ association created a bonus pool reserved exclusively for pre-arbitration players. Consisting of $50M, funded by $1.67M from each team, it’s distributed to highly performing young players who are not yet eligible to reach arbitration.1 Awards are given based on the highest award a player received (Cy Young or MVP wins or finishes, Rookie of the Year, etc) and then the rest is distributed according to a WAR calculation agreed on by both owners and the MLBPA.
Eight players received over $1M from the pool, led by Bobby Witt Jr. (AL MVP runner-up), Paul Skenes (NL Cy Young third-place vote), and Gunnar Henderson (AL MVP fourth-place finish).
Spencer Schwellenbach got some money from that pool. The Braves righthander received $365,752 for his 2024 performance, which saw him put up 2.7 bWAR after making 21 starts. For a guy who made a prorated $740,000 last season after being called up in May, that’s a healthy chunk of change.
We’ve talked about this before on the podcast, but Schwellenbach’s a candidate to sign an early extension if Alex Anthopoulos hasn’t been scared off of the concept by Spencer Strider’s surgery and lost 2024 season.
Braves sign two more to minor league deals
Earlier this week, news broke of the Braves signing OF Conner Capel and RHP Wander Suero to minor league deals, presumably with invites to spring training.
Suero’s the more intriguing to me: Throwing 67.2 innings for Houston’s AAA affiliate2, he put up a 2.66 ERA while striking out 71 in his 67 appearances. While the walks were a bit higher than you’d like, with 33, he got the results you’re looking for from a run-prevention standpoint.
Digging into the minor league statcast on Suero, he’s primarily a cutter guy - throwing it 72.7% of the time in AAA last season, it averaged 90.2 and he complimented it with a changeup (20.7% usage) and a curveball (6.6%). Thomas Nestico, the pitching analyst known as “TJStats” on social media, had the cutter as a 105 Stuff+ pitch, undoubtedly owing to its higher-than-average IVB for a cutter (+10 inches over a traditional cutter, to the point where it almost feels more accurate to describe it as a four-seamer that cuts.)
I’m curious if the Braves attempt to give him a slider to diversify the arsenal a bit, as a gyro slider would seem to work well directionally with the two-plane curveball that he breaks out on occasion.
The other signing, Capel, got into just five games as a depth piece for a Reds team that could never really seem to figure out their outfield mix outside of Spencer Steer being miscast as a left fielder. He hit .218 in 74 AAA games for Louisville, albeit with 12 bombs. Playing all three outfield positions but spending half of his time in left field, he’s obviously here as a candidate to be standing in left field on the Opening Day roster and to serve as veteran depth in Gwinnett if not.
The 27-year-old is a career .278 hitter in the majors but in just 133 at-bats across three seasons. His longest stretch of play was batting .260 for Oakland in 2023 across 32 games and 86 PAs, mostly consecutive to open the season before being optioned to AAA.3
Capel’s holding a massive arm, with his 2023 playtime giving him a 93rd percentile arm strength of 92.2 mph, albeit with a negative run value on defense and slightly below-average sprint speed. It’s a profile that will hold up…fine in Truist Park’s left field if he can hit. He’ll undoubtedly join the mix for a potential Opening Day roster spot as either the starting left fielder or a bench piece behind whatever major league acquisition the team makes this winter.
Braves favored to win the NL East next season
I got an email this week from our friends over at BetOnline4 with odds for the 2025 MLB Season.
As of time of the odds going on the board on Thursday afternoon, the Atlanta Braves (+150) were favored to win the NL East over the New York Mets (+160) and Philadelphia Phillies (+220).
Those numbers haven’t significantly changed since going up, with Atlanta slightly improving their odds of the division (+150 to 145) and the Phillies inching up as well (+220 to +215)
But when it came to the NL pennant, after the Dodgers (+225), the Mets (+375) had better odds than the Braves (+500) of advancing to the World Series. Since going on the board, the Mets have backslid to +450 while the only team to meaningfully improve has been the Cubs, who went from +1800 to +1200 after adding Kyle Tucker via trade this week.
And I find this interesting.
We all know that postseason baseball is a different sport. I’m assuming this is either the Juan Soto effect or recency bias over the Mets just being in the NLCS, but it’s wild to me to think about.5
Dave Dombrowski is WILD for this one
And finally, some levity to close us out.
The entire world knows that the Phillies have been trying to trade third baseman Alec Bohm this winter, for some reason. He was an All-Star last year that hit .280, so I get trying to capitalize on that value.
But general manager Dave Dombrowski clearly doesn’t understand Bohm’s value to other teams. Three trade offers from Philly to other teams have been publicly reported, and all of them were apparently so egregiously bad that they weren’t even countered by the other team:
Bohm and prospect Justin Crawford for George Kirby or Logan Gilbert of the Seattle Mariners
Bohm and Nick Castellanos for Kyle Tucker of the Houston Astros
Bohm straight up for Mason Miller of the Athletics
(EDIT) Aidan Miller and Justin Crawford for Garrett Crochet of the Chicago White Sox at last year’s trade deadline.
What’s worse, Braves fans: For Alex Anthopoulos to not have yet executed any major trades this offseason, or for Alex to have made some offers that were so bad that opposing front offices leaked them to the press and he was universally ridiculed across the sport?
Strangely, players who have already signed contract extensions early in their careers are still eligible to receive additional money. It’s a loophole that they fixed with the PPI program, but not with the pre-arb bonus pool.
The Sugar Land Space Cowboys is both an S-tier team name and logo.
The Las Vegas Aviators, another S-tier team name and logo.
They’re not paying me for this plug in the column, but I’m open to that if they’re thinking about it.
The other explanation here is that Vegas is trying to get money out of overconfident Mets fans, as betting lines aren’t always designed to be exactly predictive but rather to generate the best financial outcome for the book.