The Brewers and Braves lined up in a rare exchange earlier in the season involving three players on their respective 40-player roster. Brewers are sending infielder Orlando Arcia for the Braves in exchange for right-handed appeasers Patrick Weigel and Chad Sobotka, for ads from both teams. Weigel and Sobotka will report to the Brewers’ alternative training location.
While it is somewhat surprising to see an exchange of any notes taking place so early in the season, Arcia’s role with the Brewers has declined in recent years. The hope at one point was that it would be the long-term answer soon, but Luis urias it now appears to be the preferred option in that position for the Brew Crew. Arcia also saw some time on third base this year, but Travis Shaw was on the Brewers’ Opening Day list and is expected to serve as the main option in the hot corner.
Arcia had a 1 in 11 start to his 2021 season, but he had perhaps the best performance of his career last summer, when he reduced .260 / .317 / .416 through 189 plate appearances. That said, it is somewhat disappointing that this production represents Arcia’s best performance in his career, as he has already ranked among the top 10 baseball contenders at Baseball America and MLB.com. Arcia’s glove has always given him a decent floor, but his stick just didn’t come as expected. Over the course of 1876 plate appearances at the level of the major league, he managed only a 0.244 / .293 / .364 hitting line with 42 home runs and 39 steals.
Braves obviously don’t need a daily shortstop – Dansby Swanson has a locked position – but Arcia gives them a utility option with a solid glove. He has 4250 career entries on the shortstop, so it’s no surprise that Atlanta would feel comfortable sliding him into second or third base.
Ehire Adrianza he had been filling this role with the club, although there is some uncertainty surrounding his status at the time. Adrianza left the club to take care of a personal matter recently and reportedly was undergoing an admission test to return to the club. David O’Brien of The Athletic tweets that Adrianza should return to the club this weekend.
Arcia joins Adrianza, João camargo and Pablo Sandoval as off-the-bench utility options for Captain Brian Snitker, although the Braves cannot load so many internal reserve players simultaneously. Arcia and Camargo still have a smaller championship option. Arcia is the more expensive of the two, with a salary of $ 2 million against Camargo’s $ 1.36 million, and it would be logical that if the Braves gave up some pitches to acquire him, he would get the guarantee. At some point, the acquisition of Arcia could endanger one of the other internal reserve players on duty.
Depending on how things are going to happen for Arcia in Atlanta, he may be an option for them not only in 2021, but in 2022. Currently, he has more than four years of service in the big league, which means he will be controllable over the long term. of the 2022 season via arbitration.
In exchange for Arcia, the Brewers will choose a pair of optional substitutes – one of which has already been classified as one of the best arms in a pitch-rich Braves system. Weigel, 26, was ninth among the Braves farmers on the Baseball America list in 2017 and was still ranked 14th in the low season.
His career was slowed by Tommy John’s surgery in 2018, but Weigel’s return in 2019 from this procedure created some optimism. In 79 entries split between Double-A and Triple-A, the right worked for an ERA of 2.73 – albeit with less encouraging strikeout and walkout rates (21.6 percent and 12.5 percent, respectively). Weigel pitched in just one game with Atlanta last year, allowing for a couple of runs in two-thirds of an inning. This is his only appearance in the MLB so far.
Sobotka, 27, showed a special talent for losing bats, but he also struggled with control problems in parts of three seasons with Braves. The right-winger boasts a fastball with an average of more than 96 mph and a career strikeout rate of 28.8% at 47 innings in the big league, but he also walked 14.2% of his opponents and hit three more.
The exchange gives Brewers some flexibility in the pitching team in a season when most teams think they need it more than ever, but it also closes the book about one of the organization’s most promising farmers in recent memory. They will now hand over the reins to Uriah, himself a high-ranking ex-candidate, in the hope of better results. Although Urias himself has yet to have any real success in the big league, he is more than three years younger than Arcia and has a much better track record in Triple-A, where he set up a .305 / .403 / .511 line in 867 plate appearances.
Jon Heyman of MLB Network first reported that the Brewers were in negotiations to negotiate Arcia. Robert Murray of FanSided reported that an agreement with an unknown club had been reached. Ken Rosenthal of Atlético reported that the Braves were acquiring Arcia and Mark Bowman from MLB.com reported that Weigel and Sobotka were going to the Brewers.