\u201cOh hey, why aren\u2019t the Braves doing anything at the Winter Meetings?\u201d Boom! They did.<\/p>\n
As far as outlays go, this isn\u2019t a particularly large one, and that\u2019s because Mike Yastrzemski is a 35-year-old who nonetheless has managed decent production in a seven-year MLB career. He\u2019s been quite consistent since debuting at age 28 in 2019, posting between 1.5 and 2.5 fWAR every single year.<\/p>\n
Yastrzemski put up 2.4 fWAR in 558 PAs between the Giants and Royals last year, with a 106 wRC+. His career includes a 111 wRC+, and he\u2019s been between 99 and 120 in each season he\u2019s played except 2020, where he went a bit berserk with a 158 wRC+ in those nine-ish weeks of play.<\/p>\n
In addition to reasonable offense, Yastrzemski plays decent defense, including center field in a pinch. He has a career +1 in OAA-based runs across over 6,300 innings, most of that in right field. He\u2019ll give the Braves another guy to rotate through outfield and the DH spot as needed, but given his defensive upside relative to the relatively poor fielding of Jurickson Profar and Ronald Acu\u00f1a Jr., he\u2019s probably more of a guy that will start in the outfield consistently while the other guys split time with Drake Baldwin and Sean Murphy, DHing as needed. Yastrzemski is also very much a heavy-side platoon bat (career 79 wRC+ against lefties, career 120 wRC+ against righties), so he won\u2019t be in the mix about a third of time when a lefty starter takes the hill.<\/p>\n
The commitment the Braves are making is relatively modest; $23 million over two years pays him as an expensive part-timer, which is more or less what he is. His projections aren\u2019t too great \u2014 in the 1.0 to 1.5 WAR range over 400-500 PAs from Steamer, but like many players who contribute a fair bit defensively, those projections are knocked down by Steamer\u2019s heavy regression of defensive value. It\u2019s also worth remembering that Yastrzemski is getting a guaranteed commitment for his age-36 season, with a club option covering his potential age-37 campaign, and the collapse could be looming. Still, he\u2019s been relatively consistent to date, and the Braves may have been heartened by his torrid conclusion to 2025, where he had a .392 xwOBA in 186 PAs with the Royals, so we\u2019ll see what happens.<\/p>\n
Stay tuned for more on the Braves\u2019 signing of the grandson of Red Sox great Carl Yastrzemski.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cOh hey, why aren\u2019t the Braves doing anything at the Winter Meetings?\u201d Boom! They did. As far as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338836,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[133703,49,48,462,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-338835","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-atlanta-braves-roster","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338835\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}