Steve Webb
ATLANTA, GA — There will be plenty of feelings for both Freddie Freeman and Braves fans on Friday night. After all, it isn’t often you lose your best player during the offseason after winning a World Series. But the prodigal has come home, and will be sure to receive a warm welcome from the Atlanta faithful.
Freddie has said that he felt hurt with the way the Braves dealt with him during free agency. And truth be told, GM Alex Anthopolous could have handled things a lot better than trading for Matt Olson before Freeman had definitively said no to the team. However, if you look at it from a Braves’ perspective, the transaction made sense. In Olson, he got about a good a replacement for Freeman as he could possibly find. And, he got him at a cheaper price.
Olson looks like a bargain
It’s a small sample size, but if you look at the 2022 stats, you can see the wisdom in Anthopolous’s move. In Olson, he gets a terrific corner infielder. His defense is every bit as good as Freeman’s. Offensively, they’ve been comparable this year. Freeman’s OPS is slightly better than Olson’s, .880 for Freddie, .808 for Olson.
And, the Braves get that .808 for only a fraction of the price. Matt Olson’s 8-year, $168M contract peaks with $22M salaries each year from 2024 through 2029, his ages-30-36 seasons. Freddie Freeman made $22M each of the past two seasons, his age 30-31 seasons. There’s a $20M club option for 2030 in the Olson contract, with no buyout. On the other hand, the Dodgers will be paying Freeman north of $27 million a year until he is age 39.
Of course, as they say in the stock ads, past performance is no guarantee of future results, but on its face, you can understand what the Braves are up to here.
Freeman deserved to get paid
However, from Freddie Freeman’s perspective, you can see what annoyed him about the Braves’ somewhat heartless decision. He had given his heart and soul to the organization, stuck with the team when they were horrible, and delivered them to the promised land with a World Series win last season. A player like that is not a typical chess piece on the board. That is the kind of player that should be given a contract that would allow him to retire as a Brave, and ride off into the sunset.
And he deserved that even if his production in the final years of his contract didn’t quite justify the expense. In effect, he would be getting paid for what he has done, not for what he will do. It happened on a smaller scale with the Dodgers and Justin Turner. Probably the smart move would have been to let Turner exit after 2020 and look elsewhere for a younger third baseman. However, the Dodgers saw the value in the intangibles that Turner brought to the clubhouse. Cutting him lose after all he had done for the organization would have shown up in more than just one player’s WAR numbers.
Freeman was the same kind of player for the Braves, only with MVP-type numbers. You can’t blame him for wanting to return to Southern California after being shown such disrespect by the Braves’ ownership. But like the Dodgers, the Braves are but one part in a vast corporate empire. There is no crusty billionaire at the top of the organization who could make a decision with his heart. There was nobody around to say, “I don’t care if it makes sense financially, pay the man.”
And so Freddie got shown the door. And you can’t help but think that going through Freddie’s mind tonight, as well as the minds of the Braves faithful, will be the same sentence, put most succinctly over 150 years ago, but John Greenleaf Whittier: “For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: ‘It might have been!'”
