Batter's Box Interactive Magazine

The Atlanta Braves have agreed to a trade to acquire outfielder Justin Upton and third baseman Chris Johnson from the Arizona Diamondbacks for pitcher Randall Delgado, infielder Martin Prado and minor leaguers Nick Ahmed, Brandon Drury and Zeke Spruill, sources tell ESPN.

So, what effect will Atlanta's Double-Upton OF have on the National League East race, Bauxites?

Posted by Mick Doherty on Thursday, January 24 2013 @ 12:55 PM EST.

Upton(o) Good? | 9 comments | Create New Account

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Richard S.S. - Thursday, January 24 2013 @ 02:22 PM EST (#268273) #

Keith Law doesn't think Arizona did well enough in this trade. Towers has had Upton on the Trade Block for the past 3 years and actively shopping him for at least two. Talk about alienating a player, Towers had to trade him. He's lucky to get anything of value for him. Towers will keep what he wants and will flip the rest.

dan gordon - Thursday, January 24 2013 @ 02:50 PM EST (#268275) #

Upton's numbers are greatly inflated by playing in a terrific hitters' park. I think he will be exposed to some degree playing in Atlanta. He will also have games in pitchers' parks in Florida, Washington and NY to deal with. Away from the friendly confines of Chase Field, Upton's career batting average is only .250, with an OPS of .731. On the other hand, he did come up to the majors very early, and, having just turned 25 last August, he could still improve from what he has done so far. On balance, I think the Braves will be disappointed with the hitting they get from Upton. Prado's career road OPS is higher than Upton's by 22 points, and given that he is moving to the hitters' park, I wouldn't be surprised if Prado had a higher OPS than Upton next year.

greenfrog - Thursday, January 24 2013 @ 05:00 PM EST (#268280) #

A Prado extension would seem to balance things out somewhat, although he is moving out of his prime, while Upton (in theory) is just entering his. I like the trade for Atlanta, as they've acquired a huge talent, but no one really knows how this will play out. How many people thought Hill would be a 6.2 fWAR player for Arizona the year after the Jays-DBacks trade (with KJ posting a 0.7 fWAR)? At the time of the Rasmus trade, how many people predicted that John Jay would vastly outperform Colby in 2012?

Thomas - Thursday, January 24 2013 @ 06:43 PM EST (#268283) #

Upton's numbers are greatly inflated by playing in a terrific hitters' park.

I think this narrative is overplayed. I'll take the Upton side of that friendly bet in an instant.

bpoz - Friday, January 25 2013 @ 09:22 AM EST (#268288) #

A lot of teams have reloaded. The odds makers are going to have a difficult time.

Richard S.S. - Saturday, January 26 2013 @ 08:41 AM EST (#268310) #

Before you can say "a lot of teams have reloaded", you should consider who they lost and who they acquired. I think you'll find the gains don't exceed the loses. www.mlbtraderumors.com might help as they did offseason reviews of each team and discussed losses.

Dewey - Saturday, January 26 2013 @ 12:45 PM EST (#268312) #

Not much doing, so I have a question. I�m not familiar with the dynamics of Toronto newspaper competition; but the Globe & Mail seems to have a peculiar hate on for the Blue Jays. I stopped getting the Globe some time ago, but I still look at their web-pages. The sports coverage often seems oddly Euro-centric, when it isn�t obsessing about hockey. Anything but baseball, it seems. (Yes, I know; Blair and McLeod do occasional pieces.) One thing especially has been puzzling me for a long time: on the �main� on-line page [https://www.theglobeandmail.com/] every ten days or so (or so it seems) there appears an item headed �Jays struggle to draw fans�. It�s from June 1, 2012! Why do they keep putting this up there? Does this have to do with ownership feuds, British editors . . . what?

MatO - Saturday, January 26 2013 @ 03:08 PM EST (#268315) #

I don't think it has anything to do with the Jays. I've noticed really old stuff appearing on the Sports site of the G&M for a long time. Sometimes items just sit there for months at a time. What's worse is now they want you to pay for this content.

Dewey - Saturday, January 26 2013 @ 04:23 PM EST (#268319) #

Yes, maybe you�re right, Mat. I�m not thinking of now, however, but of the (past) season. If you went to the main page for the site and scrolled down to �Sports� in the lower left corner, you almost never saw a story cited there about baseball. Lots of soccer, rugby even!, track, tennis, golf, cycling, racing (auto and horse), cricket -- pretty much anything but baseball, let alone the Jays. Try checking for a week in mid baseball-season. I usually noticed a Jays item when something went amiss (injury, etc.). Hence my curiosity about this repeated months-old item about poor attendance. Why?

Is Tom Maloney a local boy, by the way? And I agree that the G&M has dwindled down to a very mediocre paper in recent times.

Just some more Box paranoia . . . perhaps.

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