The trade: Braves acquire 1B Matt Olson from the A’s for CF Cristian Pache, C Shea Langeliers, RHP Ryan Cusick and RHP Joey Estes
Baseball is designed to break your heart, former commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti once wrote. Indeed, our favorite players get old, they get waived, they get traded — and sometimes they leave in free agency. This trade certainly signifies the departure of Freddie Freeman, a franchise icon for the Braves since 2010, MVP winner, five-time All-Star and World Series champion, so it’s understandably a trade of mixed emotions for Braves fans. They’ll miss Freeman … but I think they’ll come to love Matt Olson.
Olson is about as perfect a replacement for Freeman as the Braves could have found: a left-handed, power-hitting, slick-fielding first baseman. He’s even a Georgia native, a graduate of Parkview High School in Lilburn — the same suburban Atlanta school that produced former Brave Jeff Francoeur. Olson is coming off his best season, hitting .271/.371/.540 with 39 home runs for the A’s in 156 games. He was worth 5.8 WAR — compared to Freeman’s 4.7. His OPS+ of 153 is right in line with Freeman’s best seasons (except his 2020 MVP campaign in the shortened COVID-19 season). He’s four years younger and under team control for two more seasons. He’s a really good player, and if the club’s faceless corporate owners are going to make a business decision to let Freeman go, acquiring Olson is the backup plan that can help send the Braves back to the postseason.
If there is one caveat that might jump out to Braves fans, it’s that Olson hit .195 in 2020. I don’t think that’s a big deal. First off, it was the COVID-shortened season; we can ignore just about anything that happened that year. Second, Olson cut way down on his strikeout rate in 2021, a good sign that he has matured as a hitter — similar to Freeman’s growth. In fact:
Olson, age 27: 13.1% walk rate, 16.8% strikeout rate
Freeman, age 27: 12.7% walk rate, 18.5% strikeout rate
Freeman has more of a line-drive stroke, so I don’t know whether Olson will develop into a hitter who threatens .300 like Freeman did, but Olson has more raw power and is a threat to hit 40 home runs playing in Truist Park. The Braves did pay a steep price in trading away four of their top 15 prospects, and it stings to lose a franchise player after winning the World Series (a year in which Liberty Media reported operating income of $104 million on their Braves business division), but it’s hard to dislike this deal.
The Braves gave up four players who have a shot at contributing in the majors, but they’re in win-now mode and still have a young foundation with the likes of Ronald Acuña Jr., Austin Riley, Ozzie Albies, Max Fried and Ian Anderson. If not Freeman, this is the lefty slugger they needed.
Braves grade: A
“My heart is broken,” tweeted Pache after learning of the trade. He’s the most exciting player the A’s acquired, a top-20 overall prospect heading into 2021. He began the season as the Braves’ starting center fielder but struggled at the plate (.111 with 25 strikeouts and two walks) and spent most of the season at Triple-A, where he hit .265/.330/.414 and dropped out of Kiley McDaniel’s top 100 prospects heading into 2022. He’s viewed as a plus-plus defender in center field, and he’s still just 23, but there are obvious concerns about the bat. The best-case scenario is a player like Kevin Kiermaier, although even that is probably optimistic at this point. Still, his defense alone means he could be a 2-3 WAR player if he develops a slightly better approach at the plate — a big if.
Langeliers was McDaniel’s No. 81 overall prospect after hitting .256/.339/.494 at Double-A (and a few games at Triple-A). He’s a definite catcher with a strong arm and receiving skills who has continued to add more in-game power since being drafted ninth overall out of Baylor in 2019.
The ripple effect here with Pache and Langeliers being essentially ready for the big leagues is that Oakland’s fire sale may extend beyond Olson and Chris Bassitt (and Sean Manaea and Frankie Montas) to now include center fielder Ramon Laureano and catcher Sean Murphy. Those two have more years of team control than the other group (Laureano through 2024 and Murphy through 2025), but if they’re going to rip this thing down, I suspect Billy Beane and David Forst will be shopping those two as well — especially since center field and catcher are two big needs for several teams (like the Yankees).
The A’s managed to get even more in this deal. Ryan Cusick was Atlanta’s first-round pick in 2021 out of Wake Forest. He’s a large human — 6-foot-6, 235 pounds — who hits triple digits with his fastball. He has a plus slider and an average curveball. After battling control at times in college, his initial debut in pro ball was promising with 34 strikeouts and four walks in 16.1 innings. There is certainly upside here if it comes together, with an obvious fallback as a late-inning reliever. I like this roll of the dice as the third-best prospect in the deal.
Estes was a 16th-round pick out of high school in 2019, but he had a 2.91 ERA in low-A ball in 2021 with impressive peripherals: 99 IP, 66 H, 29 BB, 127 SO.
Here’s another way to look at this trade, courtesy of Kiley’s future value rankings: The A’s get two 50 FV prospects in Langeliers and Pache, a 45 in Cusick and a 40 in Estes for two years of Olson. When the Rangers traded 1.5 years of Joey Gallo to the Yankees, they got a 50, 45 and two 40s. That feels like a solid return and they did go for depth over one premium prospect, which can backfire (see the Pirates’ trade of Gerrit Cole or the Tigers trading away Justin Verlander). The ultimate key will be Pache hitting enough to become a regular center fielder.