The Braves’ biggest offseason question may not be on the mound. It may be at shortstop, where the search for a real answer has become impossible to ignore.
Atlanta has been tied to the position for a while now, and the concern only grows with Mauricio Dubón and Ha-Seong Kim both potentially on the way out. Jim Jarvis is currently the top in-house option, but that hardly feels like a long-term solution for a club trying to tighten up one of its most persistent problem spots.
“The Braves have the most glaring shortstop need in MLB. Mauricio Dubón and Ha-Seong Kim are impending free agents, leaving Jim Jarvis as the top in-house option. There's a decent chance they'll re-sign Dubón on a two-year deal, but he's ideally suited as a super-utility player," MLB Trade Rumors' Anthony Franco wrote.
That’s why CBS Sports’ Dayn Perry floated a bigger swing: a trade for Texas Rangers shortstop Corey Seager. It’s not a new name in the conversation, but the idea has picked up steam as Texas may be more willing to listen than it was before.
“The Braves made it to the NLDS this past season and have made the playoffs in eight of the last nine years. For much of that time, though, they've struggled to find a reliable presence at shortstop.
This past season, Atlanta shortstops combined to bat just .222/.280/.322, which is squarely in "unacceptable liability" territory. As well, the top two turn-takers at the position, Mauricio Dubón and Ha-Seong Kim, are both free agents,” Perry wrote.
Seager’s resume is hard to miss. He won a World Series championship and World Series MVP honors with the Dodgers, then did it again with the Rangers a few seasons later. That kind of track record is exactly why he would loom as such an attractive target if Atlanta decides to chase a more established fix.
The fit is obvious on paper. The Braves need stability at shortstop, and last season showed just how shaky the spot has been. Dubón spent much of his time in the outfield while Jurickson Profar was suspended, Kim had an uneven offensive season before finishing stronger, and Jarvis couldn’t lock the job down for long.
If Atlanta were to land Seager, the payoff would be immediate. He would give the Braves a proven star who could help right away on both offense and defense, even if the price to get him would be steep. It would also deepen an already dangerous lineup and give the club its clearest answer at shortstop since Dansby Swanson left in free agency.
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For Texas, the appeal is obvious enough. The fit is less certain. The Rangers are working with payroll constraints and still have roster needs to address, which makes a pursuit of Sato complicated even before the bidding gets serious. With several MLB teams believed to be in the mix and the posting window set to close on December 1, this is the kind of target that can linger on the board while the Rangers decide whether they can actually get involved. [Read more 🡒]
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The bigger question now is what comes next for Walcott, and how aggressively the Rangers want to keep him moving after a heavy workload and a productive fall. He is expected to open next season in Triple-A Round Rock, but the club is weighing whether another winter league assignment makes sense or whether a little rest is the smarter play after everything he just showed. [Read more 🡒]
Rangers Fans Will Have Strong Opinions On This Luis Arraez Fit
Luis Arraez is the kind of free agent who can split a room before he even signs. For the Rangers, the appeal is obvious enough: he has moved around the infield, spending time at second base and first base, and his bat has long been his calling card even as the rest of his profile has been harder to pin down. In a market where his value is still being debated, he stands out as one of those players whose fit depends as much on how a team views his strengths as on the numbers attached to him.
What makes Arraez especially interesting for Texas is how wide the range of expectations remains around him. Different projections have placed him anywhere from a short-term deal to something a bit longer, with the dollars varying just as much, and that kind of spread usually says as much about uncertainty as it does about talent. For a Rangers club trying to balance lineup help with roster flexibility, Arraez is exactly the sort of name that invites strong opinions, because the upside is easy to see while the defensive questions never quite go away. [Read more 🡒]