On Monday the Atlanta Braves acquired Brian Matusz from the Baltimore Orioles in exchange for in exchange for a couple minor leaguers. This deal may have seemed odd in the sense that Matusz is ineffective, owed $3.6mil the rest of the season, and the Braves released him immediately. However, under a newer rule, Atlanta was able to acquire a “competitive balance” draft pick in the deal. According to Jeff Passan of Yahoo!™ Sports, the Braves are now in the business of buying draft picks. It is an interesting strategy for a MLB team to take this approach as trading for draft picks until recently has been a non-feature of professional baseball.

The 2013 MLB draft was the advent of competitive balance draft picks (CBDPs). And, unlike other draft picks, CBDPs can be traded. In a nutshell, the MLB awards extra draft picks within the top 100 overall selections to teams in the bottom 10 of the league in revenue and market size in addition to any other team that received revenue sharing in the previous year. If you’re an NFL fan, think of them somewhat like compensation picks. The Twins were awarded one CBDP in the upcoming draft, #73 overall.

Mike Axisa of CBS Sports wrote an interesting article on potential trade partners for the Braves and their strategy of accumulating draft picks in exchange for cash to bail themselves out of their predicament. Ricky Nolasco is owed $12million in both 2016 and 2017 with a vesting option of $13million for 2018 if he pitches 400+ innings over the previous two years. In short, to state the obvious, this is an awful contract to saddle a team with. Would the Braves (or any other team for that matter) take on that contract in exchange for the 73rd overall pick? As Axisa points out the 73rd pick is worth less than a +2 WAR over six years which isn’t much but it isn’t nothing. On the high side, it would be worth a player who commands about $14million over that time span. You would hope with the added payroll flexibility the Twins would be able to obtain a better return (but the Twins’ use of their payroll money is another blog entirely). Axisa also seems to think the Braves could also flip Nolasco for a couple prospects in the future which would appear to be optimistic unless Nolasco is pitching well in the last year of a deal.

One may wonder if the Twins should be using the same philosophy as the Braves. I would argue, current season results aside, the Twins are further along in a rebuild and are more in need of payroll flexibility than draft picks. The Braves were supposed to be awful this season, the Twins were not. However, if the Matusz deal is any indication, it’s going to take a lot more than Nolasco and the pick in exchange for a bag of baseballs to get it done. I would expect the Braves would inquire more into Suzuki ($6mil), Jepsen ($5.3mil), or potentially even Plouffe ($7.2mil but a far more productive player than the others) instead. Obviously, if a deal is to be made, it will have to be done prior to the June draft.