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The Atlanta Braves begin spring training games three weeks from Wednesday.

At this time last year, Evan Gattis was a non-roster invitee in spring training who made his way onto the 25-man roster on Opening Day.

Other non-roster invitees who made it to Atlanta at some point during the season included Todd Cunningham, Joey Terdoslavich and Alex Wood.

While the odds are stacked against these players, they undoubtedly have an opportunity to make strides toward the MLB level.

You can find the entire list of the Braves’ non-roster invitees here, as this will take a look at just five of those players and their chances to make the Opening Day roster.

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Pitchers and catchers report in less than two weeks for the Atlanta Braves, marking the fast-approaching 2014 season.

This offers the first glimpse at how the players look after the offseason, although many of them will say “they are in the best shape of their lives.”

Still, fans and media get a chance to see how the players look and it generally adds to the excitement for the upcoming season.

The Braves didn’t overhaul their roster after winning the National League East in 2013.

Therefore, many of the scouting reports will be familiar to Braves fans, but there are some new faces on this year’s team.

Here’s a look at scouting reports and projections for pitchers and catchers for the Atlanta Braves’ 2014 season.

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The offseason is hitting the home stretch as pitchers and catchers report in 24 days for the Atlanta Braves.

The Braves still have some salaries to get worked out as Freddie Freeman, Jason Heyward and Craig Kimbrel could not agree to deals.

This will likely go to an arbitration hearing which will take place some point between Feb. 1-21.

Those players could become winners or losers depending on the results of their arbitration hearings.

As we wait to find out the results of those hearings, let’s take a look at some of the other biggest winners and losers of the offseason for the Atlanta Braves.

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It was a fairly quiet winter in Atlanta. The biggest news were the few fan favorites who left for other cities, and the future home of the Braves—Cobb County. There were a couple acquisitions that will help the Braves, but none that change the look of the club.

This calm offseason taught us a few things about the Atlanta Braves. From the financial issues to the bullpen, here is what we learned.

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There are a few standout shortstops in baseball. Then there is the inarguable standout shortstop on defense, Andrelton Simmons.

After winning the Defensive Player of the Year and the Rawlings Platinum Glove in 2013, there seems to be little question that Simmons has proven himself to be better than the rest on defense. Here’s a deeper look as to why the Atlanta Brave was chosen and why he won’t fall off the top this year.

According to FanGraphs.com, Simmons had a 24.6 Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR) last season, a number that basically attempts to quantify how good a player is defensively by calculating how many runs they saved or gave up while they were on the field.

To put into perspective how impressive his number is, Troy Tulowitzki of the Colorado Rockies posted a 6.6 UZR. Tulowitzki is considered to be among the best shortstops in baseball right now. If that doesn’t do it for you, FanGraphs described +15 UZR to be Gold Glove-caliber. 24.6 is off the charts.

Simmons and Gerardo Parra tied this season with 41 defensive runs saved. That’s a new MLB record.

Braves first baseman Freddie Freeman described Simmons to Jayson Stark of ESPN.com, “He’s incredible. The balls he gets to. He’s so quick. [When he throws to first], it’s like the ball doesn‘t even go in his glove,” he said.

Simmons often leaves spectators in awe as they watch him on the field. His quick hands, strong arm and accuracy all come together to perform one seamless play after another. As if this isn’t enough, watch Simmons at work.

To top it all off, he is only 24 years old. He’s a young player who just finished his first full season in a major league uniform. Simmons is a dependable everyday shortstop, playing in 157 games last year.

Reliability is another way Andrelton will beat out Tulowitzki as top shortstop this year. Tulowitzki hasn’t been able to stay healthy for four of the past seven seasons of his career, playing in fewer than 130 games for the last two years.

However, baseball isn’t all defense, as we know.

Offensively, Simmons isn’t breaking records, but he certainly isn’t hurting the team either. He has a .248 batting average with 17 home runs.

Although FanGraphs predicts that Simmons will have fewer home runs in 2014, his batting average and on-base percentage are both expected to improve. Having a more consistent player at the plate, as opposed to one with a lower average and a few more home runs, will make the Braves’ lineup solid most of the way through.

His biggest competitors for best shortstop in 2014 will likely include Tulowitzki and Hanley Ramirez. Ian Desmond is another solid shortstop that will be playing in the NL East for the Washington Nationals.

Tulowitzki is consistently unreliable. He gets injured every season. If he is able to stay healthy, then he will surely be in the running for best shortstop, but if history is any indicator, this won’t be happening.

Then there’s Ramirez, who was out for the majority of 2013 and may take a little while to get back in his groove. Although he has a higher batting average, it isn’t by a large enough margin to overshadow how much better Simmons is on defense. The margin will be even smaller if Simmons improves on offense this year, which should be expected from young players.

Though Desmond has posted consistent numbers over his career and has the durability to play every game, he is not overshadowing these other three shortstops. He has a .971 fielding percentage. Desmond will help the Nationals this season, but he won’t be winning awards for his fielding or hitting.

This new year won’t bring too many changes. Simmons will continue to outshine the others at his position. At such a young age, he can continue improving and breaking new defensive records every step of the way.

Offensively, he’ll be helping Atlanta by getting the ball in play and getting himself on base.

It could be several years before Simmons is knocked from the top.

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The Atlanta Braves will once again hope a relatively young and inexperienced starting rotation can anchor the 2014 season as it did in 2013.

The Braves entered 2013 facing questions about Mike Minor and Julio Teheran’s effectiveness for an entire season.

Brandon Beachy’s health and Kris Medlen’s role were also questions.

The end result was a 3.51 ERA for the starting rotation—good enough for fifth in the National League.

The 2014 season will bring some new questions surrounding the rotation.

The departure of veteran Tim Hudson (and possibly Paul Maholm) leaves the Braves with a young and talented rotation in 2014.

Here’s one man’s prediction for the look of the starting rotation when the 2014 season begins.

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The Atlanta Braves continue to keep things close to the vest in regards to their offseason plans.

The Braves have some holes to fill, but if the season started today, they could field a competitive 25-man roster.

This makes the Braves relatively quiet players this offseason.

With that said, general manager Frank Wren will not pass up an opportunity to improve the club.

The starting rotation, bullpen, second base and bench are all positions that could see some player addition by the time spring training rolls around.

Here’s a look at what to buy and what to sell concerning some of the latest Atlanta Braves rumors.

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The Atlanta Braves have been selective in making moves so far this offseason.

With a young and talented core in tact, the Braves don’t have many major moves to make.

However, there are still some questions that need to be answered as we approach the new year.

If the Braves are going to repeat as National League East champions, they have some loose ends that need to be tied up, to solidify this team as the early favorite.

With that in mind, here are some questions that the Braves still need to answer this offseason.

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The very thought of trading Craig Kimbrel can’t help but rile up Atlanta Braves fans.

Although it’s not necessarily even an actual rumor, the concept of trading baseball’s best closer—as suggested recently by Buster Olney of ESPN (subscription required) merely as speculation—is just the kind of proposition that is, in a word, divisive.

Olney writes:

The Tampa Bay Rays have been collecting information this week in their trade conversations about starter David Price, because eventually they will have to trade him. They drafted Price, they developed Price, they love Price, and he is a team leader, but they will move him because of a simple math equation: He will soon make too much money for them to afford. 

If they trade him this offseason, they will get strong value in return. If they wait, their trade return — as well as their payroll flexibility in 2014 — will be diminished, because Price is moving closer to the time he can become a free agent, after the 2015 season. 

The Atlanta Braves should be taking notes on all this, because they have a player who fits this description and these circumstances. Someone they drafted and developed, someone they love, a team leader — and someone who is soon going to be too expensive for their relatively modest payroll: Craig Kimbrel, the best closer on the planet. 

They should be looking to trade him, and right now might be the best possible time. 

So take a borderline unhittable 25-year-old closer with a whopping 138 saves the past three seasons and an ERA of 1.39, a WHIP of 0.90 and a strikeout rate of 15.1 for his career…and make him available?

To be clear, this is simply a possible scenario that the Braves could—and maybe, just maybe, should—consider. For a few reasons.

Take, for example, Kimbrel’s salary, which is about to skyrocket from $655,000 in 2013 to a projection somewhere in the range of $7-$8 million for 2014—that’s a tenfold increase—now that he’s eligible for his first go at arbitration.

(That projection, by the way, comes from Matt Swartz at MLB Trade Rumors, who essentially admitted that Kimbrel’s performance and statistics over the first three full years of his career more or less broke the model for calculating his salary. In Swartz’s own words: “It is our suspicion that he will land much closer to the $7.25MM we have projected for him than the high number the model produced, which I might as well confess was actually $10.2MM.”)

Consider also that Kimbrel’s salary will only escalate from there until he hits free agency after the 2016 season, and the Braves—who have maintained a payroll in the $90 million range the past five years—aren’t exactly the kind of franchise that can easily afford to spend $12-15 million a year on a closer. Not when they have a handful of other young stars, like Jason Heyward, Freddie Freeman, Mike Minor, Andrelton Simmons and Julio Teheran, who also will need to be paid soon enough.

Essentially, the Braves “problem” here is that Kimbrel actually has been too good too soon, if that makes sense.

And then there’s the basic fact that a reliever, even the best one in the entire sport like Kimbrel, just does not have a chance to make a dynamic overall impact on any one game when he throws 15-20 pitches at a time—let alone over a full season when he throws 70 innings a year.

Remember, it was a little more than two months ago that the Braves completed a season-long domination of the NL East by clinching the No. 2 spot in the National League playoffs. And remember, in their first-round series against the Los Angeles Dodgers, manager Fredi Gonzalez chose not to use Kimbrel in a key spot of Game 4—with the Braves up 3-2 but trailing two games to one—in part because it was only the bottom of the eighth inning. And you remember how that turned out, right?

With David Carpenter, a lesser arm, surrendering the series-winning home run to Juan Uribe before Kimbrel even got a chance to step on the mound. In all, Kimbrel made just one appearance in those four games, throwing only 25 pitches against all of five batters to register four outs.

For a team that hasn’t won a single series in October since 2001, perhaps the idea of trading Kimbrel for players who can have a bigger impact isn’t such a terrible idea.

On that topic, then, even though the Braves are a well-constructed team with an extremely productive and promising young core, they still have areas that could be upgraded or addressed, primarily second base, catcher, center field and the rotation. And since Atlanta already has right-hander Jordan Walden, who has closed in the past, he would be at least a serviceable replacement.

Finding potential trade partners isn’t easy. The Braves, after all, are contenders, as are most clubs that might inquire about the luxury provided by a top-notch ninth-inning arm like Kimbrel. It’s often a challenge to match up contender-contender trades, because both parties are playing for the immediate future rather than the long term.

That doesn’t mean, though, there aren’t possible fits out there. With that in mind, let’s see if we can do the impossible and come up with a few landing spots and trade packages that actually might get the Braves—and their fans—to at least consider the concept of trading Kimbrel.

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Tim Hudson has signed with the San Francisco Giants, per John Shea and Henry Schulman of SFGate.com, and now the Atlanta Braves are in a position where they need to replace the veteran righty.

After having gone 113-72 in nine years with the Braves, Hudson is returning to the West Coast after he and the Giants agreed on a two-year, $23 million deal.

For Braves’ fans, it’s just another big name that has gone elsewhere, something that will happen again this offseason when Brian McCann signs with another team.

With Hudson gone, this is how the Braves rotation currently looks (2013 stats):

1. LHP Mike Minor (13-9, 3.21 ERA)
2. RHP Kris Medlen (15-12, 3.11 ERA)
3. RHP Julio Teheran (14-8, 3.20 ERA)
4. RHP Brandon Beachy (2-1, 4.50 ERA)
5. LHP Alex Wood (3-3, 3.13 ERA)
6. RHP David Hale (1-0, 0.82 ERA)

There’s a lot of confidence in the top three in the rotation, but after that, things aren’t as clear.

Here is a look at the options the Braves have with the departure of Hudson:

In-House Options

Wood seems like an easy pick to fill one of the rotation spots in 2014.

As a starter, he went 3-2 with a 3.54 ERA and 54 strikeouts. He seemed to have good control and was able to handle a good workload.

The one thing that people may point to is that he had a 2.08 ERA in 21.1 innings coming out of the bullpen. If Jonny Venters struggles coming back from Tommy John surgery, and other relievers struggle as well, Wood could be moved back to the bullpen to solidify that area.

Then there’s Beachy. After having had Tommy John surgery in 2012, Beachy made five starts last year before being shut down due to more elbow trouble. Then there is this tweet by MLB.com’s Mark Bowman:

Although Beachy is expected to be ready for spring training, there are some question marks there as well. And there will continue to be question marks until he can pitch a full season.

Hale is another option and someone who had a lot of success in the minor leagues. In 22 games in Triple-A (20 of which were starts), Hale went 6-9 with a 3.22 ERA and 77 strikeouts.

Top-pitching prospect J.R. Graham could be another option, but as Bowman notes in a mailbag post, he’s more likely to start 2014 in the minors:

Graham has made significant strides since his right shoulder sidelined him for the final 3 1/2 months of this past season. Still, while there is a chance he could end up in Atlanta’s bullpen or rotation at some point next year, it seems safer to assume Graham would begin the 2014 season back at the Minor League level.

Obviously, Wood and Beachy will be on the roster to start the season, as should Hale in the bullpen. But what if something goes wrong. Shouldn’t the Braves have some insurance?

John Lackey

It seems crazy to think this, but David O’Brien of the Atlanta-Journal Constitution believes the Braves should look at Boston starter John Lackey in a potential trade:

Lackey is owed $15.25 million in 2014, while he will be due the league minimum in 2015 because of a weird clause in his contract, according to Dave Cameron of Fan Graphs:

So, they (or maybe his agent) came up with a pretty creative solution, adding a league minimum club option to the end of the deal if Lackey missed significant time due to an elbow issue. Sure enough, Lackey’s elbow became problematic, and after the 2011 season, he underwent Tommy John surgery and spent the entire 2012 season on the DL, triggering the club option for 2015.

As a result, the Red Sox now own the rights to Lackey’s 2015 season at a salary of around $500,000. 

For the Braves, that would be an extremely good deal considering Tim Hudson’s $9 million and Brian McCann’s $12 million will be off the books. 

The Braves could reasonably pay Lackey the money he is owed this year and then have him for a league-minimum salary next year.

Lackey was 10-13 with a 3.52 ERA and 161 strikeouts this past season. He was a key cog in helping the Red Sox win the World Series.

If he continues to pitch the way he did this past season, two years and $15.75 million is a great deal.

The Red Sox have even gauged other teams’ interest in Lackey, according to Gordon Edes of ESPN Boston:

Obviously, the trade chips would be another aspect of a potential deal. While not wanting to give up a lot, the Braves could conceivably give up Cody Martin and Matt Lipka (or Todd Cunningham) in exchange for Lackey and a lower-level prospect.

That would allow the Red Sox to clear out some room in their rotation and also give them pieces for the future.

Roy Halladay

Roy Halladay hasn’t been the same over the last two years, combining for a 5.15 ERA in 38 starts the last two seasons.

However, now a free agent, what if Halladay could be even a shade of his former self.

If that’s the case, O’Brien suggests the Braves should look at signing him:

The Braves would do something like sign Halladay only if they were reasonably certain, after looking at the medical reports, that such a pitcher might be ready to compete at a high level again.

The fact remains, before those past two painful seasons, Halladay was the game’s best starting pitcher, piling up 78 wins and 35 complete games during a remarkable four-year stretch (2008-2011) in which he posted four consecutive sub-2.80 ERAs and had seasons with 20, 17, 21 and 19 wins.

O’Brien makes a good point. Imagine if Halladay can compete at a high level again. How much of a steal would it be for the Braves (or any team) to sign him? Here’s how he looked in the previous four seasons before the shoulder issues:

Halladay would also bring a veteran presence in the rotation, something the Braves lost when Tim Hudson left for San Francisco.

Obviously, the Braves would need to get Halladay at a decent rate. Like many players have done in the past, Halladay could sign a one-year deal to rebuild his value for 2015, in which he could seek the final two- or three-year deal of his career.

It’s a gamble. But it’s no more of a gamble than what the Braves are dealing with when it comes to Beachy.

What Should the Braves Do?

As we saw late in 2013, having Hudson out of the rotation hurt the Braves. There was no veteran leader to set the tone for the rest of the staff.

Minor, Medlen, Teheran and others are more than capable of doing the job. But the Braves need a leader on the pitching side of things. Bringing in someone like Lackey, Halladay or even another veteran starting pitcher would be beneficial for the Braves.

It would help come September as the team looks to grab the top seed in the playoffs. Imagine if Hudson wasn’t injured last year. Would the Braves have lost the No. 1 seed to the Cardinals?

The Braves need veteran leadership with Hudson gone. Lackey or Halladay could provide that leadership. They have the experience and a proven track record. If either can be had for the right price, it’s something the Braves need to pull the trigger on.

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