After only one day with the squad, the Braves instantly trade their catcher
In exchange for a player to be announced later, the White Sox have acquired Max Stassi and financial considerations from the Braves. The agreement has been announced by both teams. According to Daryl Van Schouwen of the Chicago Sun Times, the Braves will cover the majority of Stassi’s $7 million contract next season.
Stassi, 33 in March, spent just one day with the Braves after being acquired from the Angels in a multi-player transaction with infielder David Fletcher on Friday. Now, the veteran catcher is heading to his third organization in two days, where he is expected to take on a regular role on Chicago’s south side. The White Sox were in need of a seasoned backstop to pair with youngster Korey Lee behind the plate in 2024 after losing Yasmani Grandal to free agency earlier this winter.
It’s a need that Stassi is more than capable of meeting. While the veteran missed the full 2023 season, just the first half of his absence was due to the left hip ailment that kept him from being on the Opening Day roster in Anaheim last season. Stassi recovered from that ailment by midseason, but he and his wife revealed last month that the three-month premature birth of their baby required Stassi to pull aside from the game and focus on his family for the duration of the 2023 season.
That said, Stassi is expected to return to the field in 2024 and has shown himself to be a quality big league catcher over the past few seasons. Initially drafted by the A’s in the fourth round of the 2009 draft, Stassi made his big league debut back in 2013 with the Astros but did not find a regular role in the majors until the 2018 season when he split time behind the plate in Houston with Brian McCann and Martin Maldonado. Stassi did well for himself in a backup role that season, slashing a respectable .226/.316/.394 in 250 plate appearances. While Stassi struggled through 51 games in 2019, prompting the Astros to trade him to the Angels at that year’s trade deadline, Stassi was given a more prominent role upon his arrival in Anaheim.
In 118 games between the shortened 2020 campaign and his first full season as an Angel in 2021, Stassi combined above-average offense at the plate (113 wRC+) with strong defense behind it to be the ninth most valuable catcher in the league according to fWAR. That strong performance led the Angels to sign Stassi to an extension, though that decision would prove ill-fated. As effective as Stassi was during those two seasons, he took a step back in 2022, slashing a meager .180/.267/.363 (63 wRC+) at the plate while posting framing numbers that were closer to average than the elite figures he had posted earlier in his career.
While the struggles Stassi faced in 2022 and his time away from the game in 2023 make it an understandable decision for the Angels and Braves to go in another direction behind the plate in 2024, it’s easy to see why the addition of Stassi would be intriguing for the White Sox. After all, Lee has less than 100 plate appearances of experience in the big leagues and, even if the club believes the former top-100 prospect to be their catcher of the future, will surely need time and assistant as he looks to transition into a new role as a full-time big leaguer.
The addition of a veteran catcher such as Stassi should help with that transition, while also creating a substantial bit of upside for Chicago. Stassi’s contract includes a $7M 2025 club option that features a $500K buyout; if the veteran is able to regain the form he flashed in 2020 and 2021, that $6.5M decision would be a no-brainer to pick up and make for an attractive trade chip as the White Sox retool their roster with an eye toward the future.
The transaction relieves the Braves of a portion of Stassi’s salary while also removing an extraneous piece from their roster. With Sean Murphy and Travis d’Arnaud behind the plate, Atlanta already possessed one of the strongest catcher tandems in the league, making Stassi essentially unnecessary. In conjunction with the trade that sent Stassi and Fletcher to Atlanta in exchange for Evan White and the trade that sent Marco Gonzales to the Pirates, the Braves have saved roughly $5 million since acquiring Gonzales and White as part of the Jarred Kelenic trade during the winter meetings while adding a bench piece in Fletcher who better fits the club’s roster than any of Gonzales, White, or Stassi.
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