Braves Find Their Closer, Sign Will Smith

The first major move of the baseball offseason is finally here. Will Smith, formerly of the San Francisco Giants, has agreed to a 3 year deal with the Atlanta Braves worth $40 million. The Braves have their closer now and they signed a hometown kid in the process. Smith is from the Atlanta area and was all set to sign the Giants’ qualifying offer until the Braves stepped up with an offer.

Ken Rosenthal of The Atheltic was the first to report the news:

Will Smith contract with #Braves, per source: Three years, $40M with option that could make it four years, $52M.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) November 14, 2019

The familiarity to the Atlanta area definitely played a factor. Turning down a $17.9 million qualifying offer couldn’t have been easy. Nevertheless, Smith does pretty well here. He gets long term security and gets to go home. Can’t really beat that. San Francisco will at least recoup draft pick compensation since he was hit with the QO. They surely regret the decision not to deal him at the deadline where they could have gotten way more.

Atlanta beefs up the pen. A three man group of Shane Greene, Mark Melancon, and Smith is a tandem you can feel pretty good about. Smith provides a quality left handed arm out of the bullpen. In 2018, Smith posted a line of 2.76 ERA with 13.2 K/9 over 65 1/3 innings including 34 saves. 2018 was also his first full year as a closer which is the role he will likely take on in Atlanta.

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The Atlanta Braves are on the board. Now they have to try to retain Josh Donaldson. A task that certainly won’t be easy. This is a big offseason for Atlanta. It appears their number one priority was making sure Luke Jackson didn’t blow any more saves for them.