{"id":3343,"date":"2017-01-21T13:16:25","date_gmt":"2017-01-21T18:16:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonbaseball.com\/?p=3343"},"modified":"2017-01-21T13:16:25","modified_gmt":"2017-01-21T18:16:25","slug":"atlanta-braves-sign-kurt-suzuki","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2017\/01\/21\/atlanta-braves-sign-kurt-suzuki\/","title":{"rendered":"Atlanta Braves Sign Kurt Suzuki"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Atlanta Braves have acquired veteran catcher <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/s\/suzukku01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kurt Suzuki<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0on a one-year, $1.5 million deal, with $2.5 million in incentives. Suzuki, 33, has a .256\/.311\/.372 lifetime slash line in ten major league seasons. The Braves are the fourth team he has played on, following stints with\u00a0the Oakland Athletics, Washington Nationals, and Minnesota Twins.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Source: Suzuki deal with <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Braves?src=hash\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#Braves<\/a> will be one year, $1.5M with $2.5M in incentives.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Ken_Rosenthal\/status\/822846192941985792\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">January 21, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Atlanta Braves Sign Kurt Suzuki<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Shoring up the depth at catcher was the Braves main focus during the offseason. They have <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/f\/flowety01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tyler Flowers<\/a><\/strong>, their starting catcher for most of last season, signed through 2019. The front office avoided arbitration with back-up <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/r\/reckean01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Anthony Recker<\/a><\/strong> for $800,000, and signed free agent <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/g\/gosewtu01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tuffy Gosewisch<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0to a one-year deal. Yet, rumors still circulated that Atlanta was looking for other catching options.<\/p>\n<p>The most popular\u00a0rumors surrounded top free agent catcher <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/w\/wietema01.shtml?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Matt Wieters<\/a><\/strong>. The Georgia native had the Braves on his short list of teams. However, the Braves front office seemed to never have much interest in Wieters, mostly due to his contract demands and not wanting to give up a draft pick. Atlanta wanted a veteran catcher on a one-year deal and, as a result, Suzuki became\u00a0the guy.<\/p>\n<p>Suzuki is only three years removed from his All-Star campaign with the Twins, when he hit\u00a0.288 with a .727 OPS in 2014. He hit .263 in his three season with Minnesota. Suzuki will split catching duties with Flowers, and the new buzz is\u00a0that Recker is on the trading block. Suzuki and Flowers are both right-handed batters, with Flowers sporting a higher average against right-handed pitchers in 2016. Flowers is also more of a power threat than Suzuki.<\/p>\n<p>The Braves should now be done searching for catching options, and Suzuki fits the mold Atlanta was looking to fill.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo:<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 100%; max-width: 594px;\">\n<div style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; text-align: left;\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/605730022\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 66.666667% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline-block; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; margin: 0;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/605730022?et=EfFdVuojQRR6wdY-Yicftw&amp;viewMoreLink=off&amp;sig=ul-_ALwLsiqSzbN2XtACAz-nbSrCCaLwaol4XfdxrcA=&amp;caption=true\" width=\"594\" height=\"396\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"margin: 0;\">\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Atlanta Braves have acquired veteran catcher Kurt Suzuki\u00a0on a one-year, $1.5 million deal, with $2.5 million in incentives. Suzuki, 33, has a .256\/.311\/.372 lifetime slash line in ten major league seasons. The Braves are the fourth team he has played on, following stints with\u00a0the Oakland Athletics, Washington Nationals, and Minnesota Twins. Source: Suzuki deal [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":189,"featured_media":3351,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21,35],"tags":[299,48,68,667,69,927],"class_list":["post-3343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-braves","category-news","tag-anthony-recker","tag-atlanta-braves","tag-baseball","tag-kurt-suzuki","tag-mlb","tag-tyler-flowers"],"modified_by":"Josh Greenberg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/189"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}