Braves are the humming machine Steve Cohen’s Mets need to emulate

SEATTLE — Ronald Acuna Jr. was on the way to the NL MVP in July 2021 when he was lost for the rest of the season at about the same time Jacob deGrom, the NL Cy Young front-runner, was lost by the Mets.

The Braves zoomed by the Mets in the NL East and won the World Series without Acuna. After that championship, first baseman Freddie Freeman left in free agency. They still in 2022 won their fifth straight NL East title by tracking down the Mets once more, and they then lost shortstop Dansby Swanson in free agency.

Yet, the first half of 2023 ended with the Braves owning the majors’ best record, being well on their way to a sixth straight NL East crown and having a MLB-high eight All-Stars — including the NL MVP front-runner Acuna again, plus Matt Olson and Orlando Arcia, the replacements, respectively, for Freeman and Swanson. This is a machine humming.

Steve Cohen has enviously mentioned wanting to emulate the Dodger blueprint of reloading with money while replenishing with a deep farm system. The comparisons will never end with the Yankees. But for the Mets, the standard and nightmare all in one is the Braves, in part because, as Pirates manager and All-Star coach Derek Shelton said, “You look out on the field and they are really good and then you realize they are all signed and you are going to have to beat the same team for the next seven years.”

Every Brave All-Star, except Arcia, is under team control through at least 2026, a result of a farm system that has provided impact. General manager Alex Anthopoulos has gotten much of the core under team-friendly contracts (never for more than $22 million in any single season) early in their careers.

As Red Sox closer Kenley Jansen, who closed for the Braves last year, said, “Double A (Anthopoulos) is on top of it, definitely. He’s invested in the system. He is really smart, like he really knows what he is doing.”

The bedrock is a farm that never seems to rank highly when there are organizational rankings, but consistently does what is most vital — brings difference-makers to the majors. Bryce Elder is an All-Star in his first full major league season. Michael Harris and Spencer Strider finished 1-2 for NL Rookie of the Year last season, and Kyle Wright finally broke through. Ian Anderson and Austin Riley established themselves in 2021. A.J. Minter in 2020. Max Fried and Mike Soroka in 2019. Acuna Jr. and Ozzie Albies in 2018.

“We don’t ever have a lot of top-100 prospects or anything like that,” said Strider, one of the eight Brave All-Stars. “In this organization, they are not afraid to move you up if you are doing well, whether it is the next level or to the big leagues. I talked to players in other organizations and it is not always like that. I think it forces you to have a different focus here — play well, get called up.”

Anthopoulos was blessed to take over an organization after the 2017 season that already had (among others) Acuna Jr., Albies, Fried and Riley in it; plus Freeman and Swanson. But besides doing the long-term deals, Anthopoulos has been a crafty trader with (again) a farm system that has given him enough to do that. He most notably acquired four seeming supplementary bats — Adam Duvall, Joc Pederson, Eddie Rosario and Jorge Soler — at the 2021 deadline with all making huge contributions to a championship. It looked far different than, say, Tyler Naquin, Darin Ruf and Daniel Vogelbach.

The past two offseasons the Braves all but robbed Olson and catcher Sean Murphy from the tanking A’s (and signed both to long-term deals) while thieving closer Raisel Iglesias from the Angels during the 2022 campaign.

“They have a great system,” said Freeman, the Dodgers first baseman and 2023 NL All-Star, “You got Snit [manager Brian Snitker] and the coaching staff that are the same every year and they work hard. It’s a winning franchise. You just go in there and expect to win.”

In an analytic age, Snitker is an old-style manager surrounded by a coaching staff you hardly see any longer, deep in ex-major leaguers. There is not a lot of load management here — for example, Acuna Jr., Albies, Olson and Riley (each an All-Star) have played in all 89 Braves games. And as overcoming the loss of Acuna in 2021 exemplified, the Braves have organizational fortitude. They have hardly had Fried and Wright this year, and injuries have waylaid Anderson and Soroka.

But they keep going. They shockingly believed in utilityman Arcia over Vaughn Grissom to replace Swanson. Arcia is an All-Star, Grissom is hitting .316 at Triple-A, the Braves are 60-28 and leading the NL East by 8 ¹/₂ games (no other division leader is up by more than two games). They are the machine that should most concern the Mets in 2023 — and the future.