The Braves made a plethora of trades in the past 12 months, most of which made sense, given the team’s situation. But a couple of those deals — the one that sent away Juan Uribe and Kelly Johnson, and the one that brought Hector Olivera to Atlanta — beg a second look.
But first, some background: The Braves, after firing general manager Frank Wren near the end of the 2014 season, set about on a mission to get out of their rut of mostly mediocre-to-good performance in recent years — the team hasn’t won a playoff series since 2003 — by restocking the farm system with high-level prospects, almost all of them pitchers The team wasn’t able to acquire top position-player prospects despite looking to add some of those as well.