Atlanta Braves will struggle to find teams interested in Dan Uggla

The Atlanta Braves are looking for an upgrade at second base. They recently thought they had a longtime answer at the position with the slugging Dan Uggla, a belief they expressed in the form of a five year, $62 million contract.

Now the team is looking again. Understandably so, as Uggla batted .179/.302/.362 in 2013. Teams will likely concede quite a bit in other facets of the game to get Uggla’s 22 home runs from the second base position, but it’s hard to imagine any team being willing to put up with those numbers.

The Braves would love to trade Uggla to make room for somebody else, but David O’Brien of the Atlanta Journal Constitution says no interested trading partner has emerged:

Uggla brings a disastrous combination of a bad contract and bad production. At age 34, it is hard to envision any marked improvement next season to make us believe that better days are ahead. At this point in his career, he is probably better suited to be in some sort of DH platoon in the American League.

The problem for the Braves is the fact that no team will trade for a player with such limited output. Joe Kaiser of ESPN notes that the team might end up having to eat the remaining money on the contract to move on from Uggla. Either way, it appears that the Braves have reached the point where they will admit their mistake with the big contract and find another second baseman.