The Braves have signed first baseman Garrett Cooper to a minor league contract, according to FanSided’s Robert Murray. The deal includes an invitation for Cooper to attend Atlanta’s big league Spring Training camp.
After spending the majority of his eight MLB seasons with the Marlins, Cooper now heads back to the NL East in the hopes of achieving some stability in what has become a journeyman-esque couple of years. Miami dealt Cooper to the Padres at the 2023 trade deadline, and upon entering free agency last winter, Cooper landed with the Cubs on a minor league contract. He was then designated for assignment and subsequently traded to the Red Sox at the end of April, but was then DFA’ed again by Boston in June and then released.
Cooper signed another minors deal with the Orioles but didn’t make any appearances with Baltimore at the MLB level, as injuries hampered his time at Triple-A Norfolk. Cooper had a .914 OPS over 84 plate appearances with Norfolk, which might hint that he has something left in the tank as he enters his age-34 season, even if his MLB numbers with Chicago and Boston left a lot to be desired.
Cooper hit well in 41 PA with the Cubs before struggling badly over 75 PA with the Red Sox. It added up to an overall .206/.267/.299 slash line over 116 plate appearances, and the second straight season of declining numbers for Cooper after his Marlins heyday. Cooper hit .274/.350/.444 over 1273 PA for Miami from 2019-22, and was the team’s All-Star representative in 2022 even though injuries and the Marlins’ overall lower profile made him something of an underrated hitter.
While there has always been a good deal of swing-and-miss in Cooper’s game even in his prime years, his strikeout rates have increased over the last two seasons and his hard-contact numbers have dropped. Defensively, Cooper played a good deal of right field earlier in his career but has been almost exclusively a first baseman since the start of the 2021 season, apart from two appearances in left field for the Cubs this year.
Since Matt Olson and Marcell Ozuna have the first base and DH positions locked down in Atlanta, the outfield is likely Cooper’s best path to winning a job on the Braves’ Opening Day roster. Jarred Kelenic is penciled in for the bulk of work in left field, but since he’ll need a platoon partner, a right-handed bat like Cooper might be an ideal fit.
A return to right field also might not be out of the question, as Ronald Acuna Jr. is expected to miss some time at the start of the season as he returns from a torn ACL. The Braves have added Bryan De La Cruz (a former teammate of Cooper’s in Miami) and Conner Capel to an outfield depth chart that also includes Luke Williams and Eli White, as the team will try to make do in the corner outfield slots until Acuna is back in action.