Hello everyone and welcome to episode 427 of the Battery Power podcast.

I am your host, Brad Rowland, coming to you on a Monday afternoon slash evening, not our typical

time slot to be recording this podcast, and I am joined as I often end by Scott Coleman.

Scott today was the official kickoff of the free agent cycle in the world of Major League Baseball and the Braves. We're pretty busy, although we have plenty to discuss. How are you feeling on this Monday afternoon?

Hey, Brad. I'm doing well. Happy off season to you and all the listeners out there. I think the baseball off season is always a little odd with just its pacing and the way it goes about its business, maybe compared to the NFL and the NBA, which have like such grand openings to the off season more times than not.

Usually it's pretty quiet for a couple of weeks with baseball, but we did have some pretty important option decisions for the Braves to make today

and really just some important news around the rest of Major League Baseball as well.

So there is no shortage of things to talk about.

That's for sure. And I will say, you know, the Braves probably had more to tackle on this

particular day than most franchises. If you don't follow this closely, essentially the option deadline across

baseball unless otherwise stated is five days after the World Series, which is also the end of the

quiet period of free agency where you can only talk to your own guys. And that came and went as

of 5 p.m. Eastern on Monday. In typical Braves fashion, they waited on most of these until quite literally

4.59 p.m. Eastern, as we kind of joked about, and then they actually did. But I guess we'll

just dive in now, Scott, because there is a lot to talk about on a podcast that we don't need to go

necessarily too long on. Definitely the headliner and the one we were looking at the most is the

Charlie Morton news.

So Charlie Morton is going to be back for 2024. The Braves had a $20 million option on Charlie Morton, which they are picking up. It was first reported by your friend, your nemesis, how do you

want to put that, Jeff Passon of ESPN. I have to say this at the top to hat tip our friend Stephen Tolberg, who found this on ESPN.com. I guess in a like a best fits piece that ESPN released, Passon had a section where he

just kind of casually dropped that the Braves are going to be declining that option.

And it wasn't framed as news.

And I don't know if he was either mixed up or what happened there.

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