The news that the Braves had acquired Pierce Johnson from the Rockies on Monday is an item you have seen a thousand times before and will almost certainly see a dozen more times in the next week.
If “contender acquires minor piece of bullpen depth” is not the oldest story in the annals of deadline baseball news, it’s certainly the most common, the most obvious and the most boring. (As if to hammer home the point, Atlanta immediately acquired yet another reliever, Taylor Hearn from the Rangers, just after picking up Johnson.) But there’s something potentially interesting with this trade.
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