In short, the 2018 season for the Atlanta Braves was leaps and bounds ahead of where the franchise expected to be. Behind an impressive season that saw the team win the National League East division with a 90-72 record, the team dropped one of the NL Divisional Series matchups against the eventual NL winner, the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Behind the young faces of Ozzie Albies, Dansby Swanson and Ronald Acuna, as well as grizzled veterans Nick Markakis, Kurt Suzuki and Ender Inciarte, the Braves can look back on 2018 and realize their core got them much farther than expected, sooner than expected.

So what is next? Nick Castellanos… but more on the Detroit Tigers third baseman later.

The timeline was sped up, so how the team is built must match that new frame, one in which puts them in the top tier of not only their conference but also the entire league.

With the youngsters having more experience and playing time under their belts, youth is not an option for an excuse anymore. There are areas that the team needs to upgrade, and focusing their efforts on improving the bullpen and bench depth should be their 1A and 1B priorities before going into spring training.

Their bullpen was mostly consistent last season but seemed to break down during the NLDS. The pitching staff, in general, had a 4.76 ERA in the playoffs, compared to the sparkling 2.06 ERA that LA had in their four-game series victory, a startling difference between both teams.

The team’s main bullpen arms consist of closer Arodys Vizcaino and relievers Brad Brach, A.J. Minter, Chad Sobotka and Jonny Venters. Max Fried and Touki Toussaint both bounced between the rotation and the pen during the regular season, but both came out of the pen against Los Angeles.

With Vizcaino holding down the closer spot, the team needs to add setup-like arms to the pen. Brach would be a good candidate to be brought back, as he was third on the team with 12 saves, to along with a 3.59 ERA in 69 appearances.

Outside of that, a reunion with Craig Kimbrel would be interesting, as that would push Vizcaino to the setup role along with Minter, giving manager Brian Snitker a three-headed monster to help close games.

Lefty and former Houston Astro Tony Sipp would be a solid southpaw addition, coming off a 2018 campaign that saw him put up career numbers with a 1.86 ERA across 38.2 IP and 54 appearances. Justin Wilson, Jake Diekman and Xavier Cedeno would constitute as lower-tier southpaw options for Atlanta if they decided they needed to add another lefty to the Venters/Minter combination.

For righties, former Yankees and Mariners reliever Adam Warren or former A’s reliever Shawn Kelley would be viable options, as both put up solid seasons in 2018. The team could sign both if needed, but Kelley would be the better bet.

Position player wise, the outfield is the biggest need, as the team needs to replace Markakis and all he brought to the table. The team has been poking around in the market, but no real name has been tied to them at this moment.

Their infield was shored up with their big signing so far, bringing power-hitting third baseman Josh Donaldson on a one year, $23 million deal that makes him the highest paid player on the team, jumping first baseman Freddie Freeman and his $21 million AAV.

Donaldson, who faced injury issues last year that hampered his production, comes to Atlanta looking for a fresh start on a team that will look to move up the home run rankings in 2019, as Donaldson has been one of better rakers in the league when healthy.

After all of that, let’s get back to the little tidbit that was left at the beginning of this piece, Nicholas Castellanos.

Coming off a career season on a consistently disappointing Tigers franchise, the Braves have been publicly linked to bringing Castellanos to Atlanta. While the Tigers are wanting a big return for him and rightfully so, their expectations should be a bit tampered, as all teams who have valuable pieces available for trades are all under the shoot for the moon mindset, leading to why there has been little movement on the trade market up to this point.

If Atlanta were to seriously attempt to try and acquire Castellanos, they would need to part with at least one top prospect, or two middle-of-the-road prospects in order to fulfill Detroit’s wants.

Out of their top ten, according to the official MLB website, seven are pitchers, so the team has a plethora of pitching prospects, something teams can never have enough of. If the Braves were not wanting to give up too much, sending a player like LHP Joey Wentz, their 11th-best prospect, and C/3B Drew Lugbauer, their 29th best, would suffice to help restock the Tigers.

Pulling from one of the league’s better farm systems is something definitely in Atlanta’s favor, but with Touki Toussaint and Luiz Gohara most likely graduating from the minors this season to being mainstays on the big-league roster, they will drop a few rungs in the league rankings, still remaining in the top 10.

Atlanta has set themselves up in a great state, and with executive vice president and general manager Alex Anthopoulos at the helm leading player development and roster decisions, the team is in good hands. If they were able to secure Castellanos from the Tigers, he would only have 2019 on his deal, so it would be more of an early trade deadline deal than anything. If he were to enjoy his time with the Braves, the 26-year-old could resign and become a mainstay in the Braves outfield as their right fielder for the near future.

For the Braves to become a contender for the NL crown and a World Series berth, they need to capitalize on their strengths of youthful experience and a deep farm system to bring in the necessary pieces to win. While the current state of the team is above average, winning the East is just scraping the tip of the iceberg of what this team could become.