Dan Uggla Is Getting Paid More This Year By the Atlanta Braves Than Pretty Much Everyone Actually on Their Roster

Baseball’s Spring Training is long. After the initial excitement from the first few Grapefruit and Cactus League games wear off, it’s mostly a repetitive, tedious grind. In turn, Spring Training and social media continue to make odd bedfellows. Reporters are positioned in Florida and Arizona and need to fill time, which leads to a lot of blurry photos and pointless in-game update tweeting.

On the opposite end of that spectrum is MLB.com’s Mark Bowman who dropped this worthwhile, illuminating tweet ahead of today’s exhibition game with the Nationals concerning former Atlanta second baseman Dan Uggla.

With Melvin Upton Jr. sidelined, the highest-paid member of the #Braves payroll on the field today will be Nationals 2B Dan Uggla
— Mark Bowman (@mlbbowman) March 6, 2015

At first glance I didn’t think this was possible. Freddie Freeman is still in the lineup, after all. Freeman inked a 8-year/$135 million deal last year but it’s a back-loaded deal and he only pockets $8.5 million in 2015. Uggla, meanwhile, was released by Atlanta last summer with the club still on the hook for about $18 million — $13 million coming in 2015. (Upton makes $14.45 million in 2015.)

Moral of the story here? One, it’s good to be a veteran baseball player with a guaranteed contract. You can bat .209, as Uggla did in parts of four seasons with the the Braves and play with a proverbial lead glove in the field, and still be rewarded handsomely financially. Second? All signs point toward it being a long summer at Turner Field.

If there’s a third lesson here, it’s good to be the Nationals. Everyone expects the Nats to run away with the National League East and when you have the luxury of five very good starting pitchers, you can afford to take a gamble on a guy like Uggla, if only to stick it to your division rival who is footing the bill.