Outside of their current five-game winning streak, the rebuilding year of 2016 has been awfully hard on the Atlanta Braves. What would make it sting a little less is finding legitimate trade value on the big-league roster – outside of Julio Teheran and Freddie Freeman, of course.

When Atlanta traded away Shelby Miller to the Arizona Diamondbacks for a king’s ransom over the winter, multiple teams immediately asked about Ender Inciarte. Not only was he a good outfielder with some speed and coming off a solid 2015 (.303/.338/.408, six homers, 45 RBI, 73 runs scored), one would assume he had no space in the Braves’ rebuild.

Those teams are probably right – it’s likely just a matter of time before Inciarte is traded away for more young talent. Him missing about a month with a hamstring injury and putting up a cumulative line of .234/.303/.317 through 167 at-bats this year probably doesn’t help his trade value very much, but it shouldn’t matter.

He showed exactly how valuable he is in the matter of just two innings during a weekend series against the New York Mets at Citi Field. He was a force throughout the three-game set, slashing .308/.357/.462 during the sweep, but it was what he did late on Saturday night that really caught my eye.

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