Craig Kimbrel

Craig Kimbrel has led the National League in saves in all four of his full seasons with the Atlanta Braves. (AP photo)

Atlanta Braves president of baseball operations John Hart said Thursday that the team has "never entertained" the idea of trading closer Craig Kimbrel, in spite of all the other offseason moves the club has made.

Kimbrel, a Huntsville native who played at Lee High School and Wallace State College in Hanceville, is widely regarded as the best reliever in baseball. He has led the National League in saves in all four of his full seasons, and his strikeout rate of 14.8 per nine innings is among the best in MLB history.

Still, the rebuilding Braves would probably be better served in the long term to trade Kimbrel now. Here are five reasons why:

1. Kimbrel makes a lot of money

Kimbrel is scheduled to earn $9.25 million in 2015, which (per Cot's Baseball Contracts) ranks him third on the Braves' roster behind woefully overpaid (and untradeable) center fielder B.J. Upton ($15.05 million) and recent free agent import Nick Markakis ($11 million). That's a lot of money for someone who throws only 60-70 innings per year, regardless of how dominant he is. And Kimbrel's salary rises steadily the next few years, to $11.25 million in 2016, $13.25 million in 2017 and $13.25 million in 2018 (though the Braves can buy out that last year for $1 million).

2. Closers are a luxury on bad teams

Regardless what Hart says about expecting the Braves to challenge in the NL East this year, the franchise seems committed to a return to contention by the time it moves into its new ballpark in 2017. The well-regarded statistically based website Fangraphs.com projects Atlanta to go 71-91 in 2015, ahead of only the Philadelphia Phillies among MLB teams. Thus, having a shutdown pitcher for the ninth inning when you're not going to have that many leads to protect seems like a misallocation of resources. Better to use that $9.25 million on a bat or two, which the Braves desperately need.

3. Good closers aren't that hard to find

Though Kimbrel is historically good at his job (behind perhaps only Mariano Rivera among 21st century closers), it's been proven time and time again that great relievers are made, not born. The last two teams to win the World Series, the San Francisco Giants and Boston Red Sox, changed closers at midseason and continued to win big. And given Atlanta's track record under pitching coach Roger McDowell of molding virtual unknowns into highly effective relievers (David Carpenter, Anthony Varvaro and Eric O'Flaherty are just the most-recent examples), it seems likely the Braves could find a closer 80 percent as good as Kimbrel for 10 percent of the price.

4. He would bring a huge return

Teams always tend to overpay for proven closers, either in salary or in trade. If the Braves dangled Kimbrel on the trade market, a team with an untested bullpen but designs on contending -- the Detroit Tigers, Toronto Blue Jays and New York Yankees jump immediately to mind -- would probably fall all over themselves to acquire him. Though it's unlikely he would bring back what the Braves got for Evan Gattis (who makes near the league minimum and is under club control for longer), multiple elite prospects or perhaps a major-league ready hitter would certainly be on the table.

5. Pitchers of his type don't age well

It's a sad fact of baseball that relievers who throw as hard as Kimbrel don't have very long shelf lives (see Rob Dibble, Eric Gagne, Joel Zumaya and Brian Wilson, just to name a few). Injuries and/or a simple decline in skills tend to get in the way of the kind of longevity we saw from more deception-oriented closers such as Rivera and Trevor Hoffman. Kimbrel has shown no dip in velocity or command in his four seasons with the Braves, but history tells us he's an extreme outlier if he keeps up his current level of performance for much longer. Perhaps he's another Billy Wagner, who pitched 13 years in the majors before his first serious injury (and never showed a decline in skills), but betting on that is quite a gamble.