Philly Front Office

[UPDATE: After publication, the Braves signed outfielder Mike Yastrzemski to a 2/$23m deal. This raises their payroll this season to around $223m]

Remember the Braves? That team that cried about losing to the Phillies in the playoffs two years in a row then bottomed out last year because of injuries, ineffectiveness, and a stingy ownership group? Well, they are back and banking on less injuries, less ineffectiveness, and, well, still being stingy. Let’s take a look at their offseason plan…

Looking Around the NL East: NY Mets

The Draft

Atlanta finished with the 8th worst record in baseball. However, because of wonky MLB Draft rules they had the 6th best chances of scoring the top pick. Unfortunately for them, they were jumped by the Rays, Royals, and Giants and will be picking 9th.

More interesting through is the competitive balance pick they were awarded for bringing up Drake Baldwin and him winning the Henry Rowengartner Award. This is the 26th pick in the draft and the highest of all compensation picks. It is important.

A report from the Athletic today took stock of the Braves and specifically the 26th pick in the draft and pointed out the rules of qualifying offers and free agency. If you sign a free agent who declined a qualifying offer, you lose your 2nd highest draft pick, NOT your second-round pick (a common misconception that I was here to for guilty of making). So, if the Braves were to go out and sign Kyle Tucker, Ranger Suarez, Framber Valdez, Bo Bichette, Zac Gallen, or Michael King, they would forfeit that #26 pick. For signing Edwin Diaz, the Dodgers will forfeit pick #67. If the Phillies, Mets, or Yankees were to do the same, they would only forfeit #s 70, 58, and 69 respectively.¹ That’s a huge difference. Considering the budget first nature of the Braves, this will probably be a deterrent to any of those high-end free agents.

Front Office

In many ways, this front office is the opposite of the Mets. While NY has the billionaire fan Steve Cohen signing the checks and the thrifty David Stearns trying not to spend his money, the Braves were run by a corporation called Liberty Media and a very excited GM named Alex Anthopoulos. I say “were” because the Braves were spun off into its own company, Atlanta Braves Holdings. However, the stink of corporate Liberty Media still lives on in this publicly traded corporation. Why am I harping on this? Because the Braves first, most, and last, are concerned with making a profit. Winning is nice, but profit comes first. After years of increasing payroll, the Braves peaked 2 years ago at $276m, but slashed that number to $237m last year. They are currently at around $223m [UPDATED]. Does that mean they are going to spend? Probably not. You can already assume they are out on the top free agents, but who else do they need?

Before we get to that, we need to discuss the Braves operating plan. This is a team that is only interested in a player if they come at a deal. So many of the Atlanta mainstays were either drafted or traded for and signed to a long term, budget friendly deal. Ozzie Albies and Ronald Acuna may be the two best contracts in the whole sport. They did go out and sign Jurickson Profar last year as a free agent, but they didn’t make any other major signings. They ended up in desperate need of pitching and their bullpen was a mess. A team like the Mets could use the injury excuse, but not Atlanta. So many of their injuries were foreseeable in one way or another and they imploded with no backup plan.

The Braves Might Get Even Worse

Pitching

On paper, this rotation is awesome. Chris Sale won the Cy Young in 2023 and looked every bit as good last year, unfortunately in just 2/3 of the starts as he missed most of the summer. Injuries and Sale are synonymous. Despite being 37, if he pitches, you can assume solid performance. Spencer Schwellenbach may be the Braves best pitcher. Before breaking his elbow, he was the one I was most afraid of. He is apparently healthy now, but again, injuries. At #3, is Spencer Strider. Last year was his first year back from TJ surgery and as expected, he struggled. A fully healthy Strider would be #1 in almost any rotation. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that “fully healthy” is what the Braves will get. Hurston Waldrep was forced into action midseason and held his own, pulling in a 2.88 ERA in 10 starts. His problem is going to be innings. He went from 100 to 150 between 2024 and 2025. Then there is Reynaldo Lopez. The Braves babied his starts in 2024 only for him to get hurt and miss most of 2025 anyway. The Braves also have Grant Holmes, the converted reliever turned starter. He pitched 45 innings more than the year before and hurt himself too. Other than Waldrep, there isn’t a single reliable starter in this incredibly talented group from a health standpoint. They aren’t going to do a thing with their rotation.

The bullpen was a mess last year and isn’t much better this season. They lost Joe Jimenez before the season even started and nothing much worked out after that. Jimenez is back and so is Raisel Iglesias to join stalwarts Dylan Lee and Aaron Bummer. The Braves are just good enough to convince themselves not to spend here either (other than bringing back Iglesias).

Lineup

With damn near the whole lineup locked up (except for Marcell Ozuna who should be a different locked up) the Braves only have vacancies at SS and DH. As a free agent, Ozuna is not expected back. They made a trade for Astros utility guy Mauricio Dubon and he is penciled in as the starter at SS. Of course, they could bring back Ha-Seong Kim to play SS after he had a good run last year in Atlanta. They do have a catching surplus with Sean Murphy making $15m for each of the next 3 years and ROY Drake Baldwin ready to play every day. I would say it is likely for the Braves to try to move Murphy for another bat. As catchers are rare on this market. Once JT Realmuto signs, expect these rumors to heat up. More of the same for Atlanta.

Overview

For anyone hoping the Braves would make changes after they didn’t make changes the year before or the year before that, well, I have some bad news. This is a team that thinks it can compete with the same group from last year and will be running it back again, injury luck be damned. In the process, they will probably drop payroll again and extort that much more of a profit from the corporation.

There is a chance that Alex Anthopoulos makes a move like trading Ozzie Albies or Murphy, but I wouldn’t expect any large deposits in the payroll.

All salary info courtesy of Spotrac, all stats courtesy of Baseball Reference

1. I haven’t seen the full order published, but this is pretty close ↩︎