Braves general manager Alex Anthopoulos conducted an end-of-season media session with reporters this morning. Most notably, the GM indicated he expected player payroll to increase going into next year. A rising payroll doesn’t mean the Braves will be especially active in free agency, as the club already has a lot of internal commitments.
“It’s gone up each year that I’ve been here,” Anthopoulos said (link via Gabe Burns of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution). “I know it’s not going to go down, I expect it to rise, but to what level, we’ll spend the offseason going through that. I view it opening day to opening day, because in-season things come up. … Is it a bottomless pit? Is it unlimited? Of course not. But every year we’ve set a new Braves high from a payroll standpoint. … We will be going up, I just can’t give you the amount.”
According to the calculations at Cot’s Baseball Contracts, the Braves entered the 2024 season with around $223MM in player salaries. Their estimated luxury tax number was much higher. A team’s tax figure is calculated based on the average annual values of their contracts, leading to a higher tax number than raw payroll for an Atlanta team that has a lot of backloaded extensions. Cot’s estimated the Braves’ tax hit around $279MM, though Anthopoulos confirmed shortly after the trade deadline that Atlanta was narrowly below the $277MM threshold that marks the third tier of penalization. It’s the second straight year in which the Braves will pay the luxury tax.
The Braves seem prepared to go over the threshold for a third consecutive season in 2025. That’d entail paying a higher price for repeat payors. Atlanta would pay a 50% tax on their first $20MM above next year’s $241MM base threshold. That’d jump to 62% for the following $20MM with further penalties if they pushed past the $281MM mark.
According to RosterResource, the Braves already have around $180MM in player salaries (not CBT obligations) on the books for 2025. They’re planning to exercise a trio of club options that’ll tack on another $31.25MM. That puts the team at roughly $211.25MM. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projects their arbitration class to add roughly $10MM more — assuming they tender Ramón Laureano and move on from Cavan Biggio. Rounding out the roster with minimum salary players would put them close to last year’s estimated Opening Day payroll before accounting for outside acquisitions.
Anthopoulos and his staff could create some payroll room via trade. Jorge Soler is set for respective $13MM salaries over the next two seasons. Soler hit well down the stretch when the Braves acquired him at the deadline to bolster a scuffling offense. He’s not an ideal fit on a roster that already has Marcell Ozuna locked in at designated hitter, though. Ronald Acuña Jr. should be back early in the season in right field. If the Braves retain Laureano for his final arbitration season, trading Soler and offloading at least a chunk of his contract would make sense.
At the same time, the Braves are going to need some kind of additions. They could lose Max Fried and A.J. Minter to free agency. Charlie Morton is also an impending free agent and might decide to retire. Getting Spencer Strider back midway through the year would help compensate for losing Fried, while the bullpen still looks strong even if Minter departs. Still, there’d be some questions about the rotation depth behind a strong front four of Chris Sale, Reynaldo López, Spencer Schwellenbach and (once healthy) Strider.
Atlanta could look for an upgrade over Orlando Arcia at shortstop as well. A free agent splash for Willy Adames would be out of character for a front office that has typically done its heavy lifting via trades and extensions. (Jon Heyman of the New York Post floated the Braves as a possible Adames landing spot earlier this week.) There aren’t many obvious shortstop trade candidates, particularly if the Blue Jays elect to hang onto Bo Bichette for his last year of club control. Anthopoulos and his staff have had a knack for pulling surprise trades over the years, though, making it difficult to pinpoint exactly where they’ll look.
One area that doesn’t seem it’ll have any turnover: the coaching staff. Manager Brian Snitker is under contract through the end of next season. The 68-year-old confirmed right after the team was eliminated in the NL Wild Card Series that he’ll continue managing (X link via Justin Toscano of the Journal-Constitution). Anthopoulos said this morning that he expects the entire coaching staff to remain in place.
TradeAcuna
Rise or fall, changes need to be made…significant changes that don’t take into account people’s emotional attachment towards certain players.
I have a feeling, the Braves will go deep next season or the start of continual regression of the franchise.
MLB Top 100 Commenter
No reason for Mets to trade Luisangel
₩arkMohlers
Tendering Laureano?? That’s a joke right?
Anthony Franco
Cleveland tendered him at over $5MM coming off a worse season than the one he just had. He was terrible for the Guardians early this year but hit .296/.327/.505 in 67 games for Atlanta.
I wouldn’t be shocked if he got non-tendered but I think it’s likelier they keep him at around $6MM. He was certainly better down the stretch than Kelenic was.
₩arkMohlers
@anthony. Agreed on the better than kelenic. But, I doubt the Braves believe Laureano can maintain an almost .300 average with his sub 4% bb rate next year and be productive. I’d just be glad we got a good half year and wish him the best moving forward. I bet they move on, especially considering he was pretty terrible on the grass outside of LF.
Anthony Franco
Yeah that’s fair. I think there’s a chance they find a trade partner too. I’m skeptical they’ll want to play Soler in the outfield for a full season and it’s tough to go back to Kelenic. So if they do cut Laureano, they’ll probably need to throw a few million dollars at left field in either case.
₩arkMohlers
This is just my opinion. Soler should be DH, Ozuna should be traded, Eli White could be the bench outfielder. He’s better on defense and 1/10th the pay vs Laureano. But, I’m going beyond the article. Laureano being traded seems like a stretch. I feel lost team would just wait for the release. Ozuna could get some real trade interest.
Thanks for responding!
Benjamin101677
They can tender him a contract and still release him in spring training without owing him the full contract. So they probably tender him a contract until they figure out what they want to do with the outfield
Benjamin101677
Ozuna and soler don’t even compare. Ozuna is almost a 100 points here and brings more to Atlanta. Ozuna will stay and Soler will go if they trade
Rishi
All I know is that once he got going he was a consistent threat for the rest of the season. Don’t underestimate that he is a talented defender who plays very hard. He would certainly be good for a platoon at least. I mean he was hitting fifth and doing a great job so the suggestion by the one guy that it’s a joke to resign him at 5 mil is odd. At the least you have a very serviceable defensive first 4th outfielder. They brought in a right handed bat in Duvall to platoon with Kelenic so presumably they would be interested in keeping Laureano unless they get an everyday LFer. They’d hardly be expecting he hit 300. He showed impressive opposite field power tho.
₩arkMohlers
@ben. It’s about opportunity cost. You can get more value from Ozuna now than Soler. And who’s to say Ozuna will produce going forward? Ozuna can’t get a QO, Soler can.
₩arkMohlers
@rishi. You are looking at 67 games. He’s been terrible at defense outside of left field. Also he’s hit like 230 since he got popped for peds. If I’m a front office I approach negotiations as if I’m talking to a lifetime .247 batter with sub 5% bb rate. I’m not falling for recency bias
Rishi
Soler is locked up. He can’t get a QO.
₩arkMohlers
I mean when his contract is up. Come on son
Rishi
If one looks at what Soler has done twice now with ATL he plays well for them. He has lots of potential. He is available one more year than Ozuna. He can run a bit more. He has a good arm so while he is bad in left he is at least playable there occasionally which opens up the DH slot now and then. Ozuna has the value right now assuming teams don’t hold his past against him. Trading Soler is gonna get little value as what he’s getting is about what he’d get as a free agent.
sad tormented neglected mariners fan
People wouldn’t want to pay a ton for a 35 year old DH so Atlanta wouldn’t waste his value for nothing
It’s soler that needs to go because he hits a lot worse than Marcell but is paid as much and is as bad defensively
Rishi
He has a great arm. It’s the only time he really got to play LF in his career tho. Wouldn’t it make sense that he would be good there. He was once an above average CFer.
Rishi
Well you say common son but it wasn’t exactly clear. Everyone can get a QO eventually.
₩arkMohlers
@rishi. I never said trade soler. My comment said soler at DH (even occasional OF) and trade Ozuna. What the fudge was the point of that comment? I was arguing why soler should stay and Ozuna go.
Rishi
I don’t think his value is nothing. Any team that needs hitting could use him. It doesn’t matter how bad Marcell is defensively because they are never gonna play him in the field. Partially because it took so long to get him right they don’t want him thinking about anything but hitting. At least Soler is an option if youre desperate.
Rishi
I’m speaking about Laureano
Rishi
You’re not the only one on the thread. I was commenting also to the other chap. I mean why couldn’t I theoretically just be supporting your point tho? Adding to it.
₩arkMohlers
My apologies, mate. The notifications make it seem like you respond to me, but I guess you are just responding within the thread.
Bart Harley Jarvis
Laureano was a lot of fun to watch when he played in Oakland and was on the juice.
herecomethephillies2018
I’ll be interested to see what the Braves do with Snitker going into his last year after 3 straight first round playoff exits. I can’t imagine he’d be happy going into 2025 on a lame duck contract after winning it all in 2021, but I also can’t imagine ownership sticking with him if they get bounced immediately in the playoffs again either.
Benjamin101677
Stinker is a life long Braves guy almost 50 years. Sure he is going stay if he wants too stay longer.
Rishi
I mean it’s hardly his fault. Every year something happens. Fried got very sick one year, got hit on the hip this year. Strider wasn’t fully stretched out one year and missed this year. Sale couldn’t pitch. They played the doubleheader. I mean the guy hasn’t done anything to be fired. It’s not a lame duck at that age really because most guys are taking it year to year anyway to see how they feel. You can’t fire a manager when the entire team overwhelmingly supports him. It’s not smart.
Braveraider
He is going to retire next year and they need to figure out who could be his replacement.
LordD99
He’ll be back, unless they think he’s personally responsible for the first-round exits, and they almost assuredly don’t.
Atloriolesfan
To believe AA, you either have to assume that they’ll play brinksmanship with draft penalties again or that he’s got some Rube Goldberg plan (like last offseason) to offload bad contracts by bundling them with expendable prospects.
Sounds like Nacho Alvarez, Baldwin and/or Anderson are going to any team that will take Soler’s contract. Or maybe they try to deal Murphy and a prospect for partial salary relief and a controllable young OF.
Benjamin101677
Nobody saw Chris Sale trade last year; who knows what he may do. The Braves needs are not much but they could use;
01. More speed in the line up
02. Another relief pitcher
03. Veteran pitcher to eat some innings; no teams makes it though the season with only 5-6 pitchers
sad tormented neglected mariners fan
An old, past prime, strikeout prone low average hitter? Perfect fit for the mariners DH! We will pay him just like garver!
Seriously though if we got someone like Baldwin on top of soler I’d take it
RunDMC
They value Murphy too much to want to trade an extended guy when his value is lowest from a G1 injury that derailed his season, which was out-of-character based on his career.
Alvarez is expendable, much like Grissom was, they’re hoping his bat will heat up enough to shine the fool’s gold and pawn him off on another team looking for a MI stalwart.
Smacky
Braves should for sure replace their good players with worse players.
phillyballers
Just pay guys a dollar today and 100m a year in ten years
Canuckleball
The player would have to agree to that. Most wouldn’t.
satan
Braves need to sign Corbin Burns, forget about Fried
sad tormented neglected mariners fan
This means the braves are going to pay fried just like Aaron Nola a year ago
Man if the braves signed Nola then fried could’ve gone to Philly…
longines64
At this point I think they lost in the Sean Murphy trade.
Saint Nick
Would hope for Burnes and Adames but they will end up with Wacha and Jose Iglesias. Ugh.