Can The Braves Afford to Address All Their Roster Weaknesses in Free Agency?

Alex Anthopoulos has admitted that the team needs to address the rotation, bullpen, and shortstop, and adding another bat would be helpful, too.

(Programming note: This is the last newsletter of the week - I’m having a minor heart surgery on Friday morning and will be down for a few days. We’ll be back next week.)

President of Baseball Operations Alex Anthopoulos has not been afraid to push the Atlanta Braves payroll over the Competitive Balance Tax threshold in recent years, within reason. Spending over the first or second tier requires simply paying a tax on the overage, an amount somewhere between 10% and 50%, depending on several different factors.

As Anthopoulos told us last week, “it’s a payroll allocation, right? So we went over two years in a row. The first time we went over the first tier, the second time we went over two tiers, and all it was is dollars. I’m not trying to minimize that, but it was just money. It was, ‘okay, what is this gonna cost us? 20 cents on the dollar, 50 cents on every dollar over. So it’s an extra $3 million, $4 million, $5 million.’ Well, when you’re spending well over $200 million on payroll…”

But hitting the third tier, which begins at $40M over the base CBT threshold of $244M, involves the team’s first draft pick being moved back ten spots and that’s akin to crossing the Rubicon for AA. “ If you have these teams that are well over, you’re losing draft position and things like that. There’s a real opportunity cost there. The opportunity cost (for us) is dollars. It’s not, in my view, it’s not the same as ‘you move back in the draft’ and things like that.

Using the recently updated FanGraphs payroll projections for 2026, how much money do the Braves look to have available this winter and can they adequately fill all of their needs with that amount? Let’s talk about it.

The Braves look pretty good at first glance

When FanGraphs plugs in the projected arbitration figures from MLB Trade Rumors and then accounts for non-salary expenses - player benefits, salaries for 40-man players in the minors (who receive more than the minor league minimum), and Atlanta’s contribution to the pre-arbitration bonus pool, the initial figure is $173.92M, against a CBT threshold of $244M for 2026.

That’s roughly $70M in potential AAV that can be added before the Braves even get to the first threshold, much better than the $50M I approximated earlier in the year, based on a pre-FA payroll of $193M (before the Braves did some cost-cutting).

At the same time, there are some major adjustments that still need to be made to these numbers.

The first is that the CBT figure does not include club options being picked up. Chris Sale ($18M), Ozzie Albies ($7M), Pierce Johnson ($7M), and Tyler Kinley ($5.5M) are going to add another $37.5M to that initial $173.92M figure, so let’s bump that to $212M, rounding up.

Now you’re looking at just $32M before Atlanta hits the first CBT tier. That technically leaves $72M in spending capacity, although there’s roughly $60-65M in usable CBT space, accounting for AA’s preference to reserve some money for trade deadline adds.

But this also doesn’t account for Ha-Seong Kim, who likely isn’t returning on the $16M player option figure. Heading to free agency without a qualifying offer in an incredibly weak shortstop market still makes the most sense for the player, so let’s project out a four-year, $80M deal for Kim to bring him back to Atlanta.¹

That pushes Atlanta roughly $10M shy of the first CBT tier ($244M) before adding anyone to the roster, even though we know directly from AA that the organization wants to address the rotation, bullpen, and shortstop this winter. Only one of those is checked off so far.

(Which means that my initial top-end estimate from early August of ~$50M to play with is actually pretty accurate.)

There are a few ways to trim some spending - trading Aaron Bummer, who is owed $9.5M for 2026, would be a start - but let’s assume this is what the Braves have to work with heading into 2026.

Instead of looking at different configurations of players that would use most of that money, let’s talk about options to replace some of that free agent spending with trade acquisitions. Who might be available this winter?

Starting pitching options via trade

Up front, let’s talk about the concept of pulling off an intra-division trade for either Sandy Alcantara of the Miami Marlins or MacKenzie Gore of the Washington Nationals.

They’re likely not very good.

We don’t have any track record to explain what new Nationals boss Paul Toboni has done in trades, as he was an assistant in Boston with the Red Sox. Complete wild card here, although I’ve heard good things about his baseball acumen.

But we have a track record for Peter Bendix.

While running the Marlins (and the Tampa Bay Rays before that), Bendix had no issue making a minor trade in his own division. He got Michael Peterson from Atlanta and acquired Tyler Phillips from the Philadelphia Phillies this summer, both cash consideration deals. And he did make a notable offseason trade in the division, sending Jesús Luzardo to Philly last winter for two prospects.

I’m saying there is a chance, although I wouldn’t count on Alcantara landing in Atlanta if a bidding war breaks out. And he might not get moved at all! He rebounded late in the year and is owed just $17.3M for 2026 (with a $21M club option for 2027), plus Miami’s strong finish to the season means they may decide to add and contend a season early. The Marlins finished 2025 on a 9-3 run, including taking two out of three from the division rival New York Mets to knock them out of the final NL Wild Card spot on the season’s final day.

But outside of Alcantara and Gore, there still stand to be several starters on the trade block this winter. Here’s a non-exhaustive list of players for whom I found reputable sources discussing the team being open to a trade of this player.

Minnesota Twins: Pablo López, Joe Ryan, Bailey Ober
St. Louis Cardinals: Sonny Gray (which we covered a few weeks ago)
Pittsburgh Pirates: Mitch Keller
Cincinnati Reds: Brady Singer
Tampa Bay Rays: Shane Baz
Athletics: Luis Severino

Of that group, my preferences (in no particular order) are López, Gray, and Baz.

Pablo López is a former Cy Young finalist who is owed $21.75M for each of the next two seasons before reaching free agency. The fact that the Minnesota Twins sold a third of the roster out from underneath him means that he might be open to an offseason trade (and while extremely unlikely, it’s possible that Braves trade deadline target Byron Buxton might be interested in joining him as part of a package deal.)

Shane Baz is a young up-and-coming arm that’s hitting arbitration eligibility at the right time for his organization - he regressed in his first full season back from Tommy John surgery and an oblique injury that took away his entire 2023 and part of 2024, so he might be a bit cheaper on a salary perspective than he’d like. With his once-vaunted slider having regressed in 2025 (and being replaced midseason by a firm cutter), he’s a two-pitch pitcher right now with only a four-seam fastball and a knuckle curve as reliable options to miss bats. With the Rays trading former top prospect Taj Bradley this trade deadline (coincidentally, to the Twins), it’s possible that they decide to move on from Baz.

But there’s another factor to consider with Sonny Gray of the St. Louis Cardinals - their new front office. Chaim Bloom was just installed as President of Baseball Operations after multiple seasons with the Boston Red Sox, a tenure that saw Boston trade Mookie Betts to the Los Angeles Dodgers, let Xander Bogaerts walk in free agency, and extended Rafael Devers to an absurd ten-year deal, one that aged so well that the third baseman-turned designated hitter was traded to the San Francisco Giants just two years later.

Could there be a package deal here? Could Atlanta acquire Sonny Gray and a second piece, like super-utility Brendan Donovan?² The former University of South Alabama Jaguar is projected for a $5.4M salary in arbitration and is just two seasons away from free agency. That’s exactly the type of expense that a rebuilding team is looking to shed for assets. Atlanta could offer multiple pitching prospects for the combination of Donovan and Gray, with the arrangement that St. Louis was retaining some of Gray’s $35M salary for 2026 (Katie Woo of The Athletic reported in early October that ownership was on board with this plan). Giving Gray an immediate extension, lowering his 2026 salary in exchange for an additional guaranteed year or two on the back end, is another option.

I said earlier I wasn’t going to do this, but here’s a potential deal:

Braves receive: Sonny Gray (and $15M cash for Gray), Brendan Donovan
Cardinals receive: Bryce Elder, Owen Murphy, Lucas Braun, Carlos Rodriguez (or potentially a lower level outfielder if they have 40-man concerns)

That’s an MLB starter in Elder, an organizational top-five prospect in Murphy, and two more top-15 prospects. The money being retained by St. Louis is the real question here - do they require an upgrade from Murphy to JR Ritchie to keep that $15M? Do you offer Ritchie upfront, provided they increase from $15M to $20M (or more) retained for Gray?

Let’s assume the Cardinals keep $15M - you’ve added $25M in payroll between Gray and Donovan while checking off the starting rotation box and giving yourself a high-quality utilityman with MLB experience at every position but catcher and centerfield. He could rotate around the diamond, giving several guys a DH day each week.

Oh, and he’s also a career .282 hitter with a strikeout rate 9% below MLB average. Doesn’t hurt, right?

If Atlanta could spend a total of $20M for two bullpen arms - Iglesias getting $10M and someone else, a potential closing option, signing on for a similar amount - you’ve checked off almost all of your offseason needs and while you’re in the CBT, it’s not by much.

I’d argue that’s almost the perfect offseason.

1. I genuinely don’t know if that’s enough to bring him back, but he’s a very hard player to price right now, given the unknowns after his surgery and the health/status of Bo Bichette.

2. They’ve already said SS Masyn Winn is NOT available, but outfielder Lars Nootbaar is another option that would presumably require a smaller return than Donovan.