If the Braves Don't Splurge This Winter, When Will They?

The Atlanta Braves have, once again, achieved financial flexibility. Do they put it to good use this winter?

Major League Baseball’s offseason is still young, and despite the fact that we are not yet at the Winter Meetings, being held next week in Orlando, FL, there are a few big chips already off the board.

A record four players, including two starting pitchers, accepted their qualifying offers in mid-November. That was followed by two top fifteen free agents signing long-term deals in starter Dylan Cease, who went to the Toronto Blue Jays, and first baseman Josh Naylor, who re-signed with the Seattle Mariners after joining the team at the trade deadline. Two more of the top relief options in this year’s market have already signed, with Raisel Iglesias returning to Atlanta and Ryan Helsley joining the Baltimore Orioles on a two-year deal (with an opt-out after year one).

Between the qualifying offers and the signings, eight of the MLB Trade Rumors Top 50 free agents have already found new homes. And again, the Winter Meetings don’t start for another five days.

UPDATE: After this article was scheduled for publication, closer Devin Williams signed for 3/$50M with the New York Mets, so let’s make that nine of the top fifty that have already reached agreements this winter.

But how aggressive do the Atlanta Braves need to be? Let’s talk about it.

It’s hard to argue for another winter of austerity

The Braves shocked/disappointed the fanbase last year when they were largely quiet through the free agency period, finally inking a multi-year deal to bring on Jurickson Profar in late January but otherwise executing just minor trades (Nick Allen, Davis Daniel) and signing roughly 347,023 relievers¹ to minor league deals.

While the results on the field were less than desirable, with the organization missing the postseason for the first time since 2017, it’s hard to argue with the financial situation it presented the Braves for this season. Atlanta successfully reset their Competitive Balance Tax penalties, seeing it reduce back down to a 20% tax on any overages of next season’s $244M base threshold. They also still managed to make a profit in both in-season quarters despite lowered attendance, prompting Atlanta Braves Holdings chairman Terry McGuirk to declare his desire to increase payroll.

It’s time to put that “dry powder” to good use.

Championship windows aren’t guaranteed

We had a short discussion in the new Braves Today Discord on Monday about championship windows - that sliver of time when the team is best positioned to compete for championships.

Despite some great points being made on the other side, it’s still hard for me to buy the argument that Atlanta’s in a virtually windowless stretch of permanent contention. Yes, the trio of Ronald Acuña Jr., Matt Olson, and Austin Riley are all under team control for at least the next three seasons, with several supplemental pieces like newly minted Rookie of the Year Drake Baldwin and starter Spencer Schwellenbach all controlled for at least the next five years, but just their existence on the roster does not guarantee a World Series contender.

As we saw in both 2024 and 2025, injuries happen. Here’s a list of every Braves starter, either in the rotation or the lineup, who did not miss time to injury or suspension in the last two seasons:

Matt Olson and Bryce Elder, end of list.

Even when some of those injured players were on the field, they weren’t having their prototypical stellar seasons prior to going on the injured list. Austin Riley, who missed a combined 112 games across the last two seasons, hit just 35 combined homers in 212 games, a per-162 pace of 27 longballs, and supplemented that with a career-low 111 OPS+.² Michael Harris II and Ozzie Albies both finished the first half of 2025 as two of MLB’s worst qualified hitters, with Albies 6th-worst (by OPS) at .606 and Harris dead last at .551, including a .234 on-base percentage.

You get the picture. Even iron man Matt Olson, who has not missed a game since the 2021 season, was hitting just .238 through the end of May as the team buried itself in a hole in the NL East standings. Atlanta was never in first place or led the division in 2025 and peaked at one game over .500 in mid-May before finishing 20 games back and in fourth place.

The argument to invest heavily this winter

In 2024, the Braves lost their Opening Day pitcher (Spencer Strider) and both Ronald Acuña Jr. and Austin Riley to season-ending injuries. Per OptaStats, Atlanta was the first team in MLB history to make the postseason after losing three Opening Day starters for the final 35+ games plus the playoffs.

And that’s understating things. Down the stretch, as they were fighting for their playoff lives, the Braves were regularly starting two infield injury replacements they signed after those players were DFA’d (Gio Urshela at third and Whit Merrifield at second), as well as a trade acquisition in right (Jorge Soler) and another outfielder who had been designated for assignment earlier in the year in left field (Ramón Laureano). The Opening Day lineup was together for a grand total of six innings all season, as starting catcher Sean Murphy left the season opener in the seventh inning with an oblique injury and wouldn’t return until after Ronald Acuña Jr. was already gone for the year with his torn ACL.

Despite the backups and depth pieces taking over 44% of the lineup, Atlanta made the postseason thanks to two factors: Marcell Ozuna hitting .302/.378/.546 with 39 home runs and a pitching staff that put up the best ERA in all of baseball at 3.49.

They didn’t have either piece of that puzzle in 2025. Ozuna, playing through a hip injury, hit just .232 with a .756 OPS and is now a free agent. And as we’ve discussed ad nauseam at this point, the 2025 Braves became the first team in MLB history to have all five members of the Opening Day rotation on the 60-day injured list at the same time.

While 2025’s roster didn’t work out, we’ve seen several different iterations of a successful Braves season since the pandemic.

2021 was characterized by one of the best scoring offenses after the trade deadline, with Atlanta scoring over five runs a game over the final two months en route to a league-leading .655 post-deadline winning percentage and flipping a five-game divisional deficit into a 6.5 game lead. 2022 was led by two Cy Young finalists in Max Fried (NL runner-up) and Kyle Wright (who led MLB in wins with 21) along with breakout strikeout artist Spencer Strider, buttressed by a strong offense helmed by three MVP finishers in Austin Riley (6th place), Dansby Swanson (12th place), and Michael Harris II (13th place finish and the NL Rookie of the Year). 2023 was only the greatest offense in modern MLB history, tying the single-season homer record with 307 longballs and finishing with a MLB-record .501 team slugging percentage.

There are many ways to skin a cat, is what I’m saying.

But can you see any of those models repeating themselves in 2026?

FanGraphs released their ZiPS projections for the 2026 Atlanta Braves on Monday and the simulator was not kind to this roster. Two seasons of underperformance by several key contributors, like Riley and Albies, combined with free agent losses and overall injury questions, mean the team’s projected for only 84-88 wins.

Unless everything goes right for the 2026 Atlanta Braves, from performance to injury to the randomness inherent in baseball, this isn’t a team that the models think is going to win the division, never mind the World Series.

So, make it better.

Find a way to get the deal done for shortstop Ha-Seong Kim, as even his almost-league-average ZiPS projection of a 95 OPS+ is a significant improvement over Mauricio Dubón’s 78 OPS+ and a meteoric rise from now-departed Nick Allen’s 53 OPS+.

Add a bat for the outfield, either a starting-caliber bat that can force Jurickson Profar and Ronald Acuña Jr. into numerous designated hitter days or a rotational/platoon bat that can pair with the lefty-bashing Sean Murphy (127 OPS+ against southpaws last year) to give the Braves a deeper lineup on a nightly basis.

And add a starter, someone with good stuff that can be penciled in every fifth day. Dylan Cease would have been perfect except for that whole “Qualifying Offer and seven-year deal” thing, but a veteran like Chris Bassitt, Merrill Kelly, or even Lucas Giolito on a two-year deal would likely give Atlanta some reliable back-of-the-rotation innings and preserve the health of their studs for an October run. You can never have enough pitching, as we’ve learned the hard way these last two seasons.

Go for it while you’ve got the guys. It’s just money, and you have plenty.

The case to maintain the course

Just to be clear, I don’t mean last winter’s course of financial restraint; I mean the path of developing and/or trading for and extending young hitters (but never for more than $22M/year, of course) while building a pipeline of young pitching and supplementing it with short-term free agent or trade acquisitions.

The argument here is that it already brought you a World Series championship in 2021 and as Brian Snitker often said, the playoffs are a “different game” than the regular season. Your job is to get there as healthy and as hot as possible and hope you can survive the gauntlet.

Sure, investing a bunch of money into payroll and “pushing in the chips” for a specific season can incrementally improve your odds of winning the World Series in that season, but it’s not a guarantee - look at the New York Mets for proof of that. It’s also potentially detrimental if the money you add, typically an expensive long-term deal if you’re at the top of the free agent market, becomes an albatross on the team’s payroll down the line as that player hits the backside of their aging curve. Even adding via trade can hurt you down the road if you can’t effectively replace those lost prospects and are lacking that depth in future years.³

So rather than trying to optimize your chances in one or two specific postseasons, why not try to get as many bites at the apple as possible? It’s not exactly what Seattle Mariners general manager Jerry Dipoto was referring to with his “win 54% of the time” comment, although that’s roughly 88 wins and is good enough to get a team in the postseason as a wild card in most seasons.

I’d argue that this, with a higher wins target and regular season standard, is what the Braves are already doing. Unlike many other teams with very highly-paid stars, no one on Atlanta’s roster consumes 10% of the pre-CBT payroll on their own, as no one makes over $22M a year.⁴

Contrast this in your own division, where the Philadelphia Phillies will have FOUR players over 30 under contract that take 10% or more of the team’s pre-CBT payroll, with Zack Wheeler leading at 17.21%. The New York Mets have only two, although superstar free agent signing Juan Soto is 20.90% all by himself. In both situations, those team is forced to rely on substandard fill-in options or expensive trade acquisitions, with Philadelphia constantly looking for relievers at every deadline and both teams adding centerfielders via trade during the 2025 season.

Given the long-term nature of those expensive deals - Soto is signed through age 40, while Harper is signed through age 38 and shortstop Trea Turner through age 40 - it’s increasingly likely that those players will be net negatives on their respective rosters by the tail-end of the contracts.

By contrast, Matt Olson and Austin Riley are both signed through only age 35, although the team does possess club options on both for their respective age-36 seasons. Centerfielder Michael Harris II’s guaranteed money is up after his age-29 season, while catcher Sean Murphy’s runs through his age-33 campaign and fireballer Spencer Strider can hit free agency as early as 30 if the Braves don’t pick up his club option.

Rather than going all-in on a specific two or three-year window, the Braves have tried to balance talent acquisition with fiscal restraint, attempting to be top three or five in the league at numerous positions rather than acquiring superstars on expensive, long-term deals. While the ceiling of this approach may be slightly lower than having multiple MVP-caliber players on one roster, the floor should also be higher because one or two poorly-placed injuries or slumps shouldn’t doom the roster in October.

Time will tell which approach is the better one, but it’s important to point out that the short-term (post-pandemic) results for Atlanta show that their approach has been somewhat more sustainable than New York’s. The Mets played in the 2024 NLCS, sure, but they have no division titles during that span and only two postseason appearances, with the other being a Wild Card loss in 2022. The Phillies came even closer, losing the World Series in 2022 and narrowly missing another appearance with an NLCS loss in 2023. Both Atlanta and Philly have one season out of five where they didn’t make the postseason in that stretch, but the Braves won a World Series and took three NL East titles to Philly’s zero championships and two divisions.

This newsletter’s getting long, so let’s close with this:

The Atlanta Braves are positioned to be competitive for a long time, and it took a historic confluence of injuries and underperformance for them to miss the postseason in 2025. But at the same time, that can’t happen again.

Ball’s in your court, Alex Anthopoulos. Fix it.

1. Ballpark estimate

2. Which, to be clear, is still 11% better than MLB average. The Braves aren’t paying Riley to be 11% better than average, though; they’re paying him to be 30-40% better than average, as he was in 2021-2023

3. AKA “pulling an A.J. Preller”

4. The Atlanta Max, we’re calling it.