Is The 'Atlanta Max' of $22M Holding the Team Back?

With the rising cost per WAR in free agency, it might be time for Atlanta to evolve from a talent acquisition perspective

(Programming note: I was putting the finishing touches on this newsletter when news broke of the Braves signing outfielder Mike Yastrzemski. Expect a second article on Thursday breaking down the signing, although I did get a rapid reaction pod out last night, which can be found here in the meantime.)

Part of the reason why many across baseball expect the Atlanta Braves to be perennial contenders is their relative stability.

In an era of baseball where several World Series contenders enter the offseason with multiple significant holes, Atlanta’s ‘to-do’ list is much smaller. The New York Yankees entered with uncertainty at two of the outfield spots (centerfield and leftfield), as well as questions about the configuration of their infield, the back end of their bullpen, and the back of their rotation. The San Diego Padres entered the offseason needing to replace three to four starting pitchers (depending on how you feel about Nestor Cortez) as well as designated hitter and their bullpen.

So, the Braves needing to upgrade at shortstop, reinforce their rotation, and add to the bullpen (which virtually all contenders need to do every single offseason, as relievers are incredibly volatile), wasn’t actually that notable.

But I’m worried that their preferred free agency strategy is holding them back. Let’s talk about it.

Let’s talk about the ‘Atlanta Max’

The Atlanta Braves, as of publication, have thirteen players signed to guaranteed deals for 2026, 50% of their MLB roster.

It might not feel like it, but that’s a lot.

That list includes 2023’s home run leader (Matt Olson), 2024’s Cy Young winner (Chris Sale), the 2023 MVP (Ronald Acuña Jr.), 2023’s strikeout leader (Spencer Strider), a three-time top seven MVP finisher (Austin Riley), and three different relievers.

A quick glance around the league shows that, with very few exceptions - the SS Los Angeles Dodgers have sixteen guaranteed deals, for instance - that’s more than most teams. The division rival Philadelphia Phillies have ten. The other division rival in Queens, the New York Mets, also have ten. Last year’s other World Series participant, the Toronto Blue Jays, entered this offseason with just ten before signing two starting pitchers in Dylan Cease and KBO import Cody Ponce.

But unlike all of those teams I just mentioned, nobody on Atlanta’s roster is scheduled to make more than $22M a year in any season of their deals, six of which have three or more years of team control remaining.

Contrast this with Philadelphia, where five players are exceeding that (and four of them are signed for at least five more seasons), or Los Angeles’ eight such contracts. New York has four, albeit with one of them being so large ($61.875M next year) that it should practically count as two for the purposes of this exercise.

Instead, the Braves don’t have a single one.

Atlanta also has only two contracts (which I’m defining as three or more years of team control) that will take a player to age 35, belonging to Austin Riley and Matt Olson. Most of the other contracts end well below that, with Michael Harris’ eight-year deal, signed in 2023, having its last guaranteed year in 2030 (his age-29 season), and Spencer Strider’s last guaranteed year being his age-29 season in 2028.

Again, looking at those three NL opponents, the Phillies have DH Kyle Schwarber and starter Aaron Nola signed through age 37, first baseman Bryce Harper signed through age 38, and shortstop Trea Turner signed through age 40. New York is spending $51M a year (average) on OF/future DH Juan Soto through age 40, paying shortstop Francisco Lindor through age 37, and just traded for the ages 35-37 years of second baseman Marcus Semien. And Los Angeles, who won the World Series for a second straight year as the oldest team in the league for a second straight year, have Shohei Ohtani signed through age 40, SS Mookie Betts signed through age 39, and both 1B Freddie Freeman and infielder Miguel Rojas signed through age 37.

Atlanta’s model is simple in theory:

Field an above-average player at every position, avoid paying for decline years, and cap individual salaries at roughly $22M per season.

And I think it’s time for that to change.

The rising cost of WAR

One of the hardest things to do in any sport’s free agency, but especially one like baseball that’s built on failure, is to correctly evaluate the value of a free agent.

Los Angeles Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman has a famous quote about salaries in free agency, one that podcast listeners have heard me use a lot: If you’re always rational about every free agent, you will finish third on every free agent.

The Atlanta Braves are always rational on free agents, and they often don’t land that guy. Just in the last two years, we’ve heard reports about the Braves being in on starters Justin Verlander, Aaron Nola, and Dylan Cease, relievers Tanner Scott, Jeff Hoffman (who they would have used as a starter), Edwin Díaz, and Robert Suárez, as well as trade acquisitions of shortstop Corey Seager and outfielder Byron Buxton.

They came away from negotiations with none of those players.

And I’m easy to suspect it’s because of the $22M limit.

I’m (obviously) okay with Atlanta not going into the back half of a player’s 30s with their contract. The San Diego Padres are going to be even more of a mess in a few seasons - they have a pair of 33-year-old infielders in Xander Bogaerts and Manny Machado signed for eight more seasons (at a combined $64M AAV), with starter Yu Darvish signed through age 42 and Jake Cronenworth signed through age 37.

But the ‘Atlanta Max’ might need to be re-evaluated, because this free agent market has shown that it’s just too low.

You see, the price per WAR on the open market has risen to roughly $11M this winter, per The Athletic’s Eno Sarris.

If the Braves attempt to stay rational on every free agent, they’re restricting themselves to adding roughly 2 WAR at best under prevailing market rates. Obviously, their goal to extract excess value is unlocking an extra level of performance through mechanical, usage, or optimization changes to what the player did.

As a side note, that same theory - making changes to extract surplus value - is why you see the Braves make additions of ‘struggling’ players from other teams that aren’t being used well. A great example here is Pierce Johnson and Tyler Kinley from the Colorado Rockies; neither reliever was throwing their best pitch (Johnson’s curveball, Kinley’s slider) nearly often enough, and their true effectiveness was being hidden by Coors Field’s altitude-related negative adjustments to pitch movement.

But is the ‘Atlanta Max’ sustainable going forward? In a market where the cost per WAR has risen from $8M (which FanGraphs still uses in their calculations) to $11M just based on contract inflation and enhanced positional scarcity at premium positions like shortstop and centerfield, do the Braves need to adjust the way they do things?

The problem with increasing salaries in Atlanta

To be clear, the Braves under Alex Anthopoulos have not refused to give out contracts of over $22M a year. Third baseman Josh Donaldson signed for $23M for the 2019 season, and the reported final offers to both Freddie Freeman and Aaron Nola were for more than the Atlanta Max.

But here’s the issue: Once you take that genie out of the bottle, there’s no putting it back in.

Part of the reason that the ‘Atlanta Max’ has worked as a concept is that everyone is beholden to it. All of those accolades from earlier in the article, the Cy Young or the strikeout crown and all that, none of those guys make more than $22M.

Do things change when that’s no longer true? Is the clubhouse no longer an asset, as Anthopoulos believes it to be? That’s the real question here, and one that I don’t really know the answer to.

And the way it happens matters, as well. It would have been one thing had the team’s de facto captain, Freddie Freeman, been the one to exceed $22M. Even paying starter Aaron Nola, who the team was pursuing after running out of pitching in the 2023 playoffs, would have been understandable.

But would the clubhouse understand if it were for Dylan Cease, when there was a Cy Young winner and a strikeout king and rising stars already in the rotation? What about if they paid closer Edwin Díaz? A reliever from outside the organization, suddenly making more than everyone else?

It’s a tough switch to flip…but at some point, they’ll need to do it. Do you make Ronald Acuña Jr. the first guy? Reward your former MVP and most talented player with an extension that keeps him in Atlanta for the rest of his career, similar to franchise icon Chipper Jones?

It’s not an easy call, but I’m glad I don’t need to make it.