Why Did the Atlanta Braves Stand Pat at the Trade Deadline?

Alex Anthopoulos addressed the media yesterday and explained why the Braves didn't trade Raisel Iglesias or Marcell Ozuna

Thursday’s 6PM trade deadline came and went across the league with the Braves being the only MLB team to not make a trade that day. The only two moves Atlanta made at the deadline - sending reliever Rafael Montero to the Detroit Tigers and acquiring reliever Tyler Kinley from the Colorado Rockies - both were on Wednesday.

(The Braves also executed cash considerations trades for starters Erick Fedde and Carlos Carrasco earlier in the week, but trading for DFA’d players is common all season and not something I’m looping in with the trade deadline.)

President of Baseball Operations Alex Anthopoulos addressed a subset of the media immediately after the deadline on Thursday to explain what happened. (Premium subscribers got a full transcript of these comments in their inboxes shortly after the availability ended, by the way.)

Let’s talk about it.

“Financial implications were clearly a big part of moves on the other side”

The main reason AA gave for no trades happening on Thursday was, essentially, money. “We were not interested in just dumping players and trying to shed some money on a contract” makes it sound like Atlanta wasn’t motivated to get cash off the books, but Anthopoulos clarified it was the money implications on the other side of the deal that was the bigger hold-up.

“There were financial implications (that) were clearly a big part of moves on the other side. And again, I don’t wanna speak for the other clubs at the time, but you know, it was pretty obvious at the time that hey, financially, being able to save dollars and things like that were a strong part of the motivation.”

I have questions about this characterization, because there’s clearly a middle ground that’s not being addressed here. The implication is that the choices were either Atlanta asking the team to pay the remaining salary of the players being moved - both Marcell Ozuna and Raisel Iglesias have about $5M remaining of their $16M salaries for 2025 - or keeping the players.

Was splitting the difference, paying down the salaries to get a better return, not an option here? And if it wasn’t, whose decision was that? AA took pains to clarify that this wasn’t about a salary dump - they wanted to acquire legitimate talent towards improving the 2026 roster. Paying those salaries was the main way that all of us identified weeks ago that they could achieve that goal.

So, what happened? Of course, no one on the call followed up for clarity, so we won’t know.

Anthopoulos was asked about the benefits of not making a move to shed salary. In other words, why keep a pending free agent when this team is very clearly not going to compete for the postseason down the stretch? The answer got a bit, shall we say, absurd.

“You could dump every single player on the team then, right? ‘It's not gonna happen this year.’ […] There's obviously going to be several teams that don't look like they're bound for the playoffs. If that's the attitude, everyone just unload every single player and just dump 'em and, you still have other guys on the roster.”

Anthopoulos clarified that this was the “public trust” argument - the organization has an obligation to put forth a competitive team. “You still owe it to your clubhouse, your fan base, you owe it to everybody to do the best for the organization […] Shedding salary and gutting the team - I don't see why that would make sense, especially to the other players on the roster and so on.”

The issue with this argument is that trading those players that are expiring on deals, even if you’re paying them to play for someone else, can make the next version of the roster better. Mark Bowman of MLB.com touched on that, asking Anthopoulos if they expected to be further ahead than they are at improving the 2026 roster.

AA answered by mentioning a radio appearance he made around the time of the Mets sweep, acknowledging that he discussed buying at that time but that the rotation injuries snowballed so quickly that they didn’t have a chance to work on next year because they were working on this year.

Jumping ahead a bit, the next to last question was also about 2026, essentially asking how important this upcoming winter was to this front office and organization as they attempt to get the roster back to postseason competitiveness.

“I viewed it as our off season started now, and that's really the approach that we, we took,” explained Anthopoulos. “We don't need to wait for November free agency to start, for us to start our off season.”

He clarified that they view this like an extension of the offseason because all 30 front offices are devoted to potential trades right now, like they typically are during the winter but not during the season. “This was an opportunity in a window, right? Because GMs are engaged. There's no distraction of free agency. There's just 30 clubs (that) can talk to each other and make trades and talk players, so we had a lot of discussions - trade discussions and internal discussions - about what the roster can look like for next year.”

One final trade deadline note - in a rare moment of acknowledging a specific player, AA clarified that they never asked Marcell Ozuna to either approve or decline a trade. “We did not approach him with anything”. Anthopoulos declined to divulge who was interested in Ozuna or what deals were discussed, but he did give a telling quote about the discussions:

“You need two parties, right? You need two people. I'm trying to stay respectful to everybody here, but without getting real specific, he's on the team. I guess what I can tell you is, trying to be as forthcoming but being respectful to to all parties, but I can't force - I can't make a trade. I can't create one.”

Seems to me that the implication here is that the market for Ozuna never really materialized. Despite that, though, there’s no plans to dictate additional at-bats for Drake Baldwin so he can win Rookie of the Year and the team can receive a draft pick for it under the Prospect Promotion Incentive program.

“I don't know who's gonna get the bulk of the time. I mean, that's Snit call. Marcell's starting tonight, right? So again, I saw the lineup. Obviously I'm working on trade deadline today, but he's starting tonight.”

After Mark Bowman asked if Marcell would be okay being a bench player for the final two months, AA complimented him for being an “amazing teammate” and “consummate pro”, explaining that it wasn’t a lock that Ozuna wouldn’t play but it was out of his hands either way.

“So Snit has the lineup card. He always has. He plays who he wants to play. Obviously he's managing Murph, Baldwin. And, obviously Marcel's in the lineup today, those are decisions that Snit makes. Murph and Baldwin got hot and they (both) started playing. Marcel played less. And now in the last week, I guess four or five days, Marcel's gotten a few, more starts. That's Snit making those calls.”

Will the Braves shut down Acuña?

Another topic that came up, and credit to Zack Klein of WSB for this, was Ronald Acuña Jr’s calf injury. Klein made the same NBA comparisons that several have, asking if there’s concern about shutting him down because of the potential of re-injury.

Said Klein, “I know, injuries are different, but you saw all the Achilles injuries in the NBA. (Tyrese) Halliburton starts out with like a calf strain and he rushes it back and tries to play and unfortunately tore his Achilles. With where you guys are in the standings and (Acuña’s) injury proneness inthe last year and a half plus, is there a thought to maybe shut him down?”

Anthopoulos, fittingly, acknowledged Halliburton but pointed out that Michael Soroka’s probably the Achilles injury that Braves fans are more familiar with before apologizing that it was characterized as an Achilles injury in the first place.

Said Anthopoulos, “People want information, they wanna know. We try to be as proactive and get that information out as fast as we can. In hindsight, do we keep everybody on pins and needles for five innings and wait for the game to end? He pointed it towards the Achilles area. We're looking - it's Achilles, calf, but the Achilles area is where he is pointing. We're waiting for the doctor to get him checked out and so on. After the game, when he is getting checked out, they said, ‘look, it's more calf than anything else. It's more likely calf than anything else, and we'll get an MRI.’”

But he did clarify that the Braves don’t believe the severity warrants shutting Ronald down and besides, the player doesn’t want that. “We're gonna be conservative, we're gonna be careful, but at some point, if he's symptom free and fine, and to tell him to just, ‘Hey, sit out the next two months, hang out at home.’ I don't think that makes any sense.”