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Atlanta has a big offseason ahead of them. These are the top moves they should consider making. The Atlanta Braves are in an enviable spot. Even though they weren’t able to win the NL East in 2024, and even though they were knocked out in the first round for the third year in a row, they still managed to make the playoffs for the seventh year in a row despite dealing with more injuries to key players than many of us have ever experienced with a Braves team. Despite the recent news that Ronald Acuña Jr. and Spencer Strider are both unlikely to be ready for Opening Day, their outlook for 2025 is quite rosy. As of now, before any teams make any significant moves, Atlanta is projected by FanGraphs to be the best team in MLB.
Being the best team on paper in November is a testament to the strength of their core, and it’s very nice. But other teams will improve this winter, and if the Braves want to enter 2025 as a World Series favorite, they still have some work to do. The biggest holes on the roster are in the outfield, rotation, bullpen, and at shortstop. They don’t need to make moves at all of these positions to be a great team, but their best path to reclaiming what will be a highly competitive NL East in 2025 is to significantly improve on at least a couple of these areas of weakness. Today, we’re going to look at three moves they can make to become a true superteam.
Trade for and extend Garrett Crochet
It’s no secret that the Braves are facing down a major loss in their rotation. Max Fried, who has anchored the Braves for the entirety of this decade to date, is finally a free agent. It’s difficult to overstate how important Fried has been to the Braves. Among the 173 qualified pitchers over the past five seasons, Fried ranks 3rd in ERA (2.81), 10th in FIP (3.11), 25th in IP (659), and 11th in fWAR (15.4). His highest ERA and FIP in any single season in that time frame both came in 2024, and they were still ace-level marks (3.25 ERA, 3.33 FIP). Not to mention, he did that whole “six shutout innings in a World Series clincher” thing too.
Even with Fried out of the picture and only 101 IP projected for Strider, Atlanta’s rotation as currently constructed is projected by FanGraphs to be the third best in MLB. They’re set to roll out Chris Sale, Reynaldo López, and Spencer Schwellenbach to start the year, with Strider joining them whenever he is healthy. Those four would make a formidable playoff rotation on their own, but all four of them come with durability question marks. Sale is coming off more innings in 2024 than he had in the previous four seasons combined. López surpassed his innings total from 2022-2023 combined in his first full year as a starting pitcher since 2019. Schwellenbach threw over 100 innings more in 2024 than he had in any season in his college or professional career. And it’s yet to be seen how Strider will emerge on the other side of his second major elbow injury.
With those concerns in mind, the Braves will almost certainly add a starter this winter. They can begin the year with a rotation of Sale, López, Schwellenbach, the acquired SP, and Grant Holmes, then move Holmes to the bullpen or go to a six man rotation when Strider returns. If they don’t add a SP, they’d be committed to Holmes as a starter for the full season and would need to begin the season with the likes of Griffin Canning or Bryce Elder or AJ Smith-Shawver in the rotation.
Since their four-man rotation for the playoffs is already quite good, they could go with more of a #4 or #5 type to fill the last spot (perhaps simply re-signing Charlie Morton). I expect Anthopoulos to aim higher, though. Consider this – Spencer Strider made his last start on April 5th, and Spencer Schwellenbach didn’t make his debut until May 29th. Between those two dates, the pitchers that made starts in Strider’s stead were Allan Winans, Darius Vines, Ray Kerr, Bryce Elder, and AJ Smith-Shawver. In ten starts between them, they combined for a 6.36 ERA over just 46.2 IP. Anthopoulos knows that they can’t plan to strike gold with another prospect like Schwellenbach in the event that one of their pitchers is unavailable for October, so he will likely want to have five starters (including Strider) in which he would feel confident throwing in a playoff game.
Bringing back Max Fried makes the most sense on the surface. He’s excellent, already beloved by the players and coaches and fans, and has said repeatedly that he loves playing in Atlanta. However, nothing about how Alex Anthopoulos has operated in Atlanta suggests that he would be willing to commit well over $100M to a 31 year old pitcher who has dealt with forearm injuries in each of the past two seasons. The only pitcher Anthopoulos has ever veritably shown an interest in signing to a long-term deal is Aaron Nola, who leads all of MLB in innings pitched since 2018 and has only been on the injured list once in his entire 10 year career.
There are two things Anthopoulos has shown that he’s willing to do, though: 1) Trade for a star player right after a career year and extend them (Murphy, Olson), and 2) Extend a strikeout artist in his mid-20s who is coming off a ludicrous breakout season (Strider). Take a look at Spencer Strider in 2022 (his age 23 rookie season, right before he was extended) vs. Garrett Crochet’s age 25 season in 2024:
(If you are on a mobile device, this table is best viewed in Iandscape mode.)
Some have been skeptical of Crochet’s breakout. He’s always had a big fastball, but had never shown anything close to this combination of generating strikeouts and limiting walks. He had never started a single game in MLB before 2024 and had dealt with a bevy of injuries earlier in his career.
If this skepticism leads to his market being even slightly dampened, the Braves should absolutely pounce. Here’s the thing about breakouts: sometimes they feel fluky and you can’t pinpoint why it happened. With Crochet, it’s the exact opposite. He made a huge adjustment to his pitch mix, adding a devastating cutter that he threw over 25% of the time, and that simply changed everything for him. And the results were undeniable – out of 126 pitchers with at least 100 IP, Crochet ranked 1st in K%, 1st in K-BB%, 5th in FIP, and 9th in xERA. He was one of only two pitchers to rank in the 80th percentile or higher in Chase%, Whiff%, K%, and BB%. The other? Chris Sale.
It will undoubtedly take a haul to land Crochet, but when you have the chance to land a true ace in his mid-20s, you don’t bemoan the loss of some top prospects with no MLB success. This is especially true when you can extend that player, and Crochet has made it clear that his wish is to get an extension with whatever team trades for him. He is projected to earn just $2.9M in his penultimate year of arbitration, which means he would be unlikely to surpass $6M in arbitration in 2026 even if he bulldozed the league again in 2025. With this in mind, I think a contract extension of 6 years, $100M could get the job done. Something like this:
Anthopoulos has used this tactic before. He’ll limit the maximum a player makes in any single year by giving him more money during what would have been his arbitration years than he would have made without the extension. In this case, instead of paying Crochet something like $8-9M over his final two years of arbitration (which is what he would likely get if he was not extended) and then $23M per year for four free agent years, they’d pay $24M for the two arbitration years and just $19M per year for the four free agent years.
For Crochet, this deal secures life-changing guaranteed money for a guy who has dealt with injuries in the past and has yet to cross 150 IP in a season. On the Braves side, they’ll be okay that they had to give up some top prospects when they’re spending less money for an ace’s age 26-31 seasons than they would have for their former ace’s age 31-36 seasons.
Sign Jurickson Profar
The 2024 Braves offense scuffled to a league-average 100 wRC+ that was a far, far cry from the record-setting 125 wRC+ they posted in 2023. Underperformance relative to projections and expected stats amidst a slew of injuries were the main culprits, and it’s reasonable to expect them to return to an above-average unit in 2025 without making any changes.
Despite the rough 2024, the Braves rank 2nd only to the Dodgers in team wRC+ over the past three years. On the whole, they’ve been excellent. Despite this, it’s not difficult to find opportunities for improvement – in that time frame, they rank in the bottom half of MLB teams in both K% and BB% and just 11th in OBP, and their lineup remains right-handed heavy.
Enter: Jurickson Profar.
At age 31, the former top prospect had a breakout season in 2024 that many had begun to believe would never come, hitting .280/.380/.459 with 24 HR and a 139 wRC+. His 4.3 fWAR ranked third in MLB among left fielders, and everything in his offensive profile makes the breakout seem real. His .364 xwOBA was right in line with his .365 wOBA, and he ranked in the 80th percentile or better in xwOBA, xBA, average exit velocity, chase%, whiff%, BB%, and K%. As a switch hitter with fairly even splits from both sides of the plate and excellent on-base skills, he’s exactly the type of hitter you’d love to slot in the 2-hole behind Ronald Acuña Jr.
Because this is the first time we’ve seen him perform at this level, FanGraphs and MLBTradeRumors both project a modest 3 year, $45M contract for him. Compare that to Teoscar Hernández, also 31 years old. Hernández was not as good as Profar in 2024, but he’s projected by FanGraphs for 3 years and $72M and by MLBTradeRumors for 3 years and $60M. Anthony Santander is 30 years old and has never surpassed 3.5 fWAR in any season, but he’s projected for 4 years and $80M because, like Hernández, he has a more consistent track record.
If Profar’s breakout is legitimate, his next team will land him at a real bargain. Hopefully AA sees it the same way.
Re-sign A.J. Minter
With A.J. Minter reaching free agency and Joe Jiménez set to miss at least half (if not all) of the 2025 season, the Braves have a clear need to add at least one relief pitcher this offseason. After Minter and Jiménez, Atlanta’s top relief arms in 2024 were lefties Dylan Lee and Aaron Bummer. Their other experienced high-leverage arm, Pierce Johnson, struggled mightily in the second half. Because of this, many have opined that the Braves should target a right-handed reliever. I’m here to say that they just need Mint.
It’s not hyperbole to say that Minter has been one of the best relievers of this decade. Out of 275 qualified relievers since, he ranks 11th in fWAR, 12th in FIP, and 31st in ERA. Among the 72 qualified lefty relievers in that time, he ranks 5th in ERA, 1st in FIP, and 3rd in fWAR. He’s also been incredible in the postseason for the Braves, with a career 2.88 ERA and 2.54 FIP over 25 innings.
Yes, adding a dependable high-leverage righty to the bullpen makes a lot of sense. Manager Brian Snitker has said that he sees Minter as a high-leverage reliever instead of a lefty reliever, and when you look at the numbers, it makes sense. Minter has been excellent vs. both sides, but he’s actually performed better vs. right-handed hitters (25.4% K-BB%, .260 wOBA) than left-handed hitters (23.1% K-BB%, .281 wOBA) over the past three seasons.
Minter is a terrific pitcher and seems to get along very well with the guys in the clubhouse. He also has made it plain that he wants to stay in Atlanta. If his contract lands around the 2 years and $16M that MLBTradeRumors projects, I expect him to remain a Brave.
Conclusion
If the Braves made all three of these moves at the projected costs, it would add about $33M in payroll for 2025 and $40M in luxury tax payroll. This would keep them under the third tier of the luxury tax (which they pointedly avoided last season) and put their total player payroll somewhere in the $240-245M range, representing a mild $10-15M increase over 2024. The rotation, bullpen, and lineup would all be markedly improved from where things stand today, and even with Orlando Arcia penciled in as the everyday shortstop, they would have the look of a true superteam – one that is poised to at least make it past the first round of the playoffs. Hopefully.
<img alt="Chicago White Sox v Miami Marlins" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/65L_PjLiU1w_nV8iiyDSmj6aR28=/0x0:5616x3744/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73733640/2160949376.0.jpg">
Photo by Rich Storry/Getty Images
Atlanta has a big offseason ahead of them. These are the top moves they should consider making. The Atlanta Braves are in an enviable spot. Even though they weren’t able to win the NL East in 2024, and even though they were knocked out in the first round for the third year in a row, they still managed to make the playoffs for the seventh year in a row despite dealing with more injuries to key players than many of us have ever experienced with a Braves team. Despite the recent news that Ronald Acuña Jr. and Spencer Strider are both unlikely to be ready for Opening Day, their outlook for 2025 is quite rosy. As of now, before any teams make any significant moves, Atlanta is projected by FanGraphs to be the best team in MLB.
Being the best team on paper in November is a testament to the strength of their core, and it’s very nice. But other teams will improve this winter, and if the Braves want to enter 2025 as a World Series favorite, they still have some work to do. The biggest holes on the roster are in the outfield, rotation, bullpen, and at shortstop. They don’t need to make moves at all of these positions to be a great team, but their best path to reclaiming what will be a highly competitive NL East in 2025 is to significantly improve on at least a couple of these areas of weakness. Today, we’re going to look at three moves they can make to become a true superteam.
Trade for and extend Garrett Crochet
It’s no secret that the Braves are facing down a major loss in their rotation. Max Fried, who has anchored the Braves for the entirety of this decade to date, is finally a free agent. It’s difficult to overstate how important Fried has been to the Braves. Among the 173 qualified pitchers over the past five seasons, Fried ranks 3rd in ERA (2.81), 10th in FIP (3.11), 25th in IP (659), and 11th in fWAR (15.4). His highest ERA and FIP in any single season in that time frame both came in 2024, and they were still ace-level marks (3.25 ERA, 3.33 FIP). Not to mention, he did that whole “six shutout innings in a World Series clincher” thing too.
Even with Fried out of the picture and only 101 IP projected for Strider, Atlanta’s rotation as currently constructed is projected by FanGraphs to be the third best in MLB. They’re set to roll out Chris Sale, Reynaldo López, and Spencer Schwellenbach to start the year, with Strider joining them whenever he is healthy. Those four would make a formidable playoff rotation on their own, but all four of them come with durability question marks. Sale is coming off more innings in 2024 than he had in the previous four seasons combined. López surpassed his innings total from 2022-2023 combined in his first full year as a starting pitcher since 2019. Schwellenbach threw over 100 innings more in 2024 than he had in any season in his college or professional career. And it’s yet to be seen how Strider will emerge on the other side of his second major elbow injury.
With those concerns in mind, the Braves will almost certainly add a starter this winter. They can begin the year with a rotation of Sale, López, Schwellenbach, the acquired SP, and Grant Holmes, then move Holmes to the bullpen or go to a six man rotation when Strider returns. If they don’t add a SP, they’d be committed to Holmes as a starter for the full season and would need to begin the season with the likes of Griffin Canning or Bryce Elder or AJ Smith-Shawver in the rotation.
Since their four-man rotation for the playoffs is already quite good, they could go with more of a #4 or #5 type to fill the last spot (perhaps simply re-signing Charlie Morton). I expect Anthopoulos to aim higher, though. Consider this – Spencer Strider made his last start on April 5th, and Spencer Schwellenbach didn’t make his debut until May 29th. Between those two dates, the pitchers that made starts in Strider’s stead were Allan Winans, Darius Vines, Ray Kerr, Bryce Elder, and AJ Smith-Shawver. In ten starts between them, they combined for a 6.36 ERA over just 46.2 IP. Anthopoulos knows that they can’t plan to strike gold with another prospect like Schwellenbach in the event that one of their pitchers is unavailable for October, so he will likely want to have five starters (including Strider) in which he would feel confident throwing in a playoff game.
Bringing back Max Fried makes the most sense on the surface. He’s excellent, already beloved by the players and coaches and fans, and has said repeatedly that he loves playing in Atlanta. However, nothing about how Alex Anthopoulos has operated in Atlanta suggests that he would be willing to commit well over $100M to a 31 year old pitcher who has dealt with forearm injuries in each of the past two seasons. The only pitcher Anthopoulos has ever veritably shown an interest in signing to a long-term deal is Aaron Nola, who leads all of MLB in innings pitched since 2018 and has only been on the injured list once in his entire 10 year career.
There are two things Anthopoulos has shown that he’s willing to do, though: 1) Trade for a star player right after a career year and extend them (Murphy, Olson), and 2) Extend a strikeout artist in his mid-20s who is coming off a ludicrous breakout season (Strider). Take a look at Spencer Strider in 2022 (his age 23 rookie season, right before he was extended) vs. Garrett Crochet’s age 25 season in 2024:
(If you are on a mobile device, this table is best viewed in Iandscape mode.)
Some have been skeptical of Crochet’s breakout. He’s always had a big fastball, but had never shown anything close to this combination of generating strikeouts and limiting walks. He had never started a single game in MLB before 2024 and had dealt with a bevy of injuries earlier in his career.
If this skepticism leads to his market being even slightly dampened, the Braves should absolutely pounce. Here’s the thing about breakouts: sometimes they feel fluky and you can’t pinpoint why it happened. With Crochet, it’s the exact opposite. He made a huge adjustment to his pitch mix, adding a devastating cutter that he threw over 25% of the time, and that simply changed everything for him. And the results were undeniable – out of 126 pitchers with at least 100 IP, Crochet ranked 1st in K%, 1st in K-BB%, 5th in FIP, and 9th in xERA. He was one of only two pitchers to rank in the 80th percentile or higher in Chase%, Whiff%, K%, and BB%. The other? Chris Sale.
It will undoubtedly take a haul to land Crochet, but when you have the chance to land a true ace in his mid-20s, you don’t bemoan the loss of some top prospects with no MLB success. This is especially true when you can extend that player, and Crochet has made it clear that his wish is to get an extension with whatever team trades for him. He is projected to earn just $2.9M in his penultimate year of arbitration, which means he would be unlikely to surpass $6M in arbitration in 2026 even if he bulldozed the league again in 2025. With this in mind, I think a contract extension of 6 years, $100M could get the job done. Something like this:
Anthopoulos has used this tactic before. He’ll limit the maximum a player makes in any single year by giving him more money during what would have been his arbitration years than he would have made without the extension. In this case, instead of paying Crochet something like $8-9M over his final two years of arbitration (which is what he would likely get if he was not extended) and then $23M per year for four free agent years, they’d pay $24M for the two arbitration years and just $19M per year for the four free agent years.
For Crochet, this deal secures life-changing guaranteed money for a guy who has dealt with injuries in the past and has yet to cross 150 IP in a season. On the Braves side, they’ll be okay that they had to give up some top prospects when they’re spending less money for an ace’s age 26-31 seasons than they would have for their former ace’s age 31-36 seasons.
Sign Jurickson Profar
The 2024 Braves offense scuffled to a league-average 100 wRC+ that was a far, far cry from the record-setting 125 wRC+ they posted in 2023. Underperformance relative to projections and expected stats amidst a slew of injuries were the main culprits, and it’s reasonable to expect them to return to an above-average unit in 2025 without making any changes.
Despite the rough 2024, the Braves rank 2nd only to the Dodgers in team wRC+ over the past three years. On the whole, they’ve been excellent. Despite this, it’s not difficult to find opportunities for improvement – in that time frame, they rank in the bottom half of MLB teams in both K% and BB% and just 11th in OBP, and their lineup remains right-handed heavy.
Enter: Jurickson Profar.
At age 31, the former top prospect had a breakout season in 2024 that many had begun to believe would never come, hitting .280/.380/.459 with 24 HR and a 139 wRC+. His 4.3 fWAR ranked third in MLB among left fielders, and everything in his offensive profile makes the breakout seem real. His .364 xwOBA was right in line with his .365 wOBA, and he ranked in the 80th percentile or better in xwOBA, xBA, average exit velocity, chase%, whiff%, BB%, and K%. As a switch hitter with fairly even splits from both sides of the plate and excellent on-base skills, he’s exactly the type of hitter you’d love to slot in the 2-hole behind Ronald Acuña Jr.
Because this is the first time we’ve seen him perform at this level, FanGraphs and MLBTradeRumors both project a modest 3 year, $45M contract for him. Compare that to Teoscar Hernández, also 31 years old. Hernández was not as good as Profar in 2024, but he’s projected by FanGraphs for 3 years and $72M and by MLBTradeRumors for 3 years and $60M. Anthony Santander is 30 years old and has never surpassed 3.5 fWAR in any season, but he’s projected for 4 years and $80M because, like Hernández, he has a more consistent track record.
If Profar’s breakout is legitimate, his next team will land him at a real bargain. Hopefully AA sees it the same way.
Re-sign A.J. Minter
With A.J. Minter reaching free agency and Joe Jiménez set to miss at least half (if not all) of the 2025 season, the Braves have a clear need to add at least one relief pitcher this offseason. After Minter and Jiménez, Atlanta’s top relief arms in 2024 were lefties Dylan Lee and Aaron Bummer. Their other experienced high-leverage arm, Pierce Johnson, struggled mightily in the second half. Because of this, many have opined that the Braves should target a right-handed reliever. I’m here to say that they just need Mint.
It’s not hyperbole to say that Minter has been one of the best relievers of this decade. Out of 275 qualified relievers since, he ranks 11th in fWAR, 12th in FIP, and 31st in ERA. Among the 72 qualified lefty relievers in that time, he ranks 5th in ERA, 1st in FIP, and 3rd in fWAR. He’s also been incredible in the postseason for the Braves, with a career 2.88 ERA and 2.54 FIP over 25 innings.
Yes, adding a dependable high-leverage righty to the bullpen makes a lot of sense. Manager Brian Snitker has said that he sees Minter as a high-leverage reliever instead of a lefty reliever, and when you look at the numbers, it makes sense. Minter has been excellent vs. both sides, but he’s actually performed better vs. right-handed hitters (25.4% K-BB%, .260 wOBA) than left-handed hitters (23.1% K-BB%, .281 wOBA) over the past three seasons.
Minter is a terrific pitcher and seems to get along very well with the guys in the clubhouse. He also has made it plain that he wants to stay in Atlanta. If his contract lands around the 2 years and $16M that MLBTradeRumors projects, I expect him to remain a Brave.
Conclusion
If the Braves made all three of these moves at the projected costs, it would add about $33M in payroll for 2025 and $40M in luxury tax payroll. This would keep them under the third tier of the luxury tax (which they pointedly avoided last season) and put their total player payroll somewhere in the $240-245M range, representing a mild $10-15M increase over 2024. The rotation, bullpen, and lineup would all be markedly improved from where things stand today, and even with Orlando Arcia penciled in as the everyday shortstop, they would have the look of a true superteam – one that is poised to at least make it past the first round of the playoffs. Hopefully.
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