Braves are one of the big winners of the Winter Meetings
For this year’s Winter Meetings being some of the “quietest” in recent history, it sure didn’t feel like it if you were there to cover the Atlanta Braves.
From Sunday night’s bombshell of a trade with the Seattle Mariners, where the Braves sent a pitching prospect (Cole Phillips) and newly-acquired reliever Jackson Kowar to receive two salary dumps (Evan White and Marco Gonzales) and new leftfielder Jarred Kelenic, to the subsequent trade of Gonzales (and most of his salary obligation) to the Pittsburgh Pirates, Atlanta was busy in Nashville. Let’s look at why the Braves “won” the Winter Meetings
Atlanta’s locked in long-term control at every single position on the diamond
Alex Anthopoulos was adamant on Tuesday afternoon that the Braves didn’t target a leftfielder this offseason, they specifically targeted Jarred Kelenic.
And they got their man.
With the addition of Kelenic and the official conversion of Vaughn Grissom into a left fielder, Atlanta’s in a really unusual spot in Major League Baseball: They know who their starters are for every single position on the diamond, not just for 2024 but for YEARS into the future.
And for most of those players, with the exclusion of Jarred Kelenic’s (2025) and Vaughn Grissom’s (2027) eventual arbitration salaries, Atlanta even knows exactly how much they’ll be paying those players, too.
Atlanta’s moved at least a portion of the money owed to Marco Gonzalo
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Part of that Kelenic deal was Atlanta taking on the contract of Marco Gonzales, although the Mariners did chip in $4.5M of the $12.25M owed to the veteran lefty for 2024. Atlanta, however, flipped Gonzales to the Pittsburgh Pirates just two days later, sending some unspecified amount of cash to pay down the $7.75M remaining on the deal.
For a Braves team that projects to be close to the 2nd Competitive Balance Tax threshold, getting some of that excess salary off the books matters, as the team could still add either a starting pitcher or another reliever between now and spring training.
(Alex Anthopoulos clarified that the team’s primary spending focus is the cash payroll – they track the CBT payroll so that they’re aware of how much additional cash they’ll need to pay the luxury tax penalty, but their concern when attempting to improve the roster is the actual cash outlays.)
Despite the two consecutive NLDS exits at the hands of the Philadelphia Phillies, Atlanta’s president of baseball operations didn’t let it completely upend this offseason’s plans.
“We’re not going to significantly change the core of our team”, said Anthopoulos at the Winter Meetings. “This was the one out of ten – I’d expect our club to have more than four extra base hits (in a playoff series).”
He also acknowledged that he was thinking about it, however. “You don’t want to make decisions based on a four game series, but you’re not going to completely ignore it, right? I think that’s just the balance and the blend.”
The restraint Anthopoulos showed was in not making sacrificing quality assets for a “splash” addition, like Juan Soto (who cost the Yankees four pitchers to acquire) or Sonny Gray (who not only received $75M over three years from the St. Louis Cardinals but would have also cost Atlanta two draft picks in 2024, as he received a qualifying offer.)
Instead, Atlanta’s continued their trend of targeting specific players that they could acquire at a discount, based on last year’s performance in substandard environments: Reynaldo López and Aaron Bummer from the Chicago White Sox (61-101 last season), Kelenic from the Mariners (who had such a great tenure with Seattle that he didn’t even thank them in his goodbye social media post), and past acquisitions Pierce Johnson (Colorado Rockies), Sean Murphy and Matt Olson (Oakland Athletics).
It’s inherently not only a more sustainable way to build a roster, but by extricating those players from their poor performing prior teams, it probably makes them more likely to sign long-term extensions with the team and/or take less money than they might conceivably get on the open market.
