The Braves and Alex Anthopoulos have done fantastic work in locking in a strong core to be an elite competitor for years to come. However, many of the players under contract are now making quite a chunk of change pushing the payroll into dangerous territory that’s pushing them into the 3rd tier of the luxury tax. Let’s take a look at what the 2025 payroll looks like in in its current state and what the Braves could have to spend for this offseason. The Braves have already stated that they’ll be picking up the options on Travis D’Arnaud, Aaron Bummer, and Marcell Ozuna so I’m factoring them into the guaranteed payroll.

This is the 2nd piece in our “Where Do We Go From Here?” series and you can find the first here, where we took a look at the depth chart.

Braves Payroll

17 Guaranteed Contracts: $206.25

Breakdown: Of this list, Jorge Soler and Orlando Arcia seem to be tradable players, but it might be a good idea to keep Orlando around as a super-utility type considering his cost is minute.

Braves Payroll: Arbitration Eligible Players

Breakdown: I feel like the only shoo-ins are Dylan Lee and Angel Perdomo and the rest could be trade bait to land a larger contract from another team similar to the Chris Sale trade. I’m sure that Brebbia, Biggio, White, and Tromp will be released.

Braves Payroll: Pre-Arbitration Players

Breakdown: The Braves have carried 3-4 guys that are pre-arb eligible and my guess is they’ll end up around that number again with Daysbel and Holmes being main 2 here. Look for Holmes to be stretched out this offseason.

Final Guess

After the guaranteed $, arb contracts, and pre-arb contracts, the Braves will be sitting around $220MM, for, what I expect to be 22 players. However, I do expect AA to shop Soler as his defense is just too much of a liability.