It’s roughly 40 days until pitchers and catchers report. AA has given us a shortstop, a reserve outfielder, an established utility guy, a two-time All Star reliever and a few longshot bets. He gave us a manager as well, but that one was something he found in the attic and regifted…. there’s a lot of cool stuff lying around up there, though, so there could still be hidden value. He could always have more to do, of course — Alex Bregman would make a useful backup to Austin Riley. But having unwrapped these gifts, it would be churlish to expect much more. I don’t know what you guys are going to get AA, but I’m giving him a pass on the 2025 season — I hope he appreciates it.
May all Braves Journal readers fill the holes in their personal lineups this year and put up 162-win seasons next year.
GOD rest ye, merry gentle Braves Journalists. Thank YOU, LORD JESUS, for YOUR love.
Happy Holidaze & best wishes to all.
I’m certainly down for 162-0, but… do you really wanna to root for Alex Bregman?
I’m just sayin’ he’d be a useful addition, as would a number of other possibly villainous characters. Admittedly, I wouldn’t want to sign him him for more than we’re paying, say, Aaron Bummer, so that might limit our chances of getting him.
Frohe Weihnachten, Braves Journal Gang!
Should Murphy’s acquisition be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Should Freeman’s departure be forgot
And Marty O continue to shine?
For auld lang syne, my dear
For auld lang syne
We’ll hoist a cup this coming year
For the sake of auld lang syne
The Braves have now gone two weeks without a transaction https://www.mlb.com/braves/roster/transactions (I don’t count number changes or losing Osvaldo Bido, whose Braves career began on 12/5.) Are they even going to work over there?
From Will Sammon in The Athletic:
“Tyler Soderstrom is someone who could have shunned talks about an extension. Just 24 years old. First-round pick in 2020. Coming off a big season.
None of those elements promises much in the form of guarantees, though. So Soderstrom ended up accepting a seven-year, $86 million extension with the Athletics on Christmas. For some, security holds significant meaning.”
For some? For whom does it not? Crazy people? Life-changing wealth is slightly more than “security.” You pay advisors to lay out the probabilities and you make the call. I find it difficult to understand any decision in which the possibility of an extra, say, $40 or $50 million is worth the chance of losing the first $86 million. Not to mention that plenty of 31 year olds have found pretty lucrative contracts. “For some…”
Happy New Year everybody. I’m heading to the Dominican Republic for a week, but I won’t be all that near San Pedro de Macoris. If I see a shorstop, or the second coming of Big Papi, I’ll give him a Braves hat.
This is all propaganda from agents. Nearly every single young star should sign early because the downside risk is unacceptable (Kelenic). The upside risk is you could miss out on an amount of money which isn’t actually life changing. Even Ozzie, as crazy as his contract seemed to us, probably did better by taking it because he appears to have peaked early (or if you listen to that conspiracy theorist on this site, he peaked on time but was liberal with his age on his application).
Now for the agent it makes sense to gamble for bigger pay days because it’s no skin off your back if one doesn’t pan out. You can pool risk like an insurance company and come out well ahead.
Ozzie’s numbers do make a lot more sense if you suspect he’s 2-3 years older than he says he is…
I am fairly certain that far too many player turn down deals that they should accept. Whether this is the fault of their agents or their own unjustified confidence in themselves I have no idea. As to Ozzie, I think his deal, ex post, seems to have been just about right, but ex post is never the right way to analyze the deal. To put it in technical economic terms: “Woulda, coulda, shoulda.”
Yes but if we blame player overconfidence we can’t shake our fists at greedy agents in self-righteous indignation. The latter is much more pleasurable.
Tatsuya Ima signed with the Astros for 3 years at a base salary of $18M with incentives taking him to $21M per year. It’s easy for me to say because it’s not my money and Japanese players are risky, but $20M for potentially an ace pitcher immediately is an incredibly good deal with Houston. Yamamoto got the GDP of a small country and this guy, in the prime of his career, had to settle for a 3 year deal at a reasonable salary.
Heard we were in on him so I’m disappointed to hear he signed for so little. Also heard he was a Boras client so I would be surprised if there weren’t a bunch of player friendly opt-outs.
Opt-outs after every single season. Houston is paying a $10m posting fee, plus a $2m signing bonus, and a $16m salary.
So what is being reported as “$54m over 3 years” is actually a one year, $28m deal. Unless he’s bad. If he’s bad, then he’ll be bad for 3 years and cost $54m.
EDIT: I forgot about the three $1m escalators for 80, 90 and 100 innings pitched this year.
If he’s good, he’ll cost $31m for the one year.
jjschiller makes an excellent point that I probably should have made above. The failure to sign a buyout os arb years plus early free agency leaves an immense amount of risk with the player. On the other hand, these player opt-out clauses transfer all the downside risk to the team with essentially no upside risk to the player. The willingness of teams to accept these clauses is to lead themselves wide open to the aptly-termed “winner’s curse,” in which the most optimistic teams win the player, and are then killed by regression to the mean… or below.
Yeah that’s a Boras deal if I’ve ever seen one. Yuck.
If Imai were to opt out after year 1, yes, Houston would pay $28M with the posting fee. But he’s only going to opt out if he turns in a 4-5 WAR season, so Houston just got fair market value for him.
Their downside is if he’s, say, a 2 WAR pitcher. Then they’re paying him $12M or so per WAR, in which case that’s a bad deal for the Astros.
If he’s a 3-4 WAR pitcher for those 3 years and never opts out, then Houston gets a pretty good deal at $24M or so per year if you amortize the posting fee across the 3 seasons.
LOL no. Kim just opted out of $16 million after posting a 0 WAR season. 2 WAR is entirely good enough to opt out.
I know some of you don’t like DOB, but I always did. I liked that he didn’t care what people thought, he fought with people constantly on Twitter (well, it got old at some points), and added his musical passions into his content. Anyway, he has announced his retirement. It seemed like he was getting squeezed out of every medium the last couple years. He made a point to respond to seemingly everyone who wished him well last night, including yours truly:
https://x.com/DOBrienATL/status/2006487618146676884?s=20
https://x.com/BravesGators/status/2006567749129220221?s=20
https://x.com/DOBrienATL/status/2006576489777815656?s=20
I loved David O’Brien’s writing. I thought he was pretty clear-eyed. His podcast with Eric O’Flaherty was great too, even if they did repeat anecdotes frequently (EOF often spoke of a coach who wouldn’t make eye contact with him when he wasn’t performing and it made him spiral. There’s a lot more to managing than in-game strategy)
I have an Athletic subscription. I wonder if they’ll hire a replacement for DOB or just not have a Braves beat going forward.
I was wondering about that too .
Wonder what Justin Toscano is doing?
And I dug his mildly snobby music picks.
Can someone tell me what’s wrong with Lucas Giolito? Why is there no buzz there?
He returned from Tommy John in May. From looking at his game logs, he didn’t seem to miss a single start, last pitching in Boston’s 157th game. He put up a 3.41 era with something like a 4.20 FIP. K’s were down but so were walks.. and no QO baggage.
What am I missing? I hear the names of Chris Bassett and his ilk thrown around. Why no buzz about Giolito? What’s the red flag they all see that I’m not finding scouting the stat line?
Bassitt has made 30 starts 4 years in a row and 27 starts 5 years in a row, and Giolito hasn’t proven he’s a consistently effective pitcher.
I would gladly sign either one for 1 year and $18 million or whatever. We can use one more veteran arm. I agree with Rob that Giolito is more of an unknown. He was pretty bad for a couple years, which is why he’s probably not getting a multi deal. Flaherty is a good comp. He’d had one great year after a couple down years but struggled to find the long term contract he felt he deserved due to inconsistency.
My preference is still to sign Ranger Suarez but I don’t think we will give up our pick. Rumor is we are in on Peralta but he will cost us a top pitcher for just one season. I would much rather just sign someone.
Giolito does seem like a guy that might be available at the end of the offseason at a price AA may want. Problem is, we don’t need a frontline starter. We have Sale, Schwellenbach, and Strider for frontline starters. And while Strider is an unknown, we’re still paying him $20M to be a frontline starter for some godawful reason. But if Giolito’s value falls, he’d be such a massive upside 4th starter.
I would assume the mere interest in Giolito as reported means at least one of Holmes and Lopez are going to the pen. These pitching staff would be really deep and very Dodgers-esque with its accumulation of high upside question marks.
I think we need more starting pitching. We have too many injured pitchers to assume it’s going to work out. Somebody will get reinjured. Maybe multiple bodies. Giolito and Bassitt are not supposed to be top of the rotation. They’re supposed to be arms. I would feel better if I thought Ritchie were ready. Maybe he will be and then maybe we are good with the rotation.
There are still a bunch of free agents available, so it feels like there’s still plenty of free agency left, but it’s only, what, 5 weeks until pitchers and catchers report? And I would expect Atlanta to be mostly done at this point, so I’m going to go ahead and say their offseason has been a B/B+ and if we get another impact player, I would give it an A-/A. Interested to hear what others think.
Certainly better than last offseason. B-ish seems about right to me. Adding a pitcher that would slot into the rotation would bring it to an A.
Good news for Andruw?
https://www.ajc.com/sports/2026/01/braves-great-andruw-jones-gains-momentum-in-baseball-hall-of-fame-hopes/
Greetings from the Dominican Republic. I didn’t find any Braves prospects, but I saw the enormous house Edwin Encarnacion has under construction, directly across the fairway from Albert Pujols more modest mansion.
Tough news for the Phillies with Kepler. Just shows you never know.
Best wishes to DOB. I wasn’t his biggest fan, but I can always appreciate informed Braves coverage that is actually about baseball…vs whatever Wiley Ballard supposedly brings to game telecasts. I see little value there. But that’s just me, I reckon.
Hey we signed Kinley back for $3 million which is exactly what I’d hoped for. He’s good enough for a spot, not good enough to pay $5 million. That really helps our depth if he can just perform close to last season’s level.