NORTH PORT, Fla. – There’s still plenty of time for the Atlanta Braves to add a setup reliever before Opening Day and stay under the luxury tax threshold if that’s important. Braves general manager and president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos said again Friday it wasn’t important.
The luxury tax, that is. Not important, Anthopoulos reiterated.
“We were having conversations about a deal that would have brought us over the tax,” said Anthopoulos, whom many around baseball expected to add a starter and reliever this winter, after losing starters Max Fried and Charlie Morton to free agency and two setup relievers to injury and free agency. They haven’t added a starter or reliever.
“And it just came down to, it had nothing to do with the dollars,” Anthopoulos said of the deal they considered, but wouldn’t say if it was for a free agent or trade.
He did concede the Braves could use another setup man, after right-hander Joe Jiménez’s October knee surgery revealed damage worse than expected and could keep him out for much and possibly all of 2025. Lefty setup man A.J. Minter had hip surgery last summer and signed a free-agent deal with the New York Mets.
The Braves have been connected with several top available setup relievers, including Tanner Scott before he signed a large four-year, $72 million deal with the spendthrift Los Angeles Dodgers, and still-available David Robertson, effective at 40 and likely to command a one-year deal worth well below $10 million.
The Braves’ current payroll is $212 million and their luxury tax payroll is $230 million according to Fangraphs, which would put it about $11 million below the luxury-tax threshold.
If they surpass that $241 million threshold before the season’s end, it would be the Braves’ third consecutive season doing so and trigger a 50 percent overage fee on any salary amount above $241 million. If they stay below it, they will reset their luxury-tax status to zero for next year.
“The tax is a tax on every dollar over (the threshold), it’s not on your entire payroll,” Anthopoulos said. “So you just pay — you sign a $2 million player, it costs 3 (million dollars), it’s a million dollars in tax. That hasn’t stopped us before; we’ve done it two years in a row, and for the right deal we’ll do it. (The deal discussed) was a deal that would have been a longer-term deal. What stopped us was more the out years — ’26, ’27 and so on, how the payroll looks, who we’re blocking, how would we be impacted.”
Anthopoulos said the Braves are in a different situation than many other teams because they have so many of their top position players (and pitcher Spencer Strider) signed to long-term deals.
“We have a lot of guys that we’re locked into that we believe in,” he said. “A lot of position players are locked in. We’ve got an option on (Chris) Sale for (2026). So, the four (returning starters), those guys we have under control for at least the next two (years).”
Chris Sale will make $22 million in 2025 and has an $18 million team option for 2026. (Justin Casterline / Getty Images)
The four are Cy Young Award winner Sale, Reynaldo López, Spencer Schwellenbach and Strider, a preseason 2024 Cy Young Award favorite before damaging his UCL after just two starts and having internal-brace elbow surgery, a less-invasive procedure than Tommy John. He should be back by late April, early May at the latest.
The Braves have Grant Holmes, a pleasant surprise last season as a 28-year-old rookie, penciled in for the final rotation spot. Ian Anderson and others will also compete this spring. For now, Holmes and Anderson are the favorites to round out the opening rotation until Strider returns and one is moved to the bullpen.
Holmes and Anderson, who’s missed two MLB seasons recovering from Tommy John surgery, both are out of minor-league options and would have to pass through waivers before they could be sent to the minors.
“We do have the Ian Andersons and the Holmeses, and some of these other young starters,” Anthopoulos said, explaining why it wasn’t a priority for the Braves to add a starter, unless it was one who was clearly better than what they had and would give them a better chance to win now and warrant blocking younger pitchers. “So to block them — for the right guy, sure. But again, we always have to balance out the short and the long term.”
Other teams made big splashes in free agency or trades during the winter, and Atlanta fans were frustrated by the lack of moves by the Braves, who didn’t make a significant addition until signing free-agent outfielder Jurickson Profar to a three-year, $42 million contract in January.
“We’ve still got a lot of talent in here,” Braves first baseman Matt Olson said. “We didn’t perform the way we wanted last year, but (before) last year a lot of people were talking about the (loaded) team we had. Just because we didn’t go out and spend a bunch of money, it doesn’t mean anything inside here. We’ve got some good additions, obviously in Profar and some other guys, but we love the squad we’ve got.”
Anthopolous has heard and read all winter about the Braves not spending money the way some other teams did.
“I think the biggest difference is we’ve spent a lot on our own players,” he said, referring to all the extensions the Braves gave young stars long before reaching free agency and often before arbitration. “I think we have the most, probably, long-term contracts of the majority of teams. You start looking around the roster, not necessarily in the rotation, but we have long-term contracts all over the place. We didn’t have that many holes. Now we’ve lost free agents, no doubt about it. But we have some people we’re going to give opportunities to.
“You know, Strider and Fried are not the same, but we lost Strider for last year. We had the best (team) ERA in the game, and we lost Fried now, but Strider comes back. We lose Charlie Morton, can Grant Holmes take that opportunity and be that guy? We think he’s certainly got a chance to do that.”
Anthopoulos continued, “From an offensive standpoint, we lost Ronald (Acuña Jr. early last season), and we think getting him back is going to be big as well. Joe Jiménez is the one loss that we haven’t been able to account for. We’re hoping guys like Daysbel Hernández can certainly take a step (to fill that role), but we’ll see with the other guys we have in camp.
“We won 89 games a year ago with a lot of things going wrong. And look, the other thing is with the position players we have, a lot of them had what were for them down years. Really, other than (Marcell) Ozuna, everyone took a bit of a step back. So there’s still young, they’re still elite, talented players. There’s upside for them to be better than that. So, we explored all kinds of things — signings, trades, things like that. But again, our payroll is in the top 10. We have a lot of commitments already, and we’re going to be much more selective in things that we do.”
(Top photo: Kim Klement Neitzel / Imagn Images)
