Might be more “rant” than “musings,” if we’re being honest.
The offseason is over, friends. The long, dark, oppressive, evil winter has passed, and spring is finally here. Starting tomorrow, we shall unite once more for a singular purpose – to collectively slander Brian Snitker’s bullpen management decisions for 6 months in a row. Bats will crack, mitts will pop, beers will flow. Life will once again be worth living.
Since the Atlanta Braves have locked in a talented and deep core on a number of long-term extensions, offseasons have generally been more dull for Braves fans than most high-budget teams with World Series aspirations. Even so, the lack of activity made this winter feel even slower than most for Braves fans.
Many things can be true at once. It’s true that Jurickson Profar was one of my very favorite signings made by any club this winter. I believe he has evolved into a legitimately above average player, and he’s a perfect fit for the Braves lineup and clubhouse.
It’s also true that the Braves have an excellent roster, one that fans of at least 25 other teams would envy. The type of prolonged success the Braves have sustained over the last seven years is exceedingly rare, and it’s just as rare to have this level of consistency when it comes to knowing which players are suiting up for our favorite team year in and year out. We would be wise to cherish the chance to watch this group of players go to work every night at 7:20 eastern, because this is truly a golden era of Braves baseball.
It’s also true that the Braves had an incredibly disappointing offseason that simply did not meet the expectations of most fans. Despite GM Alex Anthopoulos claiming that payroll would rise again in 2025, their player payroll is currently about $8M lower than their opening day payroll from 2024. In terms of the luxury tax, they went nearly $40M over the first threshold in 2024, which ultimately led to a luxury tax penalty of roughly $14M. This year? They are $8M below the first threshold, and it’s now clear that they intend to avoid the luxury tax altogether for 2025.
Back in December, I wrote a lengthy piece explaining why the Braves wouldn’t duck the luxury tax in 2025. I went through many different scenarios that showed how dropping their budget in 2025 in order to miss the luxury tax would not actually create space for any significant uptick in payroll for 2026 and beyond. And so, while Braves fans continued to panic and complain about the lack of movement, I remained steadfast, believing that Anthopoulos was simply waiting for the right deals to come along. In each of the past several seasons when Anthopoulos had said payroll would go up, it did. There was no logical reason to believe this year should be any different.
Unfortunately, for reasons known only to some Liberty Media stakeholders who are already richer than any of us can possibly imagine, the Braves decided to dodge the tax anyway.
Amidst the fanbase’s online angst in those winter months, I mostly defended the team, rationalizing that there was no real incentive for them not to spend and saying things like “It’s silly to judge an offseason before it’s over.” I also promised that if the offseason remained that quiet by the time we got to Opening Day, I would cause a ruckus in protest.
Well, Liberty Media, buckle up. Your reckoning-ruckus is here.
The gist of the luxury tax article I wrote was this; in order to duck the luxury tax in 2025, they would need to spend about $15M less in 2025 than they did in 2024. But really, assuming their budget was actually increasing (as it had in each of the previous three seasons), they’d likely be sacrificing about $25-30M in potential spend for 2025 in order to reset their luxury tax penalties. And what would resetting those penalties net them in return? As it turns out, somewhere around $4M in extra funds for 2026.
Does sacrificing $25M in on-field value during a year that you have World Series hopes in order to gain $4M in on-field value the following year seem like a good deal to you, reader? Because to me, it seems like an ownership group fabricating an excuse to turn an even bigger profit in 2025 than the reported $40M or so that they pocketed in 2024.
And just so we’re clear, clearing $40M in profit during a World Series window is also not good. I won’t pretend that I’m a full-blown expert in these matters, and it’s hard to complain too much when the Braves were just outside the top five in team spending, but the purpose of owning a baseball team isn’t to make massive profits every year. When you ultimately sell the team after owning it for 20 years or so, you’ll make more profit then that you could possibly know what to do with. In the meantime, operating at more of a break-even (or even at a bit of a loss) can help raise the valuation of the org for when you do get ready to sell.
But to decrease the team’s spending by $15-20M, at this particular time? That’s crazy. THEY’RE HOSTING THE ALL-STAR GAME THIS YEAR, and surely expecting massive revenue from that week’s events. They’re projected by FanGraphs to be the 2nd best team in baseball, but instead of going all in to increase their odds of overcoming some of the other high-powered teams in the NL (especially after three straight postseason appearances without advancing and seeing their consecutive division title run end at six), they actually decided to decrease their player payroll from where it started at the beginning of the offseason.
To Anthopoulos’s credit, if he was being squeezed this much, I think he did a pretty good job by shedding the salaries of Soler (who wasn’t a great roster fit) and d’Arnaud (who is wonderful, but more of a luxury than a necessity). The Profar contract was very reasonable, particularly in the context of some of the other free agent deals we saw signed this winter. Without the funds to focus on more quality, he also did a good job of finding veterans with prior success on minor league deals who may be able to bounce back. He even found a way to unlock some nostalgia by bringing back my favorite player from the pre-rebuild Braves, Craig Kimbrel.
But, as someone who kept holding out hope for more, I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the offseason before we turn the page to the daily cadence of baseball games. This winter was disappointing and maddening. As fans, we have every right to be frustrated with ownership for going cheap in a World Series window. If you want to be angry at Anthopoulos, too, that’s not completely unreasonable – after all, he did explicitly state that payroll would go up, and it didn’t.
Now that the games are about to begin, though, I’d like to invite you all to make a choice with me. I don’t watch the games or follow the stats because I love Liberty Media’s P&L statements. I do it because the Braves are loaded with talented, fun players. Austin Riley, Ozzie Albies, Matt Olson, Michael Harris II, Raisel Iglesias, Chris Sale, and Spencer Schwellenbach all play for this team. They’ve added a stellar on-base threat to the top of the lineup in Jurickson Profar, and in a few weeks, they’ll add two of the sport’s biggest stars into the mix with Ronald Acuña Jr and Spencer Strider. Top prospect Drake Baldwin will be getting his first taste of the big leagues while Sean Murphy recovers from a rib injury, and after a compelling spring, their top pitching prospect AJ Smith-Shawver has cracked the rotation. All that, and we haven’t even gotten to Dylan Lee, the greatest reliever in MLB history! Tomorrow, we’ll get to witness the reigning Cy Young winner take the mound on Opening Day and watch a potent lineup that is much healthier than it was at season’s end.
Bottom line — there are tons of reasons to be excited about Braves baseball in 2025. Now that I’ve said what needed to be said about the winter, I’m choosing to focus on that from here on out. I’ll be damned if I let some greedy corporate overlords steal any of my joy. I hope you all are able to do the same, because it’s going to be a special season.