Refreshing the Braves' offseason big board
Pitchers and catchers report in a month. Who might Atlanta add by then?
It’s been a bizarre offseason for the Braves so far. Alex Anthopoulos’ MO in Atlanta has been to strike early and often; it’s not uncommon for the team to finish the bulk of its business by New Year’s Day. When Anthopoulos announced that he expected payroll to rise in 2025 and then cut over $20M in 2025 payroll as soon as the offseason began by unloading Jorge Soler and Travis d’Arnaud, it seemed like the other shoe would drop in short order.
So far, it hasn’t. If Opening Day were tomorrow, the Braves’ biggest offseason acquisitions would probably be be Bryan de la Cruz and Enyel de los Santos on minor league deals. Both are fun, low-cost gambles - de la Cruz was maybe the Marlins’ most promising hitter just two seasons ago and de los Santos was an effective reliever even more recently - but it’s unacceptable for a team firmly in its contention window to let major contributors walk and not commit a single guaranteed dollar to replace them.
Fortunately, Opening Day is not tomorrow. A lot of players have signed new contracts, but not that many have signed deals that fit Atlanta’s MO. One of the biggest exceptions - Jeff Hoffman - had a deal with the Braves that got scuttled by medicals. Disappointing, since I’ve sung Hoffman’s praises, but I’m in no position to second-guess the organization’s medical assessments and shoulder issues are as concerning as it gets for a pitcher.
Anthopoulos said during a recent radio appearance that the team is open to adding a playoff-caliber starting pitcher, bullpen help, and bats. (So basically anything but an innings-eating starter.) Let’s look at some players still on the market who’d make a difference on this Braves roster.
Rotation
Dylan Cease (San Diego Padres)
Cease has been a subject of Braves chatter for over a year now. Last offseason, he lingered on the trade market for months before the Padres finally took him off the White Sox’s hands in mid-March. After a down 2023 campaign, he bounced back with the best year of his career in 2024, a 4.8 fWAR campaign in which he posted a career-low walk rate while striking out just under 30 percent of hitters. And he continued to do what he does best - pitch with Swiss-timepiece regularity. No pitcher has made more starts in the last four seasons. (Second place goes to Aaron Nola, whom the Braves pursued last offseason.)
So while Cease’s trade value has probably decreased since last offseason - he’s now a one-year rental - it remains robust. As for why San Diego might want to move on just a year after acquiring Cease, the team’s self-imposed austerity measures remain in effect, and even if Cease’s $13.75M salary for 2025 is an extremely good value, the Padres seem unlikely to offer the market-rate deal it would take to keep the Boras client around for the long haul.
Getting a deal done here would be expensive. A good comparison is the Corbin Burnes trade last offseason, in which the Orioles gave up a top 50 prospect (Joey Ortiz), a pedigreed relief prospect (DL Hall), and a draft pick. Unless the Padres feel the same way about Nacho Alvarez that FanGraphs’ midseason rankings did,1 a deal would probably require sacrificing Drake Baldwin for a rental, which I doubt the Braves would do. Count this as fun but unlikely.
Nick Pivetta (free agent)
We’ve talked so much about what it takes to get Dylan Cease, so what if I told you another elite K-BB% candidate was available for the mere price of a second-round pick, a fifth-round pick, and $1 million to splurge on Venezuelan 16-year-olds?
Pivetta is another guy who’ll pitch a lot of innings - he’s been good for at least 140 the last four years. By Stuff+, he’s the best starter in baseball. The only problem? The home runs. Oh god, the home runs. Only four pitchers have given up more long balls over the last four years and two - Patrick Corbin and Jordan Lyles - are famously ineffective.
But the other two are José Berrios and Aaron Nola! Even if Pivetta gives up a lot of homers, I think getting him away from the Red Sox defense will do wonders to reduce the overall damage against him. And while giving up the draft picks and international money hurts, it also softens his market. If Pivetta would do, say, 3 years and $60 million, I’d happily take him.
Max Scherzer (free agent)
It feels a little lazy to say that I think Max Scherzer will get a one-year, $15 million deal because the other two old guys (Charlie Morton and Justin Verlander) got that much, but I’m saying it anyway. Each of the three pitchers has his advantages. Morton is by far the healthiest and the safest bet to make 30 starts. Verlander remains a Stuff+ darling. But in a single playoff start, Scherzer might be the best option. His stuff took a major step back in 2024 - his four-seamer went from a 104 Stuff+ to a 78 and it resulted in the first below-average FIP he’s posted in a season since 2011.
But hey, the ERA and xFIP were still pretty good! And given that Scherzer worked through a variety of injuries last year, maybe the Braves can coax a healthy season out of an oft-injured player the way they’ve done with the likes of Josh Donaldson and Chris Sale. As a bonus, for those who value veteran presence, Scherzer is a two-time World Series champion who’d certainly replace some of the gravitas that left the room when Fried, Morton, and d’Arnaud did.
Bullpen
Danny Coulombe (free agent)
Coulombe isn’t quite Tanner Scott, but he’s been extremely effective with Baltimore over the last two seasons. Over that period, he’s posted a 2.56 ERA/2.83 FIP and struck out 28.4 percent of batters while walking merely 5.4 percent. His Savant page is flooded with red.
So why did the Orioles decline Coulombe’s $4 million option - which would be a bargain for someone half as good? Coulombe missed much of 2024 with a throwing elbow injury, and by stuff models, his fastball lost a ton of value.
Unless Coulombe’s medicals suggest that he’s truly, irreversibly cooked, he seems to me like a good bargain at something around his option value.2 Should the Braves not sign Tanner Scott, I’m actually pretty optimistic about Dylan Lee and Aaron Bummer as the first calls out of the pen against lefties. A healthy Coulombe would be a worthy addition to that mix.
Robert Suarez (San Diego Padres)
As noted above, the Padres are in savings mode, and teams looking to cut payroll start with the bullpen. Suarez is owed $10 million in 2025 and then must choose at the end of the season whether to opt into the last two years and $16 million of his deal.
My instinct is that if Suarez pitches like he pitched in 2024, he’ll be inclined to opt out. Suarez has a weirdly hard time getting strikeouts for a guy who averages over 99 miles per hour on his fastball, but he doesn’t issue many free passes and he limits hard contact. That worked out to a 2.77 ERA/3.49 FIP last year.
I doubt Anthopoulos will go for Suarez because the player opt-out creates the kind of uncertainty he religiously avoids when issuing contracts. But Suarez would provide the kind of high-caliber fastball velocity that the Braves bullpen generally lacks, Daysbel Hernández excluded. And the worst-case financial scenario - being on the hook for $16 million over two years for an ineffective reliever - is not nearly as dire as it was in the Smith, Iglesias, or Jiménez deals.
Offense
Ha-seong Kim (free agent)
The thing with upgrading in the rotation, the bullpen, and left field is that there are tons of conceivable upgrades at different levels. You can make the rotation better by signing Jack Flaherty, but you can also make the rotation a little better by signing Jakob Junis. You can improve a corner outfield spot with Anthony Santander, but you can also do it with Randal Grichuk.
Not so at shortstop. Teams with great shortstops - even solid shortstops - covet them. I reviewed the leaguewide shortstop landscape a few months ago and reached the conclusion that there isn’t much out there.
One of the few viable options is Kim. Kim is a roughly average hitter and an excellent defender - basically, a rich man’s version of 2023 Orlando Arcia. The real question with him is his recovery from shoulder surgery, which is expected to keep him out past Opening Day. Kim, represented by Scott Boras, will likely demand the Scott Boras Prove-It Special - a short-term, high-AAV deal with multiple player opt-outs, like the deals that Boras clients like Michael Conforto, Jordan Montgomery, and Blake Snell have gotten in recent years. As noted above, Anthopoulos has never agreed to a deal like this - a deal which puts the bulk of the downside on the team and the bulk of the upside on the player.
But if there’s a player to make an exception for, perhaps it’s Kim. If he’s set on playing shortstop to enhance his market value, the Braves might be the only suitor willing to play him there (the Yankees, for example, would presumably stick him at second base and keep Anthony Volpe at shortstop). And after two years of Orlando Arcia starting at shortstop, a few more months of him covering there while Kim recovers from his injury seems easy enough to stomach.
Randal Grichuk (free agent)
I’ve been sweet on Grichuk for a while. It’s pretty simple to understand why. Over the last two seasons, Grichuk is 11th among all hitters in baseball for xwOBA against RHP (min 200 PA). That puts him above the likes of Austin Riley, Yordan Alvarez, and Shohei Ohtani. Grichuk has been poor against righties in that span (.296 xwOBA), though it’s in a much smaller sample.
Grichuk is a rich man’s weak-side platoon bat at this point in his career; I think he’ll get something like $8 million to do the job. And I think Atlanta has a pretty compelling pitch: he’ll get everyday reps in left field while Acuña rehabs, and while he’d shift to a platoon partnership with Kelenic at that point, the team probably won’t give Kelenic as much leash this year as he got last year. There’s playing time to be had in the Braves outfield, and signing Grichuk would allow the Braves to give Kelenic a second chance while ensuring that the backup plan isn’t running Bryan de la Cruz out there every day.
Trevor Larnach (Minnesota Twins)
This is the name on this list I’ve seen talked about the least - in part because he’s the least likely to be available this offseason - but here goes.
After a couple of years of uneven results in inconsistent playing time, Larnach got 400 PAs and had something of a breakout, posting a 121 wRC+ with even better peripherals. (Note that Larnach was essentially a strict strong-side platoon bat, getting only 22 PAs against lefties.)
Why would Minnesota move Larnach? Well, the Twins have a ton of left-handed talent in their outfield. There’s Larnach, but there’s also Matt Wallner and Austin Martin. Look a little further into the farm, and there’s top prospects Emmanuel Rodriguez and Walker Jenkins. Minnesota doesn’t have money to spend, so if they want to get better at a place of potential weakness (say, the back of their rotation), they might consider trading from a place of strength. Meanwhile, the Braves have plenty to offer in the way of pitching prospects. And the Braves could easily take on some portion of the $10 million owed to Christian Vásquez in 2025 - a bad contract the Twins are keen to dump.
The fit isn’t perfect - Larnach and Kelenic are pretty similar, so maybe it’s more sensible to pair Kelenic with a righty-masher - but it’s a somewhat out-of-the-box option to add some talent to the outfield.
FanGraphs’ midseason rankings had Alvarez as the 49th-best prospect in the sport. If there is a team that feels similarly, the Braves should be looking to move Alvarez this winter. He has valuable skills - a truly plus hit tool, for example - but seems to completely lack raw power and is a rough defensive fit at shortstop. This feels like Vaughn Grissom, Part Two to me.
Ordinarily, I’d say that $4 million represents the ceiling of what Coulombe would get in free agency, since if there was a team that valued him for more than that, they would’ve traded a lottery-ticket prospect to the Orioles and picked up his option. But we’ve seen at least one deal this winter that didn’t line up with that logic - the Phillies signing Jordan Romano for more than his arb estimate after the Blue Jays non-tendered him - so who knows?