Atlanta Braves payroll for 2018: first look/first guess

Obviously there’s a lot of time and decisions to be made between now and next April.  Nonetheless, it’s helpful to have a starting point in mind when thinking about what could happen.

The Atlanta Braves could start 2018 with with over half of its active roster being pre-arbitration “kids”.  With that, the team’s average age could be under 27½ – more than years under that from Opening Day 2017.

That’s the quick-and-dirty finding from a “way too early” guess on what the Braves payroll might come to look like for 2018.

As such, though, there had to be a lot of assumptions made, and those will be stated up front.  That way you can roll your own guesses and play along through the off-season.  With all of these, your mileage may vary.

So those (hopefully realistic) assumptions are:

• Nick Markakis will be playing elsewhere in 2018
• To help make that happen, the Braves will provide $2 million to the acquiring team
• Jim Johnson will be released
• Matt Kemp will remain with the club; Matt Adams would not
• R.A. Dickey‘s $8 million option is picked up; remains with club
• Ian Krol – gone
• Adonis Garcia – gone
• Kurt Suzuki is resigned at an estimate $2.5 million (was $1.5m in 2017).
• Arbitration figures are estimated at this time… 4 players are eligible (Folty, Jace, Vizzy, and Winkler)
• Lots of ‘internal option’ guys are on the chart at this time…. rotation, positions, bench, and bullpen
• An extra half-million has been thrown in for the inevitable ‘DL guy’ who makes the team, but is hurt – requiring an extra player to replace him; hopefully there’s only one!

I would also urge not looking too hard at the names on this chart… especially for the rookies and pre-arbitration players.

Here’s why I say that:

Whether a rotation slot is filled with (for example) Max Fried or Lucas Sims or Luiz Gohara is not important for the sake of this exercise – all would be paid the same MLB minimum amount of $545,000 for 2018.  So keep your focus on the numbers more than the people… names will change even more than the numbers.

So with all that, here’s the chart – also viewable via this link:

So that’s a minimum of $89.9 million… it probably can’t get lower than that unless a new home is found for Matt Kemp.

The 2017 O.D. payroll was said to be $122.6 million by Baseball Prospectus – easily the biggest in Braves’ history.  That said, their policies for the numbers they use are different from mine:  for the COTS site, BP uses the numbers that count against the luxury tax limits.  I do not.

More from Tomahawk Take

• Atlanta Braves Mailbag: New Year’s Edition
• Braves News: Atlanta makes a pair of trades, prospect debuts, more
• Atlanta Braves History: How the Red Stockings became the Braves
• Braves News: Atlanta Braves acquire Eli White from the Texas Rangers
• Atlanta Braves Swing Trade with the New York Yankees for Lucas Luetge

The difference is chiefly in the handling of bonuses paid out – I register these in the year that they are paid.

I anticipate that the Braves’ budget should be even higher this next season – but that doesn’t mean they will force themselves to spend all of that available cash.

So perhaps we’re looking at something between $30 and $40 million available to spend at the outset… subject to changes in the assumptions:

• Take out R.A. Dickey and there’s $8m more available to spend.
• Re-insert Markakis and that adds in $8.5m more.
• Subtract Matt Kemp and you subtract…  maybe half of his contract or so.

Next: Let's see that All-Star game in Atlanta

You get the idea.  Hopefully the Braves will find ways to bolster the team enough to give the NL East a run for its own monies in 2018.