The Atlanta Braves future is bright, but what will it cost?

The Atlanta Braves were one of the youngest teams in the major leagues last season and have much of the roster still on pre-arbitration contracts. What could arbitration costs in the future look like?

Ronald Acuña, Jr. lit the MLB on fire this season, with some help from players like Ozzie Albies, Touki Toussaint, A.J. Minter, and others. The Atlanta Braves were one of the youngest teams in the majors last year, due to the emergence of the aforementioned players.

As of now, they are getting paid figurative pennies for the value they are providing for the team. All of them are surely making under 1 million dollars a year.

Remember, Chris Davis is still being paid absurd amounts of money each year to look buff and strikeout 200 plus times a season. What I intend to do is establish how much some of the Braves young stars could look to make in their first arbitration-eligible seasons in the near future. Like I usually do, I’ll include video of each player for entertainment purposes.

The Big One

The obvious place to start is Ronald Acuña Jr.

If his career continues on its current trajectory, I think it’s totally reasonable to think that he could surpass the arbitration record 10.85 million given to Kris Bryant in his first arbitration-eligible year. Acuña posted a 4.1 Wins Above Replacement (WAR) number as a hitter in 2018. According to Fangraphs, the “cost” of one war is approximately 10.5 million dollars. Based on this metric, Acuña is being criminally underpaid at the moment.

If he continues to post similar numbers in the coming years, once he hits arbitration in 2021 he should easily eclipse the 10.85 Million given to Bryant. Bryant averaged 671 plate appearances over his first 3 years as well as 6.6 WAR. Give Acuña the same number of appearances over his next few seasons, and there’s a chance he could equal or eclipse those numbers.

Considering he put up the stats that he did in only 487 plate appearances, it’s scary to imagine his potential over a whole season of opportunity. My tentative number for Acuña would be $11.5 Million.

Wagner clone?

AJ Minter burst onto the scene in 2018 as the de facto closer for much of the season in Arodys Vizcaino‘s absence. With Vizcaino hopefully being healthy on opening day, it isn’t clear who will be the closer.

That being said, Minter had a very good season. Personally, I think he is best suited to be a setup man, which is still a very important role. In the modern game, a setup man is often the more valuable pitcher in the bullpen, like Andrew Miller to Cody Allen in Cleveland, Josh Hader to Corey Knebel or Jeremy Jeffress in Milwaukee, and Adam Ottavino to Wade Davis in Colorado in 2018.

So, let’s assume that Minter is still just as good as he is now or better once he is arbitration-eligible. If I am looking for a precedent, the Atlanta Braves themselves kindly provided me one. Vizcaino’s first arbitration deal was for 897,500 dollars.

Considering that Minter is probably better now then Vizcaino was then, I’m going to be a bit aggressive with this prediction. I think he could easily surpass a million when his name is called. I’ll go with $1,100,000 as my prediction.

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