Braves sign Ambioris Tavarez, Reach Arb Agreements With Two

If the Atlanta Braves are negotiating an extension, how long do they ask for, and how much are they willing to risk?

Before I go on, it’s worth noting that the agreement between MLB and the MLBPA on service time for 2020 also said that the arbitration salaries this year do not count as platform-year figures.

To extend or not to extend, is that the question?

If the Atlanta Braves are attempting to buy out Soroka, they have to get at least his four arbitration years. Trevor Bauer earned $3.5M his first year, followed by $6.25M, and  $13M before the Reds gave him a $17.5M deal for 2020.

Soroka isn’t Bauer, and his numbers won’t be as high. He was projected to earn just under $2M in 2021; assuming he pitches like it’s 2019, then becomes human, he’ll jump to around $5M, then to $11M, and finally $15M.  A four-year buy-out then looks like $36M to $40M for round numbers and an AAV of $9M to $10M.

At that point, Soroka is 28-ish and looking for contracts over $18M. There’s a certainty factor in having guaranteed years and money that reduces the number a bit, so taking him to age 30 wouldn’t necessarily add $40M to the deal, so six-years – $72M may work. However, is that something we can expect? Probably not.

Remember Lowe?

Still smarting from losing AJ Burnette to the Yankees, Frank Wren gave Derek Lowe a four-year, $60M deal in January 2009. That remains the longest deal for a pitcher in the last 20 years. Tim Hudson’s four-year, $47M deal is next on the list.

The longest contract GM Alex Anthopoulos ever gave a pitcher was a five-year, $30M deal to Rickey Romero, before the 2011 season, which went bad pretty quickly.

All things considered, a four-year deal is the most we can expect from the Atlanta Brave franchise and our GM, but I don’t expect that deal either.  I’ve seen too many studs sink quickly into the sunset after injury. More importantly, so have the Braves.

There’s another consideration in this as well. Fried carried the team in 2020 and pitched well in 2019. if you extend Soroka and not Fried; how do you explain that, and how does Max feel when it happens.

That’s a Wrap

I think the situation is exactly what it seems on the surface; file and trial. When teams work on an extension for a player like Swanson or Soroka and are close to a deal, the player typically signs the one year offer knowing it’s torn up when the extension takes effect.

The Atlanta Braves don’t negotiate after the deadline — they’ve been negotiating for a while, two weeks won’t make a difference. Arbitration cases aren’t friendly meetings, no one likes them, which means one side or the other is making a statement or has unreasonable expectations.

The numbers have been exchanged, and many will ask why they can’t meet in the middle. For now, all we know is that two important members of the team are in disagreement with the front office, and that’s never a good sign.