Atlanta Braves extension deals to simplify 2023 arbitration

It’s not the only reason — and not the best reason — for locking up young players on the roster, but the Atlanta Braves don’t need to sweat their next arbitration season.

The CBA lockout messed up a lot of baseball business last Winter, but one of the fallouts may have been a large number of arbitration cases that the Atlanta Braves had to deal with.

In 2022, there were ten Braves players that were arbitration-eligible.  Ultimately, the team was unable to come to terms with five of them, resulting in trials to determine their salaries for this past season:

• Dansby Swanson (arbitration trial winner; $10 million)
• Austin Riley (loser; $3.95 million)
• Max Fried (winner; $6.85 million)
• Adam Duvall (loser; $9.275 million)
• Luke Jackson (loser; $3.6 million)

For 2023, though, Atlanta is now looking at a group that is tied for the fewest in baseball who remain arbitration-eligible as a result of a combination of future free agents, already-extended players, and expiring contracts.

Here’s the breakdown of this new list, complete with estimates from the MLB Trade Rumors site on where their contracts should be for next year:

• Max Fried:  $12.2 million
• A.J. Minter:  $5 million
• Mike Soroka:  $2.8 million
• Tyler Matzek:  $1.8 million
• Guillermo Heredia:  $1.1 million
• Silvino Bracho:  $900K

The A’s, Pirates, Rangers, and Rockies also have 6 arb-eligible players for 2023.

The Brewers (18) and Rays (19) both have an extraordinary list to work through and several other clubs are at 10 or more.

These won’t need to be dealt with until the latter part of November (the so-called “non-tender” day when teams declare their intentions on whether to offer contracts to their arbitration-eligible players, but there are some early guesses we can make:

• Fried, Minter, Soroka:  yes — Atlanta will certainly pick up these players for 2023
• Matzek.  This could be interesting depending on the current medical evaluation for the almost-32-year-old reliever.  Certainly, he’s proven his value during the 2021 World Series run, but some apparent injury led to struggles in 2022.
• Heredia and Bracho:  both are non-tender candidates, but we have been surprised before at some of these decisions.

Of the recent contract extension players, Austin Riley and Matt Olson would have still been arb-eligible in 2023.  Others (Acuna, Albies) have been off the table already.

Michael Harris II and Spencer Strider are locked up now, but would not have been in their arbitration years yet.

Luke Jackson, Adam Duvall, and Dansby Swanson… barring a surprise, they will be free agents at year’s end.

As has been the strategy of the Atlanta Braves in recent years, getting their young core under contract certainly reduces any drama of their off-season.

It also serves as a beacon to outside free agents that might want to consider a new home that the Braves will be a team that will be a perennial contender for multiple years… there is no question about whether additional players will be needed to complement a newly-signed star… those players are already in place.

(Well… some free agents, at least)

Those are the biggest benefits of such extension deals… the arbitration situation for 2023 is simply an added bonus for the team on top of that.

But all of that discussion is merely a preview of what the Winter has in store for our Atlanta Braves… the rest of their 2023 roster decisions will wait for another day.