The non-tender deadline is usually where the quiet business of roster building happens. For a team like the Atlanta Braves, though, it can end up saying a lot about how aggressive they plan to be this winter. With a core that is both expensive and squarely in its prime, every 40-man spot and every arbitration dollar matters. This is where front offices decide whether they really believe in their own pitching labs or whether it’s time to hit reset on a few once-promising projects and move on.
That reality puts a certain kind of player under the microscope. These are not the stars you build around, but the arms you talk yourself into in February and then talk yourself out of by November. Atlanta has a cluster of arbitration-eligible pitchers projected to earn between $1–3 million next year, and on a win-now roster, even those “small” commitments matter.
The Braves have already signaled a desire to overhaul the bullpen and churn the back of the pitching staff. That makes this non-tender deadline less about trimming fat and more about choosing which lottery tickets are actually worth scratching.
Braves' decisions loom large for these 3 non-tender candidates
Alek Manoah
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Not too long ago, Alek Manoah was a Cy Young finalist and All-Star, the kind of arm you imagine fronting a rotation for a decade. Now he’s the classic “can you fix him?” project. The Braves grabbed him late in 2025, betting their infrastructure could unlock the version of Manoah that posted a sub-2.30 ERA in 2022 rather than the one who lost the zone and then lost a year to elbow surgery.
At a projected $2.2 million, he is not terribly expensive, but he is not free either. The question for Atlanta is simple: do they have the innings and patience to let him finish his comeback in their uniform, or would that roster spot be better spent on a healthier, more predictable depth option?
The argument to keep Manoah is obvious. If he even gets back close to his early-career form, the Braves suddenly have a mid-rotation starter at a fraction of the going rate in free agency. That kind of outcome pays for itself many times over and fits the way Atlanta has built around cost-controlled pieces supplementing their stars. The flip side is that he has not provided big league value in a while and is still more rehab story than reliable innings.
Joey Wentz
Wentz sits in that awkward gray area where he’s done just enough to keep you talking about him, but not enough to make the choice easy. After landing back in Atlanta, the lefty showed some real flashes, especially early on, when it briefly looked like he might carve out a steady role as a swingman. Then came the regression, the command wobbles and the reality that his long-term role is probably as a depth starter or long reliever more than a rotation fixture. He finished the season with a 5.60 ERA across three major league teams. With a projection around $1.1 million, he is not killing the budget, but he is also not immune from the chopping block.
If the Braves believe Wentz can give them 80–100 competitive innings in that swing role, keeping him around is a perfectly defensible play. Left-handed pitching with some starting experience tends to stick in the league for a reason. But he’s also out of minor-league options, and the Braves aren’t exactly hurting for in-house arms who can give them a similar ceiling with more years of control. If the front office views Wentz as little more than the last man in the bullpen with no realistic path to meaningful innings, it’s easy to see them prioritizing a few saved dollars and an open 40-man spot over another season spent hoping it finally clicks.
José Suarez
Suarez is a different kind of non-tender question. On paper, his 2025 big-league line with Atlanta looks exactly like the sort of thing you’d want to keep around: seven appearances, 19.1 innings, a 1.86 ERA, 16 strikeouts, 10 walks and a 1.29 WHIP in a small but tidy sample. The issue isn’t that Suarez pitched his way off the roster; it’s that the Braves never really committed to finding out what he could be over a full season.
Suarez’s year with Atlanta lays it out pretty clearly. The Braves traded for him in March, DFA’d him in April to jam Scott Blewett onto the roster, then let him slip through waivers and spend the rest of the season tucked away at Triple-A Gwinnett. Now he’s hitting arbitration, and even a small raise forces a simple question in the front office: do they actually see him as part of the 2026 pitching plan, or just a useful depth arm whose 40-man spot can be put to better use?
If they don’t believe there’s a clear role waiting for him — as a multi-inning lefty, a spot starter, something — he becomes exactly the type of pitcher who gets cut loose at the deadline, not because of what he’s done, but because of how little long-term conviction the club seems to have shown in him so far.
As the non-tender deadline approaches, all three arms represent different versions of the same question for the Braves: how much risk are they willing to carry on the margins of the roster to chase upside?
However it shakes out, the choices Atlanta makes this week will go a long way toward determining which arms are actually backing up that star-studded core the next time the Braves are trying to fight their way back into October in 2026.