Braves News: Braves payroll situation, PECOTA projections, more

Now that pitchers and catchers have reported to camp, the next step is for the Atlanta Braves' position players to report on Thursday. Fortunately, we have already seen reports that several guys have reported early with Ronald Acuna Jr., Matt Olson, and Austin Riley being seen taking BP and hitting bombs as is customary.

This time of the year is a reminder of just how much talent is on this Braves roster, but accumulating that talent has come at a cost. The Braves' payroll situation is something that a lot of people both have a lot of interest in, but also don't have a full grasp on, so we decided to give a snapshot of where the Braves' payroll stands going into camp and postulate what that means for any moves they may or may not make during 2023.

More Braves News

PECOTA is a projection system used by Baseball Prospectus to try to predict how things are going to shake out during the upcoming season not unlike systems like ZiPS. PECOTA certainly never disappoints to have at least one surprising prediction and they did so again as they have the NL East being won by the Mets by over five games. Given how close the division should be and the quality of the teams in the division....that is a bold take.

MLB News

Over at MLB.com, they put out a piece where they highlighted five position players who could have breakout seasons by looking at some advanced data that they hope is predictive of success in 2023. Given that a lot of these kinds of lists just identify well-known names coming off down years, it's nice to see a data-driven approach used to give some interesting names including one in the National League East.

We also had a deal on Tuesday as right-hander Michael Wacha agreed to terms with the San Diego Padres on a contract. It sounds like Wacha's deal is a weird one with escalators and strange opt-out conditions, but ultimately this gives the Padres some needed rotation depth.