With the end of the season comes a lot of roster housekeeping and formalities for every team and the Atlanta Braves are no different. We know that the odds are extremely high that both Marcell Ozuna and Raisel Iglesias are set to become free agents, but those decisions are not yet official as teams cannot make decisions on whether or not to give qualifying offers to pending MLB free agents until after the World Series. However, impending minor league free agents require no such wait.
This week, Atlanta went ahead and started to clear out their 40-man roster by outrighting Jarred Kelenic, Alexis Diaz, Dane Dunning, Sandy Leon, and Luke Williams off of their roster. On Thursday, Kelenic, Diaz, and Dunning elected free agency.
Jarred Kelenic among Braves' end of season roster cuts as Atlanta admits massive trade mistake
The timing of these moves is pretty straightforward. The Braves have loads of players on the 60-day IL with the current count being 11 and those players have to be activated within five days of the end of the World Series to not be placed on waivers. Those roster spots have to come from somewhere and unfortunately for these five guys, they are far more expendable than the guys on the injured list at the moment.
Kelenic is the headliner here as the Braves paid a hefty price to trade for him just a couple years ago once you account for the money they took on, but none of these roster moves are exactly surprising. Kelenic has failed to hit, well, pretty much everywhere the last two seasons and the other four players are depth/bench pieces that shouldn't be hard to replace. It wouldn't be shocking to see Leon and Williams circle back to Atlanta for 2026, but Diaz, Dunning, and Kelenic were never going to be in the plans.
The next steps come with the end of the playoffs where the Braves will make their qualifying offer decisions (where the odds are very high that they will not give out any QOs) and make their nontender decisions before that deadline. Once those decisions are made, the offseason will officially be on and we will figure out how the Braves plan on recovering from this dumpster fire of a season.