Happy Opening Night! Logan Webb and the Giants will host Max Fried and the Yankees at 7:05pm central tonight on Netflix. Until then, we’ve got a subscriber mailbag that gets into the Braves’ series of core player extensions, which teams have the most concerning injury issues, outlooks for the Rangers and Pirates, and much more.
Matthew asks:
As a Mets fan, several years ago all I heard was how the Braves had built the foundation of their next dynasty by convincing multiple players to sign seemingly below-market deals. Acuña, Albies, Murphy, Riley, Olson, Harris, and probably several others I’m forgetting.
Obviously the team was besieged by injuries when they missed the playoffs last year, but looking back now, how are those contracts holding up? Albies and Riley have regressed, Harris was a tale of two halves last year, Acuña is coming off two serious knee injuries, and Murphy’s banner year looks like an outlier.
Giving Acuña a pass because injuries are unpredictable (and he’s still an MVP candidate when healthy), are there any of these contracts that you think AA would like a do-over on? Or, since they were seen as being below-market rates, are they still showing positive value?
Alex Anthopoulos has sat atop the Braves’ front office for more than eight years now. He’s done a whopping 21 extensions in that time.
The biggest extension went to Austin Riley, who signed for $212MM over ten years. Had the Braves not done this deal, Riley would’ve been a free agent this past offseason, theoretically coming off a couple of injury-related down years. But he’d still be a 29-year-old with a three-year, 16.1 WAR run on his resume, so he probably would’ve signed a high-AAV opt-out deal. As it stands, the Braves probably paid a bit above market value for Riley’s arbitration years. That’s not a big issue, but from this point forward it’s as if they signed him to a seven-year, $154MM free agent deal with an eighth-year club option. That’s not really the type of deal Riley would’ve signed this past offseason, but the $22MM AAV is low enough where there’s room for profit if he bounces back in the next couple years.
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