DONE DEAL: Atlanta Braves reportedly announced a significant secured deal.
One of the pitchers with the longest tenure with the Atlanta Braves is up for a new contract, therefore the team must decide.
At almost every defensive position in the Major League, the Atlanta Braves and president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos have assembled a squad full of players with long-term contractural control.
With several pending free agents leaving the starting rotation after this season, things aren’t looking so good for the pitching staff.
A national writer for The Athletic named Tim Britton attempted to estimate the price the Braves would have to pay to preemptively extend the contract of southpaw pitcher Max Fried before the season finished.
And this isn’t just conjecture either; in order to determine what a player may get from their organization when signing a pre-free agency agreement, Britton examined 900 free-agent and extension contracts and cross-referenced them with statistical output before to and during platform years.
Despite last year’s injuries, Britton found that, of the players who were closest to Fried’s pre-free agency performance, they were 2013’s Cole Hamels and 2016’s Zack Greinke. His analysis is available to The Athletic subscribers.
(As we previously stated, Fried’s 2023 season was an exception in terms of his health; the left-hander usually saw brief stints in the minor leagues but yet recorded 28 or more starts and roughly 165 to 185 innings per season.)
Based on Fried’s projected performance from the previous season, when he only made 14 starts due to an injury, Britton’s projections went from the six years and $144 million requested last offseason to seven years and $195 million.
Fried’s annual average value comes out to be $27.86 million, making him the team member with the highest salary when looking at AAV. None of Atlanta’s many long-term contracts are expected to pay more than $22 million annually over the duration of the deal.
