As the holiday season beckons, some ballclubs appear content to wait for the new year to kick-start their offseasons.
With baseball winter nearly halfway over and just 97 days until Opening Day, the transaction logs of many a contender remain relatively untouched. Predictably, deep-pocketed juggernauts such as the Dodgers, Mets and Yankees have been quite active, but lower-budget operations such as the Orioles, Guardians and Athletics have been aggressive as well.
Let’s hop in and investigate a few clubs that have been disappointingly static so far this offseason.
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Atlanta Braves
The explanation for Atlanta’s subpar 2024 season is simple and boring: injuries. Losing Spencer Strider and Ronald Acuña Jr. — a top-five pitcher and a top-five hitter — for large swaths of the season was dooming and damning. But while the Braves expect to have both back for much of 2025, this team needs upgrades elsewhere.
Yet thus far this offseason, the Braves have been outrageously quiet. The most notable news nuggets out of Truist Park have had to do with players departing the organization. Atlanta declined a team option on longtime backstop Travis d’Arnaud, non-tendered veteran outfielder Ramon Laureano and allowed frontline hurler Max Fried to depart in free agency. Fried, a staple of this Braves era who pitched a gem in the 2021 World Series clincher, did not seem to receive a competitive offer from the only big-league team he had ever known.
All Atlanta has done so far this winter is add corner outfielder Bryan De La Cruz — one of baseball’s worst hitters in the second half last season — on a split contract. The Braves need another outfield bat, particularly if Acuña isn’t healthy for Opening Day, and another starting pitcher to replace the likely departing Charlie Morton. Currently, they have Grant Holmes and Ian Anderson penciled into the five-man rotation until Strider returns.
Thankfully, there’s a bit of room for typically creative president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos to maneuver, even if there’ve been few indications that the Braves intend to spend big. Atlanta’s payroll currently rests at $201 million, $31 million beneath their season-end figure. Still, a shorter-term deal for a veteran arm such as Max Scherzer, Walker Buehler, Andrew Heaney or José Quintana to fill Morton’s spot feels like the most likely path forward.
Anthopoulos often has something funky up his sleeve, but…