With the season over, rosterbation is the only recourse as far as Braves baseball is concerned. Of course, the pending lockout will put a damper on offseason proceedings for a while, but leaving that aside… which pending free agent(s) do you think the Braves will bring back?
Let’s start with Ha-Seong Kim. He was super-bad. He’s probably looking at a small pillow deal, if he even sticks around in MLB. On the one hand, the Braves don’t really need anything to do with him given how bad he was. On the other
hand, the lower that price gets, the more it becomes a “why not?” I don’t think it’ll happen, though — easier for him to get a new start elsewhere.
Raisel Iglesias is interesting, at least insofar as the Braves not immediately hitting the “sign” button on a costly reliever can be. The Braves gave Robert Suarez a multiyear deal, possibly to protect against an Iglesias decline (and eventual departure). But, Suarez was the one that ended up getting hurt and missing a bunch of time, and Iglesias was pretty good (and only missed a bit of time): 61/76/82 ERA-/FIP-/xFIP-, which is basically identical to his career composite of 68/76/80. If the Braves were willing to re-add Iglesias last offseason, I don’t see why they wouldn’t this year, since he basically did the thing he does. He’s definitely aging, but he did some interesting things with pitch sequence and location this year, too.
Mauricio Dubon is, I think a tough discussion. He’s definitely a clubhouse fit and I think the other guys would rejoice if he were brought back. But, it’s unclear what kind of deal he would be looking for, to add to the overall uncertainty of what free agent spending even looks like if and when the lockout ends. On top of that, Dubon didn’t hit well (.304 xwOBA, outhit it a fair bit), and his style conflicts with a lot of the rest of the roster. (It’s not necessarily meaningful, but kind of funny, that Dubon had a monster June as the rest of the team fell apart offensively.) I think the Dubon question is partially subsumed by the “what kind of team do the Braves want to be in 2027?” question. In theory, if the Braves add legitimate full-timers at short and left field, then Dubon really can be the ultimate handcuff for a bunch of guys with not-so-great outlooks (including Austin Riley and Ozzie Albies), but I don’t see them adding two legitimate regulars and Dubon, so… I dunno.
There’s a bunch of non-factors, like Joe Jimenez and Kyle Farmer, that would technically be “brought back,” so have at discussing those if you want. Lane Thomas, sure, throw his name in — he’d neither cost much nor be a huge impact either way at this point. Brent Suter is super-fun, but would not be a major move. This is the low stakes rosterbation corner, and you can be here for it if you want.
And then we come to Tyler Mahle, who has already said he’s interested in continuing his great run after being traded to Atlanta over the summer. Lots of guys say stuff like this, especially before the bidding opens. The market for free agent starting pitching has been a head-spinning whirlwind for years. Mahle got $10 million coming off a half-season where he benefited from a low HR/FB. He’s now coming off a full-ish season where he pitched decent in aggregate but amazingly well as a Brave. Does that move his price point outside of where the Braves are comfortable, like pretty much every other free agent starter? I imagine Mahle would take something like $26M/1 to sign, at least under the current paradigm. The Braves could do that, but if some team just adds more years at the same or a similar, not-very-diminished annual price point, they’d probably bow out.
