Spend big, win big

Braves’ expectations are clear this season

The Atlanta Braves have the largest payroll in franchise history entering the 2023 season.

They expect their results to reflect that.

“I think this is the best team we’ve had,” Terry McGuirk, the team’s chairman, told the AJC this week. “And, you know, we won 101 games last season. I don’t know whether we’ll win 101 games again, because the division gets better, but it’s certainly a team that I think we’re going to be proud of.”

The Braves have become a behemoth. They are the five-time reigning champions in the National

League East Division, they won the World Series in 2021 — and they know maintaining this success means investing in their core players.

McGuirk told the AJC at the end of last season that his goal was for the franchise to soon carry a payroll that was among the five highest in Major League Baseball. Greg Maffei, the CEO and president of Liberty Media, which is the principal owner of the club, echoed the same thought in November.

The Braves aren’t yet to that level, but their spending has continued ascending — and they’re set to pay the luxury tax for the first time under Liberty Media’s ownership.

Opening day for all 30 MLB teams is Thursday, and the Braves will be among the first on the field as they visit the Washington Nationals for a 1:05 p.m. matchup. Atlanta enters the new season with a payroll of roughly $199 million that ranks eighth in the majors, according to Roster Resource.

A different number is used for luxury tax purposes. The Braves’ competitive balance tax figure is calculated at close to $240 million, per the same site, which exceeds

the first luxury tax threshold of $233 million. As a first-time taxpayer, the team would pay 20% on overages.

The Braves are currently seventh in CBT payroll, a result of their many long-term extensions with younger players orchestrated by general manager and president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos, who in McGuirk’s opinion is baseball’s best executive. The CBT number is the result of the average annual value of each contract on the 40-man roster plus additional benefits. The final figure is calculated at season’s end.

There are four thresholds, each carrying sharper financial penalties for exceeding. The Braves are still comfortably below the second threshold at $253 million, and they’ve indicated there are no financial limitations right now if the right opportunity comes along.

“We’re getting a bit of a penalty for making these long-term commitments, but it’s what is the right thing to do for the franchise,” McGuirk said. “Obviously it’s a tremendous thing for the franchise, and it’s a small price to pay to put together this kind of an organization and this group of players.”

The payroll is expected to keep climbing. Earlier this month, Liberty Media released 2022 financial figures that revealed the Braves had franchise-record revenues of $588 million. The team expects similar success in 2023. The days of fans opining the Braves weren’t spending to their full capabilities are long gone.

Season ticket sales were going so good this year, the team intentionally cut them off for the first time to ensure some singlegame tickets would remain available for purchase directly from the Braves.

“Last year, we had record attendance,” Derek Schiller, the team’s CEO and president, told the AJC. “We’re expecting that we’re going to be at or above that this year. For all intents and purposes, the business has never been healthier. As a result, payroll has never been healthier.

“The baseball side of our business, Alex and his whole team have a great deal of confidence on any given year that we’re going to have a strong business to support and sustain what is happening.”

Said McGuirk: “The fans are providing the support that enables us to really put the pedal to the metal to try and drive this team to World Series performances.”

The Braves made only one headlinegrabbing acquisition this winter, trading for catcher Sean Murphy and promptly signing him to a contract extension worth $73 million over six years, and they were relatively quiet in free agency.

While the Braves have provided MLB a new blueprint in signing promising youth to long-term deals, it’s notable that none of those contracts individually are consuming a significant portion of payroll comparable to a typical pricey free-agent acquisition. This season, first baseman Matt Olson is the highest-paid Brave at $21 million, earning a million more than veteran starting pitcher Charlie Morton.

“We’ve always felt in recent times, we could be a top-five payroll at any moment,” McGuirk said. “If there was a deal that made sense for the team to improve itself dramatically, we would do it.”

In other words, this season will continue the Braves’ trend of spreading their wealth. Of the six National League teams that qualified for the postseason last October, the Braves were the only one without a player whose salary exceeded $20 million. Four of the other five had at least one player earning more than $30 million.

The New York Mets, who also won 101 games last year but lost the division title to Atlanta on the head-to-head tiebreaker, spent more than $423 million on free agents this past winter, largely to retain the team they had. The Phillies — who finished third in the East but made the playoffs as a wild card, eliminated the Braves in an NL Division Series and then won the pennant — spent just less than $400 million to bolster their roster.

The Braves spent around $3 million on free agents, and therein lies a strategic difference compared to other wealthier clubs. Atlanta prioritizes development and early extensions that cover much of a player’s prime years, rather than bidding for a player in his prime age on the open market. Those situations drive prices up, and the Braves are having success without entering bidding wars.

Once again, they enter the season as division favorites, according to multiple outlets.

“I mean, that is very high praise for a team that is being outspent pretty dramatically by the Mets and Phillies,” McGuirk said. “So we’ve obviously done a better job with less money to pick the players who are going to play for the Atlanta Braves, as evidenced by all of these measurements.”

Now, with the first pitch hours away, McGuirk is confident manager Brian Snitker and his staff will continue to help the team follow through.

“You have to go out and play,” McGuirk said. “You have to do it. I think our players have proven that they are that quality and can do it.”