In a recent interview with Jeff Shultz of The Athletic, Braves general manager Alex Anthopoulos sat down to talk about a number of intriguing topics. If you want to read the entire piece, follow the link. I highly suggest it. We’ll be breaking it down piece by piece and giving our thoughts on a number of topics, starting with the elephant in the room. Why didn’t the Braves seriously target Shohei Ohtani?
“He’s a great player and obviously the Dodgers are a great organization,” said Anthopoulos. “We just can’t — we get asked this all the time: Do we react to what other teams are doing? You can’t. You have to do what’s best for your organization. You still monitor what other teams are doing. But we’re much more in tune with what the other four teams in our division are doing.”
Contrary to popular belief, the Braves have been far from cheap this offseason. Their luxury tax payroll is nearing $270 million, the highest it’s ever been by quite a large margin, and there are still more moves to be made. However, adding Ohtani into the mix, even with the unprecedented deferred money, would take a lot of willingness from the front office. Ohtani’s number against the luxury tax is still $46 million, which would have put the Braves above the fourth luxury tax threshold.
“There was so much speculation about what he would get,” said Anthopoulos. “But if you look at what the net present value numbers are, they’re kind of in the range of what people thought. What threw everybody for a loop was $700 million but (the value) ended up where it was supposed to end up. I don’t really have a strong opinion of the contract one way or the other because arguably he’s one of the best players who’s ever played because of the two-way component and he should get the biggest contract. But look — there’s still the CBT hit. Our payroll is in the top 10. We have some guys making pretty big salaries. But we’re set up more to spread it around. That’s the decision we made when we signed all of these guys.”
The Braves have a number of team-friendly long-term contracts on the books, which gives them a ton of flexibility to be aggressive. That flexibility is a weapon and something they would like to continue to have in the future. As terrific of a player as Shohei Ohtani is, signing someone to a mega-contract like that would severely limit the Braves options in the future. They don’t pay sticker price for anything, and that isn’t going to change, even for possibly the greatest baseball player to ever live.
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Photo: Rich Graessle/Icon Sportswire
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