The Braves announced they’ve re-signed free agent closer Raisel Iglesias to a one-year, $16MM deal. The PRIME client returns for what’ll be a fifth season in Atlanta on the same salary he made in 2025.
As is often the case with Braves moves, the signing comes out of the blue. President of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos suggested at the GM Meetings the team was more focused on addressing shortstop and upgrading the starting rotation while keeping the bullpen on the back burner. That apparently changed with the opportunity to keep Iglesias, who remains a high-end reliever as he enters his age-36 season.
The 11-year veteran carries a 2.35 earned run average in 218 2/3 innings since the Braves acquired him from the Angels at the 2022 trade deadline. He’s fourth in MLB with 113 saves since the start of that season. Iglesias posted a sub-3.00 ERA each season between 2020-24 as one of the steadier closers in the league.
Things seemed as if they might come off the rails early in 2025. Iglesias gave up an early-season home run barrage, including five longballs in April alone. He surrendered seven round-trippers before the end of May and carried an ugly 5.91 ERA through the first two months. The switch flipped over the summer, as Iglesias was one of the league’s best late-game arms from the beginning of June onward. He reeled off 46 frames of 1.96 ERA ball while striking out 29.3% of opponents over the season’s final four months. Iglesias only gave up one home run in that time despite a massive 54.5% fly-ball rate.
The truth certainly lies somewhere between those two extremes. Iglesias wasn’t going to continue giving up homers on a quarter of fly-balls, as he did early in the year, nor will he maintain the sub-2% homer/fly rate he posted later in the season. That’ll be the main concern moving forward, but his strikeout and walk profile remains strong. Iglesias punched out 27.4% of opponents against a tidy 6% walk rate. He turned in a 3.21 ERA overall while going 29-34 in save chances — coming up just shy of the sixth 30-save showing of his career.
MLBTR ranked Iglesias as our #32 free agent and the #5 reliever in the class in predicting a two-year, $26MM contract. He did not command the second year for what would have been his age-37 campaign. The Braves were apparently one of at least two teams that offered a sizable one-year deal. Francys Romero reports that the Dodgers also made an offer around $16MM but Iglesias declined to remain in Atlanta. L.A. and the Blue Jays were the only other teams publicly linked to Iglesias in what turned out to be a brief stay on the open market.
Toronto and Los Angeles are two of a number of teams that remain in the market for a late-inning reliever. Edwin Díaz is almost certainly going to command the largest contract in the class despite rejecting a qualifying offer from the Mets. Devin Williams has gotten a lot of attention in the first few weeks of the offseason. Robert Suarez should command a multi-year deal at a hefty salary. Ryan Helsley, Kyle Finnegan, Emilio Pagán and Kenley Jansen are among the many other unsigned closers.
Iglesias returns at the back of an Atlanta bullpen that still needs a lot of work. They’re getting Joe Jiménez back after he missed the entire ’25 season recovering from knee surgery. Dylan Lee is a high-end option from the left side. Atlanta dropped right-handed setup arms Pierce Johnson and Tyler Kinley at the beginning of the winter, so another righty alongside Jiménez in the late innings is a must. They’ll balance that against the yet to be addressed starting pitching and shortstop holes.
The Braves now have 13 players on guaranteed contracts that’ll combine for $192.5MM next season. They’re operating with a very light arbitration class that features a number of non-tender candidates. That group is unlikely to add more than $4-8MM to the books. The Braves opened last season with a player payroll around $208MM. They’d likely need to go beyond that mark to address the rotation and shortstop, especially if they fill the latter position by re-signing Ha-Seong Kim. RosterResource projects them for roughly $208MM in luxury tax commitments, putting them well shy of the $244MM base threshold. The Braves are believed to have stayed below the CBT line this year but had paid the tax in 2023 and ’24.
Image courtesy of Dale Zanine, Imagn Images.