Or rather, have they gotten what they’ve gotten because they didn’t pay?
I am not a gardener by trade or by general interest. Until about 5 years ago, I couldn’t tell a marigold from a begonia.
But our house’s landscaping was a bit of a disaster, and we wanted to fix it. So we spent some time, research, and money on rejuvenating the area around our house. We found a bunch of cool plants, got the topsoil and mulch, and spent some very hot days making the area into something we could be proud of.
It sucked. But it worked. And I now know a lot more about plants.
When we built our current house, we decided we were going to start from the beginning. We went to a gardening class put on by the Cincinnati Zoo. We went to local garden shops to buy quality plants. And we bought more than we thought we needed because the instructor warned us – you’re going to lose some.
You see, you can do everything right. We tilled. We put down fertilizer, compost, and all of the things you are supposed to. We watered those %^&*ing things so much. We spent a lot of time on this. We spent a lot of money. But when the instructor, the head gardener at the zoo, warned us that we would lose 10-20% of the plants, he wasn’t kidding. The idea was to do the best we could and plan that we’d lose some, but as a result, we’d end up with a really good start to our landscaping.
The Atlanta Braves didn’t really heed this kind of advice this offseason. I warned that spending money was important to winning and making the playoffs. The Braves didn’t really pay for players, but they’re paying for it now.
If you didn’t read Ivan’s excellent piece on why the Braves are struggling, you should go read that and come back to this.
Ivan takes you through all the struggles on the field, and he explains why each area is struggling. But I also think it comes down to a basic truth – the Braves cheaped out this winter.
Over the five previous seasons (2020-2024), the Braves began spending progressively more, both in terms of raw dollars but also relative to the league. It peaked last year when they crossed a crucial threshold and spent a whole standard deviation more than the league average. The team may not have played awesome, but they made the playoffs.
This year? They’ve dropped down to about .6 standard deviations above the league-average, sneaking $10-15 million below the luxury tax. And now, they are currently out of the playoff picture, already 5 games behind the third Wild Card.
You’ll now look at me and say, “It’s still early,” or “Pre-season projections had us with the second-best record in baseball!” We can even finally declare that Ronnie and Strider are back, and once they right the ship, the Atlanta Braves will speed right back into the playoff picture. And well, you might be right.
But it didn’t have to be this hard, either.
The needs on offense were pretty clear heading into the offseason – shortstop and left field. The team could weather a month or two without Ronnie (Jurickson Profar was a decent idea), and this is the one area the Braves actually tried. But with all due respect to the yeoman work that Nick Allen has done so far, the Braves could have done better here as well. In terms of OF, the Braves are 25th in fWAR and 20th at SS.
The needs in the rotation were also clear. Knowing the rotation situation would be stretched, Atlanta did nothing. Instead, they hoped Chris Sale, Reynaldo Lopez, and Spencer Schwellenbach would buoy Grant Holmes and whatever they threw out there on the fifth day. Then Lopez got hurt. AJ Smith-Shawver has been better than expected but is now also hurt. Atlanta’s rotation sits at 20th in the majors in fWAR (heading into this past Thursday).
The needs in the bullpen seemed less drastic in some ways, but the depth again was already stretched due to Joe Jimenez’s injury. Raisel Iglesias, Pierce Johnson (I still wince when I hear his name), Dylan Lee, and Aaron Bummer made a solid four with Daysbel Hernandez maybe a solid fifth. But there were warning signs, and Atlanta again did nothing to really address this. The bullpen currently sits at 25th in fWAR (again, as of this past Thursday).
Instead of spending money, the Braves currently sit about $10-15 million shy of the luxury tax. And this is why that is bad.
One, this is precisely the time to spend. You have an amazing team full of players in or near their prime, and very few of the core players are on the wrong side of 30. You did all of those extensions to gain cost certainty, and you just didn’t do anything to help it. This is the time to pay the tax before retreating way below when you inevitably rebuild.
Two, the team already knew it was weak in the depth department, and the Braves didn’t even start the season at full strength. With the margin of error already narrowed, the team decided to do nothing to try to wedge that back open. You know there will be injuries. Yes, Profar’s suspension was out of nowhere, but that sort of adds to my point. You have to expect that you will lose players (though, yes, not always this way), and that has happened along with the guys who were already hurt. It’s not a surprise. It always happens.
Three, there were also areas where the team needed one more player anyway. Shortstop was an area they knew they should address, and they’ve lucked into a productive Nick Allen so far (which is still not much). The rotation could have used another starting pitcher, regardless. The bullpen probably needed two more arms that weren’t “throw it at the wall and see what sticks” quality.
So yeah, the Braves may make the playoffs still. It is still early. We do have Ronnie and Strider back, and Reynaldo should be back at some point. But the Braves made this unnecessarily difficult on themselves in an effort to (unless otherwise proven) duck the tax. I got roasted in the comments (which … fair, I mean, this is a Braves site) for not picking the Braves in the East, but this is what I was worried about.
We knew we were going to lose plants. We knew spending more money to buy more plants because we were going to lose plants meant spending more money than just buying what we thought would be the requisite number of plants. But we did it because we faced reality. We planned. And the garden looks pretty good.