There’s an old website, from the early days of the internet, telling the story of a guy who started with a paperclip and kept trading it for different things until he eventually ended up with a house.
Atlanta Braves president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos was obviously inspired by that story.
“AA” has made four major league trades this offseason, all of them building on the previous deals.
The goal of the original trade was to get Seattle Mariners outfielder Jarred Kelenic, which Atlanta successfully pulled off on the Sunday before the MLB Winter Meetings.
But to do that, Atlanta had to take on not one, but two bad contracts: LHP Marco Gonzales, owed $12.25M in 2024, and 1B Evan White, owed $7M in 2024 and $8M in 2025 plus a $2M buyout of his 2026 club option (the first of three consecutive club options).
That’s $29.25M Atlanta took on to get Kelenic, who will make the league minimum this season, around $725,000, for a total investment of about $30M in the new leftfielder.
Once you factor in the money Seattle sent over in the deal – $4.5M – it comes out to an estimated $25.5M (Note: We’re rounding for ease of math.)
Let’s look at how Anthopoulos made some trades to shed some of that salary.
Atlanta flipped Marco Gonzales to Pittsburgh
Atlanta sent Evan White to the Angels for David Fletcher and Max Stassi
Max Stassi goes to the Chicago White Sox
If David Fletcher stays, there’s more math to do
Atlanta’s not flipped David Fletcher yet, but they might not do that at all.
He’s comparable to the now-departed Nicky Lopez as far as the role he’d play (veteran infield backup), but with two distinct advantages over Lopez:
The first is that Fletcher actually has a history of offensive success, as he’s a career .277 hitter, including receiving MVP votes for his 2020 season where he batted .319/.376/.425. While he’s never been a prolific home run threat, he stole 15 bags in 2021 as a full-time starter split between shortstop and second base, so there’s things to like in the profile.
Lopez, by contrast, is a career .249 hitter and that’s buoyed by one exceptional season – 2021 – where he batted .300 as a full time starter. Outside of that season, he’s batted in the low .200 range, with batting averages of .240, .201, .227, and .231.
The second advantage is cost certainty – Lopez was predicted to receive $3.9M in arbitration this season and would likely be due for a raise next year.
Fletcher, by contrast, is a known quantity when it comes to salary – he’s a $6M player in 2024, a $6.5M player in 2025, and will cost a $1.5M buyout for 2026 if he’s not moved before then, either in the coming weeks or as a mid-season sell to a contender that needs a fill-in at shortstop.
Alex Anthopoulos has shown that he likes cost certainty, extending players before he needs to in order to have accurate salary projections in future seasons (as well as to buy out a year or two of free agency, as a cost savings move).
So what’s the final cost for Jarred Kelenic?
So our math says $15.75M. Per reports from those directly briefed on the finances in the deals, primarily The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal ($), Atlanta assumed “in the range of $15 million” in 2024 salary commitments at the end of this trade tree to acquire Kelenic.
(It’s entirely possible there’s something else we’re not accounting for here – these finances aren’t exactly public. And so everyone’s figures are slightly different – Fangraphs has Atlanta sending just over $6M to the White Sox.)
By contrast, Eddie Rosario’s 2024 club option was for $9M.
But there’s a few things to point out with this additional $6M in salary that Atlanta’s taken on for 2024:
The first is Fletcher’s addition – as we said, he’s (as of now) expected to replace Lopez on the 2024 roster, so the cost for Lopez and Rosario combined was closer to $12.9M, compared to $15M for Fletcher and Kelenic. A difference of two million dollars isn’t nearly as significant, especially when you factor in Kelenic’s projection to outproduce Eddie Rosario in 2024.
The second factor that’s even larger, in my eyes, is that Atlanta has five seasons of contractual control of Kelenic. He’s receiving the league minimum this season before four years of arbitration (as a Super 2 player, he’s projection to go to arbitration a year early), not hitting free agency until 2029.
Atlanta took on somewhere between $2M and $3M dollars to upgrade from one year of 32 year-old Eddie Rosario and three years of backup Nicky Lopez to five seasons of Jarred Kelenic and two years of David Fletcher.
And of course, if Kelenic looks like the #6 overall pick that he was in 2018, it’s entirely possibly Alex Anthopoulos does his thing and locks Kelenic up to an early, cost controlled contract extension.
Yеs! Finally someone writes aboսt credulity.