📅 Published on: 2024-12-02 17:00:06

⏱ Duration: 00:30:40 (1840 seconds)

👀 Views: 77 | 👍 Likes: 6

📝 Video Description:

In this episode of Braves Today, host Lindsey Crosby offers an in-depth analysis of why the Atlanta Braves might be looking to reset the Competitive Balance Tax (CBT) this offseason. Crosby breaks down the benefits of this strategy, noting the increased penalties associated with repeatedly exceeding the CBT thresholds and highlighting the current financial state of the Braves’ payroll. He also touches on the potential impact of injuries to key players such as Spencer Strider and Ronald Acuna Jr., and how their absence could influence the team’s overall strategy. Further, Crosby discusses the expected performances of both the offense and pitching staff for the upcoming season, providing key statistics and projections. Lastly, he addresses the fans’ expectations for spending and competitiveness, emphasizing the long-term benefits of a strategic financial reset.

Can Atlanta Reset the CBT and Still Make the Postseason in 2025? | Atlanta Braves Podcast
00:55 Understanding the Competitive Balance Tax (CBT)
03:23 Atlanta Braves’ Payroll and Tax Strategy
06:21 Offensive Performance and Injury Impact
14:26 Pitching Staff Analysis and Projections

Subscribe to Braves Today on audio wherever you get your podcasts
Follow the show on Twitter: @braves_today
Follow Lindsay on Twitter: @CrosbyBaseball
Read our written work: bravestoday.substack.com
Send us questions: [email protected]

Rocker Chicks by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

🎙 Channel: Braves Today Podcast

🌍 Channel Country: United States

📂 Tags:

atlanta braves,atlanta braves highlights,braves baseball,atlanta braves podcast,braves podcast,ronald acuna jr,ronald acuna podcast,ronald acuna highlights,ozzie albies,max fried,max fried highlights,atlanta braves press conference,braves today,Brian Snitker,chipper jones,mlb,mlb podcast,world series,mlb trade deadline,atlanta braves trade rumors,atlanta braves recap,atalanta braves preview

🕵️‍♂️ Transcript:

there’s a growing belief that this is the season the Atlanta Braves try to reset the CBT and there’s a lot of reasons why this year makes a lot of [Music] sense yes welcome on in to Braves today for Monday December 2nd your source of news notes and updates on your Atlanta Braves I’m your host Lindy Crosby you can follow me on Twitter and blue sky at crossby baseball you can follow the show on Twitter Braves today we have a Facebook page and Instagram as well and you can find all of my written work Braves today.com as this is both a podcast and a newsletter and something that we first brought up a couple weeks ago and it’s gained a lot of traction in Braves country Braves media or whatnot in the last week or two is the idea that the Atlanta Braves are looking to reset the competitive balance tax this off season reminder catching everybody up here this is the luxury tax this is the extra penalty you pay on dollars over a specific salary threshold in 20123 it was 233 million the Braves went over not by a lot but they did go over I want to say Atlanta’s final payroll came out to 245 again on a threshold of 233 2024 Atlanta went well over it threshold was 237 the brave spent 276 and we’re within less than $5,000 of going over the third threshold and I’ll get that in a second and and so this has been two consecutive years Atlanta has gone into the competitive balance tax and the first year you go over it’s a 20% tax on your overage the second year it’s 30% so it’s it cost you more to go over in the second year in the third year it becomes a 50% tax so you sign a dude for 10 million bucks you have to pay 15 he gets 10 and you remit five to the league which is used for different things it was used for helping make teams whole from broadcast issues there’s a whole list of things it gets used for but um you have to remit an additional five to the league and those bills always come out in December so we don’t have the official number for Atlanta this year but we know that they went over and then I mentioned the tear every $20 million you go above that threshold which for last year was $237 every 20 million you go over there’s a search charge so once you hit 20 million over you’re into uh the second tier that’s a 12% search charge you pay that on top of your whatever it is your 20 your 30 or whatever the second tier I’m sorry the the third tier the second search charge amount becomes $42.5 million that’s when you hit $40 million over the big thing there is when you also do that your highest selection in the draft is move back 10 spots and so you lose the draft the bonus pool that comes along with that your first pick is obviously the biggest draft pool of them all and so that’s the tier that Atlanta was trying to not go over and we heard from Alex anthopoulos and Brian stier right after the season ended literally it was less than 48 hours that game the final game in San Diego was on Wednesday it was a Wednesday I remember it was an evening game I don’t think it was a late game it was an evening game and we spoke to them on zoom on Friday so less than 48 hours it was like lunchtime Friday so less than 48 hours after the season ended we spoke to Alex anthopoulos that’s where he told us the expectation was the coaching staff wouldn’t change they ended up doing that the expectation was they’d pick up all of the options it was Ozuna darno and bummer were specifically mentioned they didn’t get darno option and anthopolos told us the payroll was going to go up it had gone up almost every year he’d been here the expectation was that payroll was going to go up for 2025 I don’t think Alex anthopoulos was intentionally lying to us I just every interaction I’ve had with him he tells us as much as he’s able to tell us about what they’re doing it is my belief that and he gave a caveat up front that they hadn’t really sat down and looked at all of this stuff so it was just the vi vies right The Vibes of how the offseason was going to go I am convinced that Atlanta decided when they got the news that Spencer Strider that Ronald lunia Jr wouldn’t be ready to start the season you knew you were going to have to do more work maybe than you were expecting you weren’t going to have them for a while is when they decided to Pivot and say hey we’re going to reset the CBT and there’s a couple reasons why you can expect the team to get better next year in some areas there are some reasons you can expect the team to get worse in some areas next year we’ll start off I’m going to get to the reasons why they could be worse next season okay we’ll do that in the second segment the first segment though I want to talk about some of the reason to believe that you can not be super involved D in free agency remember we’ve talked about uh a normal offseason could be 60 million bucks of spending this a luxury tax reset off season a winter of austerity as I’ve been calling it needs to be at $20 million or less and then you have a couple million left in season to go get a guy or two at the trade deadline if you need to I think one of the reasons why you could see Atlanta do this right here this year is because last season your offense dealt with a ton of injuries and underperformance and you still made the postseason I it wasn’t a satisfying year obviously 89 and 73 you went second place in the NL East you had won the division for six consecutive years right you went to the postseason and you got knocked out 2 by the Padre’s who promptly turned around in the next round and lost to the eventual World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers so you lost to the team that lost to the champion but consider this because of all of the injuries and other issues you dealt with last season the offense prob wasn’t really that good there were areas where Atlanta did well right they had the ninth highest slugged in the league 4:15 they were top five in home runs but especially coming off of the the generational year that this offense had in 2023 they tied the single season record for homers in a season with a Juiced ball Minnesota Twins team from 2019 so really Atlanta had it they significantly underperformed based on batted ball inputs we broke down a lot of this stuff right the ball seemed dead early in the year things like that and then Atlanta dealt with severe injuries one of my favorite stats to remind everybody is actually no what’s wait uh opta stats uh one of these stat houses out there put out a stat on the final day of the Season that said no other ml MLB team other than the 24 Atlanta Braves has ever made the playoffs with three opening day starters missing the final 35 Plus games in this case you lost Spencer Strider on April 5th you lost Ronald theun Jr on May 26th and they’re referring to Austin Riley as the third one on August 18th none of those guys played after those dates Riley didn’t return in the postseason obviously but even that kind of undersells it because and here’s the stat I wanted to actually use a second ago Atlanta’s opening day lineup got a grand total of six Innings together this season Shawn Murphy got hurt in an at bat he missed 58 days he returned on May 27th it was Strider was already out so your opening day lineup was now ruined but that was literally the same day that Ronald lunia Jr went on the injured list after his injury in Pittsburgh it was a couple days earlier that actually happened but that was the iil day for Ronald lunia Jr he was out the rest of the year Michael Harris went down in mid June and by the time Michael Harris came back Aussie alz was out this was literally you dealt with twomon absences from four of your different starters and all guys who either have been Allstars or are All-Star caliber Shawn Murphy was an All-Star in 23 Ronald Jr was a d MVP uh Aussie alz has been a multitime Allstar Michael Harris is All-Star caliber to me and just has dealt with minor injuries that has kept him from showing on the field statistically that he is that and so even if this just regresses to a normal amount of injuries you’ve already shown that the rest of the offense that was there you’re Matt you’re Matt Olsen in that last third of the Season where he was amazing your Marcel Luna and those other guys were good enough to get you into the postseason now a lot of that was the pitching they’re coming in the second segment but you already have a playoff caliber roster and it is safe to assume that between Better Health having your stars in the lineup more often and the impacts of a new hitting coach you should be able to improve on some of the rough statistics from 2024 your batting average 16th literally right in the middle on baseball if you sort I was on baseball reference if you sort by top or bottom Atlanta never moves from the line there on 243 batting average expected was 244 so right there they did not under or overperform batting average slugging they did it was the ninth best slugging at 415 the expected slugging was third best at 428 it’s those dead and balls we talked about earlier in the season but some of the other things and some some of this was new ways to attack the Stars like Matt olssen some of this was the impact of lesser hitters filling in for a Riley or an Aussie and guys like that the Braves LED baseball in whiffs swing and Miss rate 28.1% no other team was above 28% so at least a couple percentage points worse than everybody else and they were fourth worst at contact in the zone at 81% I’ve talked on here before about Michael Harris specifically missed a lot of pitches in the heart of the plate that he took when he should have swung so I fully expect one of the things Tim highers has talked about as the new hitting coach is getting guys to be more aggressive at recognizing and swinging at their pitches I would expect Atlanta to improve at both Zone swings like the rate of swings and Zone contact from that fourth worst 81 % last season so you combine you don’t have to play guys like GI or shell and Whit marfield for two months and again nothing against G relle and wh marfield they got us into the postseason they were great guys in the clubhouse but it’s hard to argue they’re better than Austin Riley and oie alz same thing with having to play you played Eddie Rosario for after he was DFA for a while in the Outfield you you play Jared Kellick every day because you were down a bunch of guys you grab Ron and laurano off the scrap he having the starters in there even a shortened schedule of Ronald luno Jr means that the offense should be better in 2025 than it was last year now I don’t think it’s going to be 2023 good and I think in retrospect we can say that may have just been one of the greatest seasons in baseball history from an offensive perspective and we maybe didn’t appreciate how much above standard performance that was until obviously it was over right in retrospect that was special and it was probably a little not not an appropriate it was probably a little bit of a mistake of ours to assume that they would come anywhere close to what that season was it was a Confluence of a ton of factors including a MVP season of of Ronald and everything else to get them there I didn’t expect to fall as far as they did but the injuries did play part of that if your offense did enough to get you in the postseason last year it stands to reason they should be able to contribute more in 2025 and that’s good because I believe you could actually run into a situation where the pitching staff takes a step back and we’ll break that down next right here on Braves to day welcome back to Braves today Lindsey Crosby talking about the potential Atlanta Braves decision to reset the CBT in 2025 and we’ve already established in the first segment there that the offense should be better not going to be 2023 levels you may literally never see that again but the offense should be better and I think that’s good because it is likely that the the pitching staff takes a step back in 2024 now I’m sorry in 2025 now in 24 uh there’s both Collective performance and individual performance that went really well in 24 that you can expect to not necessarily match in 2025 part of that is just I don’t quite think we realize how good the pitching St was when we’re watching every single game it’s very easy for us to get caught up and remember some of the bad things right maybe it’s Charlie Morton hitting 18 batters which fun fact I thought it was a lot more than 18 that’s that’s that’s barely over one every other start he had 30 starts last year and he hit 18 batters now for some reason I thought that was a lot higher than 18 still a lot but thought it was higher but like we may be stuck on remembering the bad spot starts from some of these guys Bryce Elder putting up a 652 right or Darius vines coming up with an 856 Allan Winan’s two starts in a 1526 ER like we remember some of that stuff but in reality Atlanta’s pitching staff as a whole was one of if not the best in all of baseball their 349 erra tied with the Seattle Mariners for number one in baseball now Atlanta did it their relievers were better than their starters which is how it is for most teams Seattle was backwards their starters were better than the relever but Atlanta’s starters 358 ER third best in baseball Atlanta’s relievers 332 erra third best in baseball the 349 erra isn’t necessarily something that was a mirage are a fluke Atlanta’s fielded independent pitching was 344 which led all of baseball and actually led by a lot the next closest team was at 370 and MLB average was like 408 so Atlanta not only LED and fi an independent pitching they led by a lot but yeah tied for first in ER starting pitcher e was third relief EA was third by home runs allowed it was the second best performance as a staff in baseball the 150 home runs Allowed by Braves pitchers so less than one a game they were four behind Kansas City who plays in a much more pitcher friendly Park than truest does they had 146 the Braves were first in strikeouts by a lot 1553 was the number of strikeouts the Braves put up in 2024 second was the twins with, 1500 even third was the Astros at 1,479 only six teams even had over 1,450 strikeouts Atlanta had over 1,550 only two teams broke, 1500 and the twins nailed it on the dots again League leading performance in ra League leading performance and strikeouts relievers I’m sorry not relievers War the Braves were first in baseball reference war from their pitching staff at 12 a half and this is pretty evenly split third from the starters at 8.6 second from the relievers at 3.9 and by the way if anybody ever tells you that like how good Cleveland’s Bullpen was last year the Cleveland Guardians Bullpen was first in relief or was first in in war at 7.5 they almost doubled up Atlanta in reliever War that’s how absurd their Bullpen was in 2024 and obviously they rode them so hard it failed them in the post season Manuel CL gave up more home runs in October than he did All Season more runs I think actually in October than all season so as a collective group that pitching staff was you could argue the best in baseball last year and because of that it is statistically most likely that they take a step back now I don’t know how far back it’s going to be they could be third best next year they could be fifth best next year they could be 16th if you I mean look at what happened to the offense in 2024 versus 2023 in 2023 the Braves offense was among the best in baseball at everything runs home runs RBI all of that stuff they just destroyed baseball the next year a lot of that regressed back towards League average now granted they were one of the best at at home runs and things like that but still the offense took a natural step back that is how this stuff works I don’t expect the Braves pitching staff to be a bottom 10 pitching staff or anything but I do think it’s a little bit foolish for us to assume they can be number one again and we need to prepare and just mentally prepare that they could take a small step back and if you look at some of the individual stuff individual P picturers there’s a reason to believe and to see the regression I think we’ve talked about this a little bit a week or two ago maybe it was when we did the Zips projections that are out but Chris S amazing year 18 and3 238 ER Sai Young winner 7th place in the MVP statistically he’s likely to regress a little bit next year even if he is fully health healthy and the health as much as we don’t want to admit it is still a question for Chris S because of his age and his recent injury history Max freed Charlie Morton are your two next highest Innings guys and they are gone they are they combine they take 59 starts out of the rotation one of them may come back Morton may come back we talked about that on Friday in a cheap deal if you need to add a backend starter but they’re gone and then Ronaldo Lopez I think we need to understand how tenuous his performance was on paper really good 26 appearances 25 starts 8 and5 record 199 eray he was worth 5.1 War second on the staff behind Chris sales 6.2 on the Zips projections for next year Lopez is projected for 4.1 so a full War down while sale is projected for 4.5 now those haven’t been updated since they non-tendered laurano and canyan and things like that but uh you can see they’ve projected some of those pitchers to take a reasonable step back a four War season is still a very good season from a starting pitcher but 5.1 for Lopez last year 6.2 for sale and for Lopez specifically there’s some stuff to worry about in the profile he put up a 1 199 erra last year but a lot of the inputs said that should have been higher Ronaldo Lopez’s uh Fielding independent pitching and remember Atlanta had the best FIP in all of baseball Lopez’s fielded independent pitching was 292 so almost a full run worse than what he actually did than his 19 199 his expected ER based on inputs was a 394 so almost two runs worse than what he actually put up and part of this is you have to understand the profile of Ronaldo Lopez is a flyball pitcher that relies pretty heavily on his fast ball and he gives up a lot of hard- hit balls he gives up a lot of barrels his hard hit rate 42.2% was 20th percentile last year his Barrel rate 8.8% was 26th percentile last year obviously the higher better there and like that fast ball he only gave up two home runs on the fast ball all year despite throwing it 1,00 times he gave up two homers the actual stats the slugging was a 369 the expected slugging was a 409 you have to to remember the dead and baseballs works both ways like it it hurts your offense cuz the balls don’t fly as far but it helps your flyball pitchers because the balls don’t fly as far and Ronaldo Lopez by all normal measurements should have given up more than two home runs and I think you can really see the factor of luck when you look at his curveball he threw 244 of them last year all but 20 were to lefties like he is almost entirely fastball slider to a righty but against a lefty he will take he will ramp up the curveball usage he’ll throw some change UPS too that curveball allowed a 151 batting average and a 264 slug with only one Homer and 244 throne but here’s the thing the expected stats based on the inputs 231 batting average 80 points worse and a 4 52 expected slugging almost 200 points of slugging higher than what he actually put up now this is only 43 batted ball events so this is a little bit of small sample size and a little bit of luck but he we have to acknowledge he uh we have to acknowledge that he significantly overperformed the expected numbers in the inputs last year and that is a recipe to expect some regression I’m not saying he’s going to all of a sudden put up an erra of four next year but I’m saying the 199 he’s probably going to give some of that back because it looks like he was exceptionally lucky when it came to the batted ball inputs what the hitters did versus the statistical results he got from those and then I think the other reason why you could say it makes sense like okay so the offense should be better the pitching staff’s going to regress a little bit you think but it feels if you have some confidence that the hitting will improve more than the pitching will take a step back then you feel like this is still a postseason team this is a team that can make October do they win the division we don’t know but this is team that can win October and when you factor in the understanding that Spencer Strider and Ronald lunia Jr will not be ready to start 2025 and we don’t know how good they’ll be when they get back in the lineup it makes sense to say if we can get a 15% improvement in our offense and we only give back 5 or 10% of the pitching performance that we did we’re still a better team than we were last season let’s take advantage of the fact that we’re not going to have them for a while and when they come back they may not be back to the same forms that they were pre-injury let’s use this season to reset the CBT so that we’re not paying a 50% overage on every dollar we spend if we go over by 40 million bucks that’s an extra $20 million in payroll that you can’t spend because you’re paying the tax so if we assume that money is finite which it is for the Atlanta Braves they spend what they make then it makes sense to say this is the season where because we don’t know when or how good Spencer Strider and Ronald lunu Jr will be but we know that statistically the offense should be better and we know that the pitching staff is good and we’ll take a small step back we should still be good enough to make the postseason and to contend for the division so this is the season where we need to try to reset the CBT now so we can go out and when we have even more money coming off the books after next season because you have risel glaus is $16 million is off the books Marcelo Zuna $16 million is off the books that’s 32 million right there plus the additional spending that you could have done this season to get back to those payroll levels you could have a $100 million available to spend next off season because your tax would only be 20% and not 50 it makes sense now is this satisfying no I do not want the Atlanta Braves to take a year off from spending significant money to try to reset the CBT right and I had a couple people Express this thought to me in on Twitter and YouTube comments things like that saying we expect our team to spend as much money as they can to try to compete and I think this only really works if you see Atlanta find a way to let us know that they are going to spend more in the future this is a strategic long-term decision and I don’t know if we’ll ever see AA directly address this the winter maans are next week I’m sure somebody from the beat is going to ask him I will ask him if I was going to be there I had to change my plans for a personal issue I can’t be at the winter meetings this year I would have asked him myself there’s a belief the Braves are trying to reset the CBT this year are you trying to stay under are you going to go over for the right player are you going to spend the same amount what’s the offseason plan and he wouldn’t give us a straight answer but at least we’d get him on the record with something I I don’t think you’ll ever hear Atlanta come out and say yes we are staying below the CBT but I do think that is what they are trying to do as of now again do I like it no do I get it yes we’ll be back tomorrow with more Braves today in the meantime if you have questions concerns comments whatever it is we’re going to do show ideas we’re going to do a mailbag later this week uh I’m on Twitter and blue sky at crossby baseball shows on Twitter at Braves today leave a comment on YouTube Down Below or anywhere else until next time this has been Braves today [Music]

🔗 Watch on YouTube

🚀 Related Hashtags: #Atlanta #Reset #CBT #Postseason #Atlanta #Braves #Podcast

Disclaimer: This video is embedded directly from YouTube. All rights to the video and content belong to the original creator, Braves Today Podcast. For more details, please visit the original source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aU_BxMZe8Y.