One great free agent set out to create history at the start of the offseason, and he succeeded. When the Atlanta Braves, an NL East foe up in Queens, signed generational hitting Juan Soto to a 15-year, $765 million contract, they gave out the biggest contract in baseball history.
Although Soto’s skill was always going to fetch a high salary, the circumstances were ideal because he was 26 years old and entering free agency in the midst of his prime. This is how you achieve a record-breaking agreement, especially when you consider that Steve Cohen, the owner of the Mets, has no financial boundaries and no fear.
Soto’s deal has recently been compared to that of other of Atlanta’s key players. Battery Power’s Stephen Tolbert explained how absurd these financial numbers are and how astute Alex Anthopoulos has been in recent years.
The huge Soto contract has almost the same amount of guaranteed money as the Braves’ whole starting lineup.
Considering the Atlanta Braves’ anticipated starting lineup, the sum of their contracts was somewhat more than Soto’s. Seven hundred and seventy-five million dollars is the sum of the guaranteed money given to Sean Murphy, Matt Olson, Ozzie Albies, Orlando Arcia, Austin Riley, Jurickson Profar, Michael Harris II, and Ronald Acuña Jr. The Braves are paying for 57 potential seasons of output for their entire starting lineup, rather than 15 years of production for Soto. That’s the only difference.
It’s unheard of to have a lineup full of superstars and be paying almost as much as ONE player in your division. It takes years of preparation to achieve something this remarkable, and Alex Anthopoulos began that years ago.
The Braves ended up with some of the most team-friendly contracts in baseball because they were the first to extend key players before their high-profile arbitration seasons. The Braves lineup hasn’t changed much year after year because of this.
Even if players like Dansby Swanson and Freddie Freeman have gone through free agency in previous years, Anthopoulos has managed to acquire additional top-tier batters to complement Acuña Jr. and company. He then used free agency to add hitters like Marcell Ozuna and Jurickson Profor to the lineup. However, for whatever reason, the prices of those two transactions fell short of what the market was willing to pay for good hitters in each offseason.
Sometimes a straightforward analogy like this helps us realize how fortunate we are to have Alex Anthopoulos leading the Atlanta Braves. He is the reason the squad has several successful players on the roster rather than simply one high-paid superstar.
