On Wednesday the Atlanta Braves did the following:
-
Signed RHP Luke Jackson ($1.9 million), IF Johan Camargo ($1.36 million), and LHP Grant Dayton ($900,000) to one-year non-guaranteed contracts, avoiding arbitration.
-
Announced they have elected not to tender a contract to OF Adam Duvall.
-
Tendered contracts to all other non-signed players on the 40-man roster, including arbitration eligible players LHP Max Fried, LHP A.J. Minter, RHP Mike Soroka, and SS Dansby Swanson
Wednesday was the deadline for major league teams to tender contracts to their players without guaranteed contracts. For players with less than two years of service time the deadline is essentially a pro forma one. For those that have accrued enough service time for their salaries to be determined by baseball’s arbitration process, the deadline has more substance. For players firmly in a team’s plans, like Fried, Minter, Soroka, and Swanson for Atlanta, it means that they are locked in to another deadline, January 15, when teams and agents exchange desired salaries for the player for an arbiter to decide between.
For players on the fringes of the roster, it’s a day of frantic negotiations and decisions. Teams are trying to lock in what their salaries will be as much as possible prior to next week’s general manager Winter Meetings. Without known salaries for those players, the team could simply non-tender them an look for replacements in free agency.
In a year after teams took a financial beating due to the shortened season without fans attending, free agency looks to be harsh for all but the top-tier players. For players like Luke Jackson, Johan Camargo, and Grant Dayton, coming to terms now means avoiding being thrown into that free agent pool. Even so, their contracts are non-guaranteed; if the Braves decide this spring that they want to cut these players rather than take them into the season, where their contracts become guaranteed, they can do so for only a termination fee of prorated 45-days of their agreed salary.
In short, these players will still have to earn their way back on the team.
Most interesting here is Johan Camargo, who took a 20% pay cut from his 2020 full salary, the biggest cut allowed by current rules. This goes to show how much agents want to avoid their lower-tier clients going to free agency this offseason.
The bigger surprise was the Braves decision to non-tender the player who logged the most innings in their outfield in 2020, Adam Duvall. Playing in 57 out of 60 games in 2020, the largest percentage of major league games played by Duvall in a season since 2017, Duvall posted a .237/.301/.532 batting line while swatting 16 home runs; his 116 wRC+ was the second highest of his career in a season behind only the 121 mark from 2019 (in 41 games).
Of course Duvall accumulated that playing time in part because of injuries and underperformance by other outfielders; the initial plan was for Duvall to mostly start against left-handed pitchers and be a top right-handed hitting reserve and defensive replacement.
The Braves decision was likely effected by the uncertainty around the Designated Hitter rule for the National League in 2021. The rule was put in place in 2020 after an agreement between MLB and the players union in an attempt to help keep pitchers healthier in a season where rosters could quickly become difficult to manage due to the COVID-19 virus. That agreement expired with the end of the season, and there has been no word on the status of discussions for 2021. If the rule is not renewed for 2021, the Braves will likely move to secure a more accomplished hitter to play left field and bat in the top half of the line-up to replace the loss of 2020 NL home run and RBI leader Marcell Ozuna.
The move by the Braves does not necessarily close the book on Duvall’s time with Atlanta. The Braves could re-sign Duvall. However, Duvall will have to compete with other free agent outfielders, a list that grew substantially on Wednesday. Among the 59 players non-tendered by their clubs on Wednesday are the following outfielders:
Albert Almora
David Dahl
Delino DeShields
Ben Gamel
Brian Goodwin
Nomar Mazara
Jose Martinez
Tyler Naquin
Eddie Rosario
Kyle Schwarber
All of these outfielders were added to a pool that already had Jorge Bonifacio, Jarrod Dyson, Adam Eaton, Brett Gardner, Matt Joyce, Nick Markakis, Cameron Maybin, Yasiel Puig, Josh Reddick, and Hunter Renfroe. These players, including Duvall, will be competing for the same platoon/4th outfielder or designated hitter jobs, creating a depressed market for that sort of player.
Leave a Reply