What does a "soft sell" look like for the Atlanta Braves?

Can the organization be both buyers and sellers at the deadline?

Things are not going great for the Atlanta Braves.

As of Wednesday night’s rain delay, they’re just 27-32 and ten games back in the National League East. While the parallels to 2021 practically write themselves - the Braves didn’t break .500 that year until August 6th and rode a hot streak and some clutch deadline acquisitions to a division title and a World Series championship - there’s one crucial difference between this year and that magical season: The rest of the division.

In 2021, the New York Mets finished with just 77 wins and the Phillies with only 82, clearing the way for an 88-73 Braves team to win the division and steamroll the postseason en route to hoisting the Commissioner’s Trophy.

This season, the Phillies and Mets might clear 90 wins by September 1st.

In light of this, several projection systems have significantly cut Atlanta’s chances of making the postseason. FanGraphs gives the Braves only a 44.8% chance, while Baseball Reference is at just 17.9% and several betting sites have shifted to Atlanta being more likely to miss the postseason (-165) than make it (+140).

If the fortunes for Atlanta don’t turn and they end up clearly on the outside looking in as we approach the trade deadline, how might they straddle that line between selling rentals while gathering assets for future seasons? In other words, a “soft sell” - not tearing it down, but moving current year assets for future assets.

Let’s talk about it.

What assets are available to be moved?

In this ‘soft sell’ scenario, we’re assuming the Braves would be prioritizing retaining players with multiple years on their deals and moving players that either had an out or were pending free agents after the season is concluded. The two obvious trade chips combine for $32M in salary this season - designated hitter Marcell Ozuna and closer Raisel Iglesias.

Both have complicating factors.

For Ozuna, it’s twofold: His current hip injury and his lack of defensive value. The slugger is dealing with some sort of “tear” in his hip, assumed to be a labrum tear, suffered in the series finale against Tampa Bay on April 13th. While he’s playing on it, it’s impacted both his sprint speed and his power production, due to the need to protect the hip and issues adequately rotating through the swing. “I’ve been kind of slow because I don’t want to rotate, because my hip is kind of shut down a little bit,” explained Ozuna to The Athletic’s David O’Brien.

In the fifteen games for Ozuna to open the season, prior to the injury, he hit .306/.477/.531 with three homers and nearly as many walks (16) and strikeouts (17).

After missing the Toronto road trip to be evaluated by team doctors back in Atlanta, he’s hitting just .269/.400/.441 with seven homers in 41 games. While his on-base percentage of .420 entering Wednesday night still led the entire team and was a top-five mark in baseball, it’s no longer the best mark in baseball as it was prior to the injury.

The other issue with a potential trade of Ozuna is the lack of defensive versatility for the big slugger. He hasn’t played in the outfield since early in the 2023 season, with President of Baseball Operations Alex Anthopoulos explaining it wasn’t his reads/routes/reactions in the outfield, it was his throwing arm.

---

Subscription break! We’re adding more premium subs every single day - shout out to our newest premium subscriber, Carter, who signed up for an annual subscription last week. If you’re a frequent reader and/or find yourself really appreciating what we do both here and on the YouTube channel, which includes daily podcasts, weekly live shows on Fridays, our private group chat, and a soon-to-be-scheduled meetup for a Braves game, why not become a paying member? It’s $6/month or $69 a year, and it helps support everything we’re going over here on Braves Today.

---

“He can track balls okay,” Anthopoulos told me last year, but there’s an aspect of defense that they’d lose with him out there due to his well-below-average arm. “Are we okay with runners advancing first to third, things like that? That’s a tough lift” for the team to accept.

But despite both of those issues, it feels like a light sell-off could include moving the slugger. Since the start of the 2023 season, his 89 home runs and .912 OPS are both 6th-most in baseball, while his .373 on-base is 11th in baseball.

He’s owed a $16M salary this season, meaning that a trade deadline move will cost the acquiring team just $4.9M for the remainder of the season. It’s incredibly likely that Ozuna is moved in this scenario, as he has the ability to provide top-tier offensive production from the DH position, a spot where many teams are stuck using 4th outfielders, backup catchers, and rotating position players through for a half-day off.

Contenders who haven’t received great performances from their designated hitter spot include Kansas City (-1.2 WAR, although they just promoted Jac Caglianone so that might be solved), San Diego (-0.8 WAR), San Francisco (-0.6 WAR), and St. Louis (0.0 WAR).

Raisel Iglesias is the other $16M man that could be moved, although he has warts as well - namely, a 5.64 ERA and seven homers in just 22.1 innings this season.

But relief options are always in demand at the trade deadline, and he’d be a similar $4.9M salary down the stretch. It’s a pittance if he can get back to form between now and the deadline, which could be achieved by minimizing his slider usage and perhaps placing him in a setup role.

A list of teams that need a reliever at the deadline is essentially a list of every team that’s fighting for a playoff spot - while it doesn’t feel like they’d move him to the division rival Mets or Phillies, every other contender in the league is probably an option to acquire the flamethrower.

Other trade candidates include anyone on an expiring deal, which is mostly down to reliever Rafael Montero (who is likely to be DFA’d prior to the deadline) and outfielder Alex Verdugo. I wouldn’t expect either depth piece to fetch anything of value, but it’s possible Atlanta uncovers a gem in the depths of someone’s system that they can develop.

Could the Braves move on from Sale?

The biggest question, for me, is if the Braves attempt to deal veteran Chris Sale at the deadline. He’s technically on an expiring deal but the team does hold a $18M club option for 2026, one that is all but certain to be picked up by Atlanta if he’s still on the roster.

Potentially dealing Sale could provide the largest return of all of the pieces moved at the deadline, as he’s one season removed from a Cy Young and a National League Triple Crown and, after some early stumbles, has righted the ship and returned to that form this year. Entering his start on Wednesday night, Sale had a 1.66 ERA and 62 strikeouts across 48.2 innings and eight starts. Most teams that acquired Sale for their stretch run would likely be adding their game one starter for any postseason series.

It would be tough for the Braves to subtract Sale from their 2026 rotation and still maintain the exemplary performances of their pitching staff, a feature that carried the team to a playoff spot in 2024 amidst multiple injuries to the lineup. Spencer Strider, a year removed from his elbow surgery, will combine with Spencer Schwellenbach to form a formidable duo at the top, but the Braves would need either a return to health for Reynaldo López or a step up from Grant Holmes to have a trio of playoff starters. They’d also be reliant on Bryce Elder as their #5, and the depth would start with prospect Hurston Waldrep, partnered with veterans Davis Daniel and Ian Anderson.

Because of the impact on future depth and Atlanta’s desire to compete next year, I’d estimate the odds of trading Sale either this deadline or over the winter are virtually zero unless he specifically requests a trade, and he doesn’t strike me as the type of player that will do that.

It’s hard to picture many other multi-year deals moving in this “soft sell” scenario, one where the team plans to contend next season, outside of relievers like Pierce Johnson, Aaron Bummer, and maybe Joe Jiménez (if he returns by the deadline).

And the returns on all of these players would need to be near-majors pieces that could help the Braves in 2026.

(Tomorrow’s newsletter is one where we consider a more…drastic rebuild and discuss who might be available if the Braves were tearing it down to the studs, which, as I’m watching Merrill Kelly hold the Braves hitless through five innings, is sounding more and more appealing.)