The 2025-26 off-season officially began on Sunday, November 2nd as we changed our clocks and realized that the Dodgers had become back-to-back World Series champs the night before. It will semi-officially end in roughly mid-February when the mandatory reporting dates take hold… about 105 days, give or take.

We are therefore approaching the halfway point in this off-season. GM meetings are done, the Winter meetings are done, and Christmas week will soon be upon us — a time when almost no baseball work gets done at all.

With all that as background, here’s one man’s assessment of where the Atlanta Braves are in their pursuit of a viable roster for the 2026 campaign.

[ this didn’t age particularly well… so there’s an update below 🙂 ]

Spending

It was a month ago that we speculated on what amount of spending would be required to get the Braves into “Top-5 Payroll” territory this winter — a bar set by team CEO Terry McGwirk. That number was $77 million, with a top-end amount coming in the neighborhood of $95 million, given the various luxury tax thresholds involved.

Thus far, here is what the Braves have added (with 2026 payroll amounts):

• Raisel Iglesias ($16 million)
• Robert Suarez ($13m)
• Mike Yastrzemski ($9m)
• Mauricio Dubon ($6.1m)
• Joel Payamps ($2.25m)

There were a few other additions of pre-arb players (Danny Young, Anthony Molina, Osvaldo Bido), but for the sake of this exercise, I’ll ignore those numbers since (a) they are all under $1 million, and (b) they effectively replace other players formerly on the roster at similar levels (players such as Nick Allen).

[Note: Bido was DFA’d yesterday to make room for a shortstop to be named later in this post. ]

Those new contracts add up to $46.35 million, which leaves $30.65 million to reach that $77 million ‘Top-5’ figure, and $48.65 million before hitting that speculated maximum of $95 million and the third, extremely punitive luxury tax threshold.

With the spending thus far, Atlanta has gone a long way toward addressing bullpen needs, but nowhere on the main issue — shortstop. Additionally, there was an expectation that a rotation ‘horse’ might be necessary. So let’s talk about those possibilities.

The Shortstop Position

INTERNAL OPTIONS.

The recently-acquired Mauricio Dubon owns two Gold Gloves, but they are for his work as a utility infielder in 2023 and 2025. Houston played him at seven different positions, though he’s officially a ‘middle infielder’.

He’s logged most of his major league innings at second base (1472) with another 1219 in center field. Still, he’s posted 721 innings at shortstop. Just don’t ask him to pitch or catch.

Nacho Alvarez Jr. is listed as a third baseman, though that was a minor league role he’ll reprise only when Austin Riley gets banged up. He could end up as another Dubon — playing anywhere and everywhere — though he doesn’t really profile as a bona fide shortstop.

Nick Allen is gone — sent to Houston for Dubon — and he was clearly the team’s best defender at the position. Obviously, the team would prefer more offense.

While the Braves drafted a pile of shortstops this Summer, it would be shocking to see any of them prompted to the majors soon enough to help in 2026. Yes, Tate Southisene and Alex Lodise are ranked 3rd and 4th among their prospects on MLBPipeline.com, but both are still quite a distance from the majors.

That pretty much sums up the problem: Atlanta must look outside the organization for help… and the options are limited.

EXTERNAL OPTIONS – TRADE

I’ll spend about 30 seconds to kill this rumor: Corey Seager is not coming to Atlanta via trade. Here’s why:

• He’ll be 32 at the beginning of the season
• His contract runs through 2031
• He’s getting paid $31.5 million per year for each of those next six seasons
• @Sports_News_Times reports that the Braves are on Seager’s no-trade list… and convincing him to change that would make him even more expensive: in state income taxes alone, moving to Georgia would cost him $8 million over the remainder of his contract.
• The Rangers have said multiple times that he’s not going anywhere (part of that could be because the ownership isn’t willing to ‘buy-down’ his contract to make a trade palatable to suitors, but that part is speculation)

Other trade possibilities?

• Trevor Story. Speculation time: Story has a minimum of $55m left on his Red Sox deal ($25m/$25m/$5m buyout) and his defensive ratings all crashed in 2025. In fact, they really haven’t been that good since 2019. At least he got through a full season for the first time since 2021. More on him later.
• CJ Abrams. I’ll make this simple: Washington isn’t going to trade him to a division rival.

Given this short list (and general lack of industry ‘buzz’), Story would seem to be the only viable option via trade, but the Braves would have to determine whether he’s worth it on the defensive side for 2 seasons… starting at age 33-1/2. That said, he might be about the same as Bo Bichette, who we’ll talk about later.

As for talking with Boston, the Red Sox still might have a bad taste in their mouths from their last deal with Atlanta: a disastrous swap of Vaughn Grissom (no longer with their organization) for Chris Sale.

Dealing Story, though, might change the fabric of the shortstop market: right now, the Blue Jays and the Braves are the only teams truly seeking help at that position. Putting Boston into that hunt would give the Sox a means of thwarting the plans of a division rival, boosting themselves in the process.

The complication with that theory is that Boston still would like to ink Alex Bregman. They could actually afford to pursue both Bregman and Bo Bichette and sew up their needs at those positions for quite a while, but would they?

EXTERNAL OPTIONS – FREE AGENTS

The world is waiting on Bo Bichette. Bo Bichette, however, is likely waiting on Kyle Tucker.

Kyle Tucker is in an enviable position. Virtually every high-payroll team in baseball wants him on their team. Chief among these teams are the Dodgers and Blue Jays, but we can’t rule out the Mets and Yankees… maybe even the Phillies.

If the Jays land Tucker, that might require them to back off the shortstop market and try for Ha-Seong Kim or maybe even an Isiah Kiner Falefa.

The Braves don’t want to overpay for anybody (which could mean they end up without a chair when the music stops), but their inaction to this point probably tells us a few things:

• Atlanta either doesn’t feel strongly enough about Bichette to force the market by throwing money (and years) at him -or- Bichette himself would prefer Toronto, but is forced to wait for a resolution about Tucker.
• Atlanta also doesn’t feel strongly enough about Kim to get him under contract at his preferred number (probably $17-20 million.. a lot for a ~90 OPS player).
• Bichette is the only ‘difference maker’ in this market: getting him would put Atlanta in the elite tier offensively and allow them to compete against anyone. Doing less would leave a notable hole in the lineup. The front office clearly knows this, and that’s probably why they haven’t done anything else yet: I suspect strongly that they want Bichette… just not on an overpay, because…
• Atlanta could still use a starting pitcher, too. Zac Gallen (for example) is still out there, but (a) MLB Trade Rumors has speculated a 4 year contract at $20 million, and (b) he’s a Boras Corp. client. Getting both (or any other starter) would use every spare dollar Atlanta has, so it would be hard to break the bank on Bichette.

How it Plays Out

If Tucker becomes a Blue Jay, the Braves should pounce onto Bichette. In any other scenario, Bichette returns to Toronto.

Without Bichette, the Braves would turn to Kim next — the same player who rejected them via a $16 million player option for 2026. I can’t see Atlanta offering much more… $17-18m tops.

[ HERE’S THE UPDATE: As we have seen on multiple occasions, Alex Anthopoulos has chosen to dictate, and not be dictated to. That has happened again. He has opted to take the lesser — though known — option in Ha-Seong Kim… paying him the premium $20 million for a 1-year deal as a means to get him signed now. Ah, the price of him being a Boras Corp client.

The Braves now have a chair as the music stops. Additionally, they now are free to pursue additional pitching with the knowledge of how much they can still spend… which is enough for virtually anyone else still available.

Kim, by my reckoning, does not constitute a difference maker offensively. He does, however, provide stability to a position of importance on the infield. The pitching staff will appreciate that, and perhaps that contribution will outweigh offensive short-comings. (We now resume your regular … and mostly irrelevant… article) ]

Failing that, a Trevor Story trade would be the next-most-likely possibility, having the merit of a limited-length contract. Maybe the Red Sox would entertain the possibility to buy down $5 million of that in exchange for Nacho, Dubon, or somebody else useful. The problem here? In that scenario, the Sox would not be able to pivot to Bichette, as he’d already be a Blue Jay again: they’d at least have to get Bregman.

Failing all of that… Maricio Dubon is your starting shortstop for the 2026 season. Excited yet?

So it’s gotten complicated. As usual, there are dominoes that must fall before decisions can be made.

Unfortunately, that’s the nature of these things when you are choosing to rely on the market to sort itself out instead of being the market-setter yourself: you end up with the leftovers once the best menu items have already been taken.

Hopefully, we’ll see a few things break before Christmas [ed note: I suppose it did, eh, Toronto? We didn’t wait on you after all! ]. Hopefully, the Braves give so that we can receive.