Monday will be a big day for Drake Baldwin and the Braves, as the young catcher looks to take home an awesome personal award in the NL Rookie of the Year award and also earn the team an additional first round pick in the 2026 draft. This has ramifications for later in the offseason as well, as the team would lose its second highest pick in the draft if they were to sign a free agent who declined a qualifying offer. I have heard some argue that getting this additional pick from Baldwin winning Rookie of the Year would make it easier to take that loss of a pick when signing a big free agent, but I would make the counterargument that it makes the cost higher, in that the team would then lose a higher pick with close to $3.5 million in slot value, as opposed to their second round pick, which is likely to have a slot value in the range of $2 million. Especially recognizing that this front office likes to spread around money in the draft, that’s a significant cost to eat for signing a Qualifying Offer free agent, especially with the extra pick from Baldwin’s potential NL ROY. The 2026 draft presents an opportunity for this franchise to get a huge injection of young talent into the farm system with a front office that drafts well and potentially a historically large bonus pool if they get the pick from Baldwin’s NL ROY and some lottery luck.
I would personally be pretty protective of that draft asset and there really aren’t many free agents I’d be willing to lose that pick for (particularly if it is the Baldwin NL ROY pick). It would have to be Kyle Tucker or maybe Dylan Cease for me to personally want to give up that pick to sign them, especially knowing that this franchise drafts quite well under Anthopoulos. Personally I think a fairly realistic and resource efficient offseason would start with re-signing Ha-Seong Kim to something on the order of a 2-3 year deal with an AAV in the range of $15 million. I would then pursue a starting pitcher who would be a potential playoff-quality starter with a durable history and would not cost an arm and a leg in draft or prospect capital – Sonny Gray seems like a really good fit here, but free agents Chris Bassitt, Zach Eflin and trade targets Joe Ryan, MacKenzie Gore, Mitch Keller, Pablo Lopez, Freddy Peralta, and Brady Singer all come to mind as options across a spectrum of cost and quality. Those are the two biggest needs, but the team also clearly needs to add a couple pieces to the bullpen (Pete Fairbanks would be a nice addition), and I would love to see a utility player added who can provide a league average-ish bat off the bench. I think that would be a very promising offseason to set the team up for success in 2026 without costing the team too much in terms of forward-facing assets.
