Just In: It’s time for another Braves star contract extension

admin | April 29, 2024 | Other Clubs | No Comments

The Braves are an MLB-best 19-7, having won 11 of their last 13 games and coming off a series victory over the team with baseball’s second-best record.

They’ve arrived as expected to kick off the 2024 season, but what makes this early season run so amazing is that they’re doing it without their stars playing like stars.

Marcell Ozuna has been the team’s finest offensive player, and Reynaldo Lopez has been the Braves’ best starter. Hell, I could even argue that A.J. Minter has been the most useful player in the first month.

The hard-throwing lefty has developed into one of baseball’s top relievers in recent years, contributing significantly to the Braves’ sizzling hot start. Following yesterday’s game, in which he pitched a scoreless 10th inning, Minter has already tied his career high of five victories in a season. If you do the math, he’s winning at an outrageous rate of about 60 percent. Of course, it won’t happen, but it doesn’t change the fact that we’re overdue for a Minter contract extension.

The hype leading up to the season has been all about Max Fried and contract extensions. The long-time Braves ace is scheduled to become a free agent this winter, and everyone is hopeful he’ll stay here for the rest of his career, especially with Spencer Strider out for the season. That has been a topic of conversation for years and will continue to be a storyline throughout the season, but in terms of team success, Minter has shown to be extremely useful, and he is also poised to become a free agency at the end of the season. It shouldn’t be prohibitively expensive to keep him in Atlanta, where he expects to spend the rest of his career.

“I mean, obviously, who wouldn’t want to play in Atlanta,” Minter said, via The Atlanta Journal-Constitution prior to the start of the season. “Atlanta, in my opinion, right now it’s the best organization in baseball. Obviously, I would love to stay in Atlanta. Who wouldn’t? But yeah, that’s something that’s kind of out of my control at the moment.”

This past winter, the Braves spent a lot of money to bolster the bullpen, giving Joe Jimenez a three-year, $26 million contract and Pierce Johnson a two-year, $14 million contract. To this point in the season, the outcome has been one of baseball’s top high-leverage bullpens, but things would be far less advantageous without Minter.#

Unlike Fried, Minter seems like a quintessential Braves extension candidate. He’s a southern youngster who has made it abundantly clear that he wishes to remain with the group. It will not be cheap, but it is time for the Braves to break out the checkbook and make this happen. He will have plenty of suitors if they allow him to enter free agency, which, as we all know, makes things much more difficult.