The Braves announced Thursday that they’ve signed veteran outfielder Alex Verdugo to a one-year, $1.5M contract. With Opening Day just a week away, he consented to be optioned to Triple-A Gwinnett to ramp up. (Players can refuse an optional assignment once they accrue five years of MLB service.) MVP Sports Group represents Verdugo.
Just days ago, The Athletic’s Brendan Kuty reported that Verdugo had yet to receive a formal big league offer in free agency. That turned quickly. He’ll head straight to minor league camp and spend some time in Gwinnett while he makes up for missing most of spring training, but he’ll be an option for Atlanta at some point in April.
The 28-year-old Verdugo (29 in May) is coming off the worst season of his big league career but was a steady regular with the Dodgers and Red Sox from 2019-23. Over those five years, he slashed a combined .283/.338/.432 with quality corner outfield defense. He may not have developed into the star some had hoped for when the former second-round pick was widely regarded as a top-100 prospect. Still, Verdugo was a clear contributor to generally competitive clubs.
The 2024 season started with more of the same. Traded to the Yankees last offseason, Verdugo came out of the gate hot, batting .275/.362/.450 in his first 141 plate appearances. However, he fell into a deep slump from that point forth and never recovered. From mid-May through the season’s end, Verdugo’s .221/.270/.330 line was one of the least productive in all baseball among qualified hitters.
Last year’s prolonged struggles indeed hindered Verdugo’s market. He was connected to teams like the Pirates, Angels and Astros throughout the winter, but all of those clubs either went another direction in the outfield or didn’t make an outfield addition.
The Pirates reportedly “floated” a verbal number around $8M when initially talking with him a couple months back, but no formal offer was ever presented. It’s not clear whether that’s because Verdugo didn’t find the price point amenable at the time or whether the Pirates instead decided it better to spread out their limited remaining resources across multiple players; they signed Tommy Pham ($4.05M) and Andrew Heaney ($5.25M) to one-year deals not long after being linked to Verdugo.
How those negotiations played out is a moot point at this juncture. Verdugo heads to Atlanta on a lighter deal than most would’ve predicted back at the onset of free agency, providing some outfield depth at a time when Ronald Acuña Jr. is still rehabbing last year’s ACL tear while Jarred Kelenic continues to struggle. Offseason signee Jurickson Profar has also been banged up in camp, as it’s now been nearly two weeks since he was in an official game. Profar injured his wrist on a diving attempt in left field; he was diagnosed with a bone bruise, not a fracture, and is expected to be ready for Opening Day. Bone bruises are tricky injuries, the effects of which can sometimes linger longer than expected.
If the Braves can get everyone healthy, they’ll have some decisions to make. At full strength, the outfield would be Profar in left, Michael Harris II in center and Acuña in right. Kelenic would fill a fourth outfield role in that setup, while Bryan De La Cruz — also on the 40-man roster — would likely reside in Triple-A as a depth piece.
Verdugo’s addition to the mix most directly threatens Kelenic’s role. Both are left-handed hitters who can handle center field but are probably better suited for corner work. (Verdugo certainly is.) Kelenic is a former top-10 pick and once ranked as one of the game’s 10 best prospects, but he’s never hit his stride in the majors after decimating minor-league pitching.
The Braves acquired Kelenic from the Mariners in the 2023-24 offseason via a series of convoluted salary-dump trades that wound up seeing Atlanta take on around $25M in dead money (plus nearly $7M in luxury taxes) to purchase the former top prospect. They said from the jump that he’d receive regular playing time and would not be platooned, but by the end of camp, he’d struggled enough against lefties that the Braves re-signed Adam Duvall to platoon with him. Kelenic’s first season with Atlanta resulted in a disappointing .231/.286/.393 slash. He’s followed that up with a .200/.282/.457 slash in 39 spring plate appearances.
Kelenic has a minor league option remaining. If he struggles, it’s feasible that Atlanta will try to get him on track in Gwinnett and switch him out for Verdugo, using the veteran Verdugo in that aforementioned fourth outfield role. It’s a low-cost depth gamble made possible by Verdugo’s lack of market. There’s little harm in opportunistically adding to the depth at this price point; the Braves are now up to about $231M of luxury obligations, per RosterResource, leaving them $10M shy of the tax threshold.
Jon Heyman of the New York Post first reported that Verdugo and the Braves had agreed to a deal worth $1.5M. Brendan Kuty of The Athletic reported that it was a one-year, major league contract.
