There’s this idea amongst the Atlanta Braves fanbase this winter, mostly contained on social media, that the team and president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos is being “cheap” by not breaking the bank for some of the top tier free agents that have signed.

To recap some of those signings:

Aaron Nola signed first, going back to the Philadelphia Phillies on a seven year deal worth $172M. (For what it’s worth, Atlanta reportedly outbid Philly for Nola’s services, but he chose to stay home.) Sonny Gray was the next to sign, taking $75M for a three-year deal with the St. Louis Cardinals.

And then the Shohei Ohtani deal happened. Ten years, $700M, with an astounding $680M deferred, bringing the luxury tax calculation down to $46M a year.

(Worth noting – all of those free agents received qualifying offers and would have required the Braves to sacrifice their 2nd and 5th-highest draft picks in the 2024 MLB Draft were they to sign with Atlanta.)

We’ve also seen lots of third tier (and fourth tier) pitchers sign, as well, including Seth Lugo, Eduardo Rodriguez, Michael Wacha, Kenta Maeda, Tyler Mahle, and Jack Flaherty.

When you look across the ecosystem of Braves fans and where they congregate online (twitter and facebook groups, mostly, but occasionally on reddit as well), there’s quite a bit of angst that Atlanta’s being “cheap” by not outbidding other teams for these starters that are entering their early 30s (or, in the case of Sonny Gray, already 33 when signing).

But in reality, the Braves have been plenty active this offseason and have committed significant amounts of money, relative to the rest of baseball.

The average MLB team has signed two Major League players for a total of $32M guaranteed – Atlanta’s signed three players for $70.25M, in relievers Pierce Johnson and Joe Jiménez and pitcher Reynaldo López.

By Spotrac’s payroll calculations, Atlanta’s currently sitting on the third highest cash payroll at $208.4M and the highest CBT payroll at $242M for 2024.

Now, the offseason’s not over and there’s plenty of big dollar free agents like Matt Chapman, Cody Bellinger, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto left to sign, but it’s worth repeating:

Atlanta has also been active in the trade market, bringing in nine players and shipping out twelve (several of those nine incoming players, notably Marco Gonzales, Evan White, and Max Stassi, were almost immediately moved back out).They’ve taken on multi-million dollar deals, some of which they’ve been able to shed.

Just because you took on money via trade instead of free agency doesn’t mean you didn’t spend money.

The final result of that, as of now, has been Atlanta’s securing five years of outfielder Jarred Kelenic and two years of David Fletcher for just barely more than the club option for one year of Eddie Rosario and two years of arbitration-eligible Nicky Lopez, plus the multi-year additions of several relievers (like Aaron Bummer and Ray Kerr).