At 8:00 p.m. ET on Friday night, the deadline for the Atlanta Braves to either tender or non-tender arbitration-eligible players came and went. An hour passed between the deadline and the time when the news was announced concerning the decisions that the Braves had made on the group of players who were in that category heading into tonight.
As it turned out, the Braves decided to non-tender five players here on Friday night, as RHP Griffin Canning, LHP Ray Kerr, OF Ramón Laureano, RHP Royber Salinas and RHP Huascar Ynoa were all non-tendered and are now all free agents.
The #Braves today declined to tender contracts for the 2025 season to RHP Griffin Canning, LHP Ray Kerr, RHP Royber Salinas, RHP Huascar Ynoa and OF Ramón Laureano.
— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) November 23, 2024
While Ramón Laureano definitely did an admirable job as one of the handful of fill-ins who helped push the Braves to the Postseason, it does make sense that the Braves would choose to non-tender him at this particular moment since this should free up just a bit more money for them to pursue a better outfield option instead of giving $6.1 million to potentially a fourth outfielder. However, if both the Braves and Laureano haven’t figured things out then we could see Atlanta circle back to Laureano at some point later on in the offseason.
Other than that, there aren’t many particular surprises here — outside of Ray Kerr, who wasn’t even being mentioned as being a non-tender candidate until it actually happened. With that being said, he’s probably safe bet to return on a minor league deal, so we probably haven’t seen the last of Kerr in Atlanta’s organization. As far as the other guys go, it’s a major “if” in their particular cases. Huascar Ynoa was promising but he’s just been having a tough go of it as far as injuries are concerned. Griffin Canning getting non-tendered basically confirms that the Jorge Soler trade was a salary dump, so there’s that.
On the other side of things, Jarred Kelenic, Dylan Lee and Eli White appear to have avoided the cut like expected. Kelenic still figures to be part of Atlanta’s plans in the outfield, keeping Dylan Lee around in the bullpen is a no-brainer and Eli White still figures to be a perfectly fine option when it comes to contributing as a bench option for the outfield. All-in-all, there weren’t many major surprises as far as this particular deadline is concerned.
