Has Braves window to extend Max Fried already passed them by?

The Atlanta Braves have extended young stars more often than not but Max Fried isn’t among them. Has the window to lock up the southpaw already passed?

Atlanta Braves general manager Alex Anthopoulos and the rest of the front office have been lauded for the organization’s ability to lock up star players to extensions, specifically ones that have been decisively team-friendly. Whether it’s been Ronald Acuña Jr., Austin Riley, Matt Olson, Michael Harris II, Spencer Strider or even most recently Sean Murphy, it’s been a masterclass from that group.

For as phenomenal of a job as the franchise has done, it’s still not a perfect record, though. In the past two offseasons, two big stars have hit free agency: Freddie Freeman and Dansby Swanson. And now, both of those players have contracts elsewhere.

The big key for the Braves has been getting into negotiations with extensions early. They have been expert at identifying the players who are part of the future and signing them to deals well before free agency. That didn’t happen with Freeman and Swanson, so they weren’t willing to pay any proverbial free agency tax to keep them.

And that’s what has some fans worried about the pitching staff’s ace, Max Fried.

Braves might be too late to the party to work a Max Fried extension

Fried, who will be 29 years old at the start of the 2023 season, has two years remaining on his contract before he’ll hit free agency at the conclusion of the 2024 campaign. The Braves don’t have the southpaw locked up to any type of extension and that might be bad news for them in terms of keeping their ace in tow.

Again, the key for Atlanta’s front office and Anthopoulos has been getting these extensions done early, well before there are only two years left on a contract before free agency. By that measure, they are just well beyond the time in which they would’ve ideally been able to get the deal done.

The other factor in this is that Fried has far exceeded the performance level for too long for the Braves to realistically expect him to take a huge discount to stay in Atlanta. He’s been a bonafide ace for this team over the past few years and, with what we saw from the starting pitching market for players much older than the 31 years old Fried will be when he’s a free agent, that means a monstrous payday is waiting on the open market.

While the ideal scenario would be Fried agreeing to an extension with Atlanta, the biggest AAV they’ve handed out thus far in their recent deals is roughly $21 million/year to Austin Riley and Matt Olson. Fried is going to cost much more than that, so it seems highly unlikely that the two parties will ultimately get a deal done.

Does that mean the Braves start to explore the possibility of trading Fried? Is the lefty the first time they truly break the bank to keep a star? We don’t know. But given the recent history, Fried hitting free agency after the 2024 season seems like the most likely outcome as of now.