Braves Sign Newly Acquired Baseman Matt Olson to an eight-year, $168 million contract that runs through the 2029 season, the team announced today. Atlanta also has a $20 million club option for the ninth season. Olson is represented by Jet Sports.
Atlanta, one of the few organizations to publicly disclose the terms of the contract, also announced that Olson will earn $15 million next season and $21 million in 2023 before being paid $22 million a year for the final six seasons of the contract. . Olson is also donating $1.68 million to the Atlanta Braves Foundation as part of the deal. This is the third largest contract ever signed by a player who has been in MLB for four to five years, second only to Joey Votto as well as Giancarlo Stanton.
Anthopoulos and his front office did not spend much time reinforcing Olson’s opinion along with Ronald Acuna Jr. as well as Ozzy Albis, is now one of the key building blocks for a team that hopes to build on last year’s World Series. “Now he’s part of that core,” the president of baseball operations told reporters, adding that he and agent B.B. Abbott “worked all day and all night” on the expansion once the deal to acquire Olson was finalized (video link via Bally Sports). The guaranteed portion of Olson’s contract even extends beyond Akuna’s contract, though the Braves have club options on Akuna for the 2027 and 2028 seasons. Albis’ contract runs until at least 2025 and includes club options for the 2026 and 2027 seasons.
MLBTR contestant Matt Schwartz predicted Olson would make $12 million next season and was due one final raise in arbitration in 2023 before he had to go public. He will forfeit six seasons as a free agent in a potential deal, likely earning around $138 million in those six seasons as a free agent. The new contract surpasses Olson’s previous contract. Freddie Freemanfor the largest contract in franchise history.
Olson’s $168 million guarantee trumps the Braves’ $140 million offer to Freeman, although it certainly matters to the Braves and the owners of Liberty Media that Olson is 27 (28 years later this month). Freeman is 32 years old and will be 38 by the time the six-year deal is closed — his stated asking price. Olson, meanwhile, signed a full-season under-35 contract. This age discrepancy and the significantly lower annual value of Olson’s deal were no doubt the driving factors behind the Braves’ comfort level when they made a commitment of this magnitude to Olson, but apparently didn’t go six years on Freeman.
While Olson and Freeman will now be inextricably linked for the foreseeable future, Olson made it clear yesterday that he has no intention of comparing himself to Freeman, whom he called “a gambler from hell” (link to twitter, with video by Matt Kawahara of the San Francisco Chronicle). “I’m just going to go out there and do what Matt Olson does,” he added.
This is good news for Braves fans, as Olson has little to go wrong. In 2021, the left slugger hit a career-high 39 home runs and earned a second Gold Glove award at first base in what is unlikely to be his last. Olson was prone to strikeouts early in his career, but last season he cut his strikeout rate by more than 10 percentage points, finishing the year at 16.8%, not much higher than his flashy 13.1%. Since the opening day of 2019, Olson’s 89 home runs are tied with Nelson Cruz for third in MLB, second only to Pete Alonso (106) and Eugenio Suarez (95).
Now that Olson has signed on, the Braves payroll will jump to a projected $156 million this season, the highest in franchise history. They already have about $84 million on balance in 2023 and will have at least $43 million in stone by 2026 (probably rising to $50 million assuming Albis stays healthy and his club option on 7 million dollars will be chosen that season).
A year ago, a changing of the guard at first base would have seemed unthinkable to Braves fans—and it may still be for many. Olson’s expansion adds even more finality to the end of the Freddie Freeman era in Atlanta, and as the Braves look to start a new chapter in franchise history, they’ll do so with Atlanta native Olson manning first base and fixing the heart. orders along with Akuna and Albis.