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Jackson Roberts is a Newsweek contributor based in Hoboken, NJ. His focus is MLB content. Jackson has been with Newsweek since July of 2025 and previously worked at The Sporting News and MLB Network. He is a graduate of Swarthmore College and the Newhouse School at Syracuse University. You can get in touch with Jackson by emailing j.roberts@newsweek.com
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If you forgot the Atlanta Braves existed during the deluge of trade deadline activity across Major League Baseball, you’d be forgiven.
The Braves only made a few minor trade, shipping reliever Rafael Montero to the Houston Astros and adding reliever Tyler Kinley and starters Erick Fedde and Carlos Carrasco. More importantly, they held onto expiring veterans, namely designated hitter Marcell Ozuna and Raisel Iglesias.
Ozuna and Iglesias have big contracts and both are underperforming this year, but surely some contender could have been interested enough in one of them to toss the Braves a prospect of at least reasonable value, no?
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According to president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos, those deals simply weren’t there.
“I can’t force a trade,” Anthopoulos said, per Mark Bowman of MLB.com. “So I understand that people may think we should trade so and so and we should get this guy back, or that guy back. Unfortunately, out of respect to all parties, I can’t divulge (specifics).”
The Braves, though they won a surprisingly riveting 12-11 game in 10 innings on Thursday, are dead and buried in the playoff race. Trading Ozuna and Iglesias might have killed fan interest for the rest of the year, but it would have at least given them some chance, no matter how negligible, at a brighter future.
Anthopoulos said he wasn’t interested in just dumping Ozuna and Iglesias because of their salaries, but couldn’t they have retained some salary and tried to get some young talent? Not so, the exec seemed to say.
“Generally speaking, when it comes to trades, if we thought there was a trade where we were getting some value back that we liked, we would have made a trade or two or three or four,” Anthopoulos said, per Bowman. “That didn’t present itself. Our goal in this Deadline was to try to get some form of help for 2026 and beyond.”
An immensely frustrating season for the Braves only got more perplexing on Thursday.
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