You may see a lot of faces in the Atlanta Braves dugout starting next week, but you may already recognize all of them.
That’s because of the manner in which recent acquisitions have already been applied and because of the tightness of Atlanta’s 40-man roster.
MLB rules permit – for reasons not terribly clear – clubs to expand from the 25-man active roster they’ve used all season to the entire 40-man roster on September 1st. Those rules may be changing for next season, but for now… the current rules prevails.
The degree of the active roster expansion is determined by each team, and some clubs have more interest in bringing in new bodies than others.