Alex Anthopoulos spent nearly an hour on Sunday morning talking to the media, including Braves Today, about the 2026 season that was and the team’s pending winter moves.
And he spent a lot of that time cautioning against overreaction.
The Braves won the National League East, eliminated the Philadelphia Phillies in the Wild Card round for their first postseason series victory since 2021, and remained competitive with the Los Angeles Dodgers until the final innings of every game in the NL Division Series. One disappointing series, he argued, should not invalidate six months of success.
But near the end of the press conference, while discussing another injury-riddled season for Atlanta’s pitching staff, Anthopoulos asked the question that should define the Braves’ offseason:
“Are we creating too much risk in our rotation, in our relievers, in our position players?”
Atlanta does not believe it has a broken roster. Anthopoulos defended the offense, praised the pitching staff, and expressed confidence in the organization’s resources.
But he also tacitly acknowledged that the Braves can no longer construct their plans around Ronald Acuña Jr. staying healthy, Spencer Strider and Spencer Schwellenbach supplying full seasons, Austin Riley rediscovering his old production, and every high-upside pitching gamble remaining upright.
Let’s talk about it.
Anthopoulos will not let one series define the roster
There’s been this lingering feeling among parts of Braves Country that multiple offensive failures against the Los Angeles Dodgers, most notably from the quartet of Ronald Acuña Jr., Matt Olson, Drake Baldwin, and Austin Riley, means that this roster is structurally defective and Atlanta should blow it up and start over.
Anthopoulos made it clear that drawing that sort of conclusion is going a bit too far, saying, “I think you have to be careful overall to take small samples and overreact one way or the other. That doesn’t mean we don’t want to get better, we don’t want to tweak, we’re not going to self-evaluate.”
And in that self-evaluation of the Division Series, Anthopoulos noted several things: The quality of LA’s pitching, which he repeatedly credited, and the fact that Atlanta had opportunities to turn almost all of those games late and just couldn’t follow through.
But he did admit two significant weaknesses as it pertains to the offense.
The first is consistency, with Anthopoulos explaining, “We had a good year offensively, just streaky, right? Very, very streaky across the board.”
On the whole this season, Atlanta’s offense was either good or average, depending on how you’re measuring - by home runs (7th) and total runs scored (8th), they were good. By rate-based measures such as wRC+ and wOBA, both of which ranked 20th, they were slightly below average. Obviously, to win baseball games, you need to score runs and prevent runs against you, so a top-ten mark in runs scored will have us conceding the “good” framing to Anthopoulos here.
But what they weren’t was dependable.
The Braves produced a 116 wRC+ in April and a 111 mark in July. They were approximately average in May, below average in August and September, and catastrophically bad during a June in which their wRC+ fell to 65.
That volatility followed them into October, where Atlanta hit .203/.264/.391 against Los Angeles.
And the other admission from Anthopoulos was the team’s on-base ability. It didn’t help them in the NLDS, where they picked up 13 walks and didn’t cash any of those in, but it was a weakness of the team this season.
“We're top 10 in the majors in runs, top 10 in the majors in average, top 10 in the majors in slug. I think we're 11th in strikeout rate in the major leagues. Our on-base was not good […] so you'd like to get that better.”
That sounded more like an argument for continuity than a prelude to dismissing hitting coach Tim Hyers.
“Second half of last year, I think we were top five in on-base, so we showed the ability to do that. And then in the playoffs, we had more walks than any playoff team. We had 30 walks in the playoffs. We were second in on-base in the playoffs.”
Anthopoulos later praised the staff and discussed the benefit of continuity, so it shouldn’t be treated as a given that they’ll move on from Hyers this winter.
The Braves know they cannot pencil Strider and Schwellenbach into 180 innings
Anthopoulos is never overt with his comments in these meetings, but the closest he came to admitting that they had a specific need was his comments on the injured duo of Spencer Strider and Spencer Schwellenbach.
Strider finished the year throwing bullpens at the team’s facility in Florida, but was well short of being ready for minor league rehabilitation games. Spencer Schwellenbach is currently recovering from surgery related to the elbow he fractured in 2025.
Anthopoulos admitted that they will not construct the rotation as though either pitcher is guaranteed to supply a full workload. “I don’t think it’d be responsible to sit there and say, ‘Okay, those guys are going to start 30 games, throw 180 innings.’ […] I don’t think you’re going to see us come in and say we expect those guys to be locks in the rotation with Sale.”
Anthopoulos paired that caution with an emphatic reminder of why Atlanta has not abandoned Strider’s upside.
“The start against LA was old Strider. That was a flash of, ‘It’s still in there.’ […] His stuff was that good, his command was that good, his delivery was in a great place.”
Strider struck out eight with two walks and one hit across six scoreless innings, repeatedly touching 97 mph on his fastball and picking up 15 whiffs with a 36% CSW.
Instead, Anthopoulos said they’d treat those two similarly to how they handled Grant Holmes last winter: as unknowns, based on how they look as they complete their rehabs. But they won’t be counting on either pitcher.
When MLB.com’s Mark Bowman suggested to Anthopoulos that the Braves needed two starters and a left fielder, Anthopoulos called it “really fair commentary” while declining to confirm an exact shopping list, saying “some of it’s really obvious that we’re going to need to do stuff.”
Durability is becoming a roster-building requirement
Someone once said “the best ability is availability”, and it sounds as if Anthopoulos is starting to swing that way.
He discussed learning as a young general manager that paying attention to the “games played” column is just as important as evaluating talent alone, and admitted to having strayed away from that in recent seasons. Anthopoulos recalled acquiring starter Mark Buehrle after the left-hander had completed 12 consecutive 200-inning seasons without ever landing on the injured list.
For a roster that has Acuña, Strider, and Schwellenbach, that anecdote leads you to believe that durability’s going to be more heavily considered going forward.
So does Anthopoulos’ discussion of Acuña’s knee, which was “barking” during the postseason, when he discussed accounting for potential absences. “You go into the offseason and you have to prepare for that, right? You have to prepare for games missed.”
And that, more so than anything else said in the nearly one hour of conversation, makes me think that the free agency of Mauricio Dubón is especially consequential. Anthopoulos had nothing but praise for the veteran utilityman, saying he “had a really good year for us” and that they were “very comfortable” if he returned to be the full-time shortstop.
Pressed on re-signing some of their own free agents, including Dubón, deadline trade acquisition Tyler Mahle, and closer Raisel Iglesias, Anthopoulos was (as always) non-committal but said players sometimes want to explore the market first, using last winter’s negotiations with Iglesias to illustrate that point. Atlanta tried before Iglesias reached the market, then completed the deal shortly after he became free to negotiate elsewhere.
“Sometimes you end up calling and they say, “Look, you’re my first choice, but I’m this close to free agency. I just want to hear what everyone else has to say. I just want to get a better read of the market,” and so on. […] More often than not we’ll take advantage of the window to have conversations. That does not mean that you’re guaranteed to get it done in that period, but that also doesn’t mean that you’re gonna lose the player (if they don’t sign before the official start of free agency).”
The internal improvements are not guaranteed
This goes hand-in-hand with the injured starter question, but Anthopoulos was asked about Austin Riley, and his answer was the bluntest example of the team needing to prepare for the worst-case scenario.
Anthopoulos praised his defense, work ethic and health, but admitted the Braves do not possess a simple diagnosis. “I wish honestly I had an answer for you that it was one tweak away.”
Then came the day’s sharpest quote:
“We haven’t been able to solve it, and he hasn’t been able to solve it.”
It didn’t sound to me like it’s an executive who is preparing to move on from a player already - as we’ve discussed, the core muscle injury has introduced a lot of unknowns into Riley’s future, as he works to adjust who he is physically to accommodate the changes to his body.
But it also didn’t sound to me like an executive who is entering the offseason expecting to get MVP-finisher Riley of 2021-2023 back, either.
My honest belief here is that Atlanta will continue to try and recover the offensive upside of Riley, getting him access to whatever resources he needs to do so, but while understanding that its roster must become less vulnerable if that recovery does not manifest in his 2027 numbers.
Don’t expect a fire sale
Anthopoulos would not name untouchable players, saying, “I’ve always said everyone has a price.”
“Everyone has a price” was an explanation of why Anthopoulos refuses to declare players untouchable, but is not evidence that Riley, Strider or another core player is being actively shopped.
But he clarified that he wouldn’t name untouchable players to the media even if he had them, because that does nothing but cause headaches.
“You gotta remember, our players are gonna see that stuff. “Hey, he only mentioned these one or two guys. Why didn’t he include me?” Now I have an agent calling me, now I have a player calling me. I have all that kind of stuff, right? You understand from my standpoint there’s zero upside to that.”
But he’s excited to connect with opposing general managers in the coming days to get an idea of what the landscape looks like for both free agents and trades. “Leading up to the GM meetings, we’ll have an idea of what’s out there. We know the list of free agents, or the ones we expect to be free agents, unless they sign in the next two or three weeks. But you really don’t know until you start contacting the other 29 clubs who could be available.”
And those conversations are important, as team opinions on players change - Anthopoulos has spoken in the past about how they had repeatedly called on both ace Chris Sale and Dubón and they were consistently not available…until suddenly they were. Alex reiterated that thought today.
“Each year there’s always a surprise or two of, “Hey, quietly we might talk about so and so,” and things like that. And then you never know where that leads. […] We will go into the off-season open-minded about all kinds of stuff. And that’s how you have discussions. That’s how you get creative.”
The Braves need a wider margin for error
Anthopoulos did not spend Sunday promising sweeping changes. He defended the offense’s full-season performance, praised the pitching staff and said the organization remains positioned to contend.
He also remained proud of the way the 2026 clubhouse came together after concluding that he had drifted too far toward collecting talent the previous year.
“I probably started focusing a little bit too much on talent and less on how the pieces would fit. […] We really got back to focusing on makeup, character and team fit with everybody that we brought in.”
That philosophy will factor into the decision awaiting Atlanta on Jurickson Profar, who remains under contract for 2027 following his second PED suspension. Anthopoulos said the Braves have not decided whether Profar will return, only that the time has arrived to begin those internal discussions.
But Atlanta’s next correction must extend beyond clubhouse fit.
The Braves still believe in Strider’s upside. They will continue working to recover Riley’s offense. They expect Acuña to remain an impact player, and they know what Schwellenbach can provide when healthy. None of those beliefs is unreasonable.
What would be unreasonable is building another roster that requires every one of them to be right.
Atlanta needs enough dependable innings that Strider and Schwellenbach can be treated as upside rather than necessities. It needs enough position-player depth to survive Acuña missing time. And it needs enough offensive production elsewhere that Riley’s recovery does not determine the lineup’s ceiling.
Anthopoulos is not preparing to abandon the players who helped create this contention window. He appears to be recognizing that believing in them and protecting the Braves against their uncertainty are not mutually exclusive.
The Braves do not need to stop betting on upside. They need to stop building a roster that requires every one of those bets to hit.
Thank you for the outstanding summary and commentary!
I find myself a contrarian when it comes to starting pitching. The Braves have had more than their fair share of SPs go down, but Braves are not unique and are probably not even an outlier. SPs have a higher injury risk, smaller impact and higher prices than ever. The rational approach should NOT be: “Let’s go invest more.” The rational approach should be: “Let’s build a staff that deals with reality.” I give the Braves very high marks for doing this in 2026. Fans don’t seem to like it, but it was the biggest key to their success. The Braves won the division in large part due to Holmes, Perez, Elder and a deep pen. I don’t understand why so many fans seem mad about that.
The hitting inconsistency and in some cases player regression is THE major issue for this team. How do they fix it? Improved situational hitting? Braves were below league average in most situational hitting stats. For example, last in MLB for getting runners home from 3rd with less than 2 outs. I’m counting on BT to give us the answers! C’mon Lindsay, do your magic.
Lindsay, whenever you get another chance at a call with AA, ask if Kerr will get another opportunity as a starter, or if he's staying at a reliever.