Drake Baldwin Deserves to Play Every Day
Atlanta's mismanaging their Rookie of the Year candidate and it could cost them a first round pick
Drake Baldwin needs to be in the lineup every day.
I know I usually start these deep dives off with some sort of historical context or ‘setting the scene’ or whatever, but let’s cut to the chase: Drake Baldwin needs to play every day. Build the lineup around him, not the other way around.
Let’s talk about it and break down the reasons why this is the best course of action.
He’s the best offensive option…by far
Drake Baldwin’s played in exactly 100 games this season, while Sean Murphy has 90 and Marcell Ozuna has 124.
He’s outperformed them in both conventional statistics and value, as measured by FanGraphs WAR.
Baldwin: .280/.351/.462, 15HR, 62 RBI, 2.3 fWAR
Ozuna: .227/.358/.404, 20HR, 62 RBI, 1.2 fWAR
Murphy: .204/.306/.419, 16HR, 45 RBI, 2.2 fWAR
In the month of August, the difference between Baldwin and the veterans is significantly more stark:
Baldwin: .284/.356/.444, 4HR, 21 RBI, 0.4 fWAR
Ozuna: .195/.326/.429, 5HR, 14 RBI, 0.2 fWAR
Murphy: .080/.193/.100, 0HR, 3 RBI, -0.4 fWAR
(That’s right, Sean Murphy’s having a “Marcell Ozuna’s start to 2023” level slump right now.)
Drake Baldwin needs to play every day.
He can hit lefties just fine
Tonight was the 35th game where the Braves faced a left-handed starter this season.
Baldwin has been in the starting lineup for exactly four of those.1
But it’s not like Baldwin’s been bad against lefties. This season, in 58 at-bats, Baldwin’s batting .310/.385/.483 off of southpaws. While he doesn’t have impressive homer numbers, just three, it’s the best batting average and slugging percentage against lefties on the roster.
The other two sluggers aren’t nearly as confident in the box against left-handed pitching as Baldwin. Ozuna’s season line is .227/.397/375, while Murphy’s crushed seven homers but is hitting just .207/.348/.489 in those situations.
Drake Baldwin needs to play every day.
He’s not really vulnerable against any pitch
Statcast has this really cool feature called “pitch arsenal stats” - in essence, how each MLB player has fared against every single pitch.
Drake Baldwin has exactly one pitch with a negative Run Value, coming in at -3 against sinkers. Every other pitch type, he’s either average or well above average.
He’s hitting .409 with a .864 SLG and a +5 RV against cutters2, .311 BA/.500 SLG/+4 RV against four-seam fastballs, and an absurd .625 BA/1.250 SLG/+3 RV on sweepers.
Drake Baldwin’s lowest batting average against any pitch type is .222 against sinkers. That’s the lowest. While he has a whiff rate over 25% on both sliders and curveballs, he still has a .490 slug on those sliders and a .267 average on those curveballs.
Drake Baldwin needs to play every day.
He needs the defensive reps
I remember discussing Drake Baldwin with someone in the organization last year and he likened Baldwin to a young Brian McCann - a promising hitter who had the capacity to be a good defender, but without the experience to perfect the motions and movements required.
The good news is that Baldwin’s already made great progress in that area - after 585.2 innings behind the plate in the majors this year, he entered Sunday as an above-average blocker and framer. It’s still not perfect; per Statcast, he’s not adding value on “tough” blocks, at -1, although he’s getting all the “easy” blocks he should be and enough of the “medium” difficulty blocks to still be positive on the whole.
His framing is positive on the whole, although he’s not stealing the high strike in any capacity at all and struggles with pitches to his glove side.
But catching basestealers is a massive area of growth for Baldwin. He’s successfully thrown out just six of 60 stolen base attempts, good for -2 Catcher Stealing Runs and a full 3 CS below league average. And this is something that’s going to require technique and reps to improve; Baldwin’s arm strength of 76.8 mph is 56th out of 64 qualified catchers this season, although that’s offset a bit by his top 15 exchange of 0.63 seconds, on average.3
He can be better, and his pitchers could help him out a lot more than they did earlier in the season. But it’s going to require more reps to both learn what works and get the muscle memory down.
The upside is too great not to do it
After hitting the game-winning two-run homer in the ninth inning against Philly on Sunday night, Drake Baldwin’s officially taken back the lead in the NL Rookie of the Year race per FanDuel.
And the stakes are huge here.
Winning Rookie of the Year would give Atlanta an additional draft pick after the first round, thanks to MLB’s Prospect Promotion Incentive program. And with the draft pool Atlanta is expected to have next year, that’s a big deal.
The Braves, per Tankathon, ended Sunday with the fourth-best odds for the #1 overall pick in this winter’s MLB Draft Lottery.
In the 2025 draft, picking 22nd, the Braves had the 23rd largest pool at just $9.081M. By contrast, the #4 pick belonged to the Colorado Rockies and they had the 5th-largest pool at $15.72M.
The additional PPI picks are typically placed after the first round. Kansas City had one this year at #28 thanks to Bobby Witt Jr4, while Arizona and Baltimore picked at #31 and #32, respectively, the previous year. Those three picks all came in between $2.84M and $3.2M in additional spending capacity added to the team’s bonus pool.
See the impact that the Braves getting an additional draft pick after the first round can do to their draft pool?
Drake Baldwin needs to play every day.
For the good of the player. For the good of the 2026 roster. For the good of the organization.
Tyler Anderson on 7/1, Trevor Rogers on 7/6, Matthew Liberatore on 7/11, and Cristopher Sánchez on 8/30
Yes, I’m choosing to take this personally
If you were curious, “pop time” is a combination of the transfer time and the actual length of time for the flight of the ball from home to second base, so that’s why I chose to break it down into its components versus just giving you a pop time that doesn’t properly illustrate where he excels and where he struggles.
BWJ’s was for his AL MVP runner-up, not Rookie of the Year. It’s for any of the three major awards in the player’s first three seasons.
Do we know how he hit left-handers in MiLB? The MLB numbers are a small sample size.
As we saw in yesterday's game, he doesn't have to start every game in order to play in every game. Snit saved him until most needed, pushing up a baserunner who'd tie the game, then coming around to win it with a 9th inning home run. That homer, seen by all on the highlight shows, does more to elevate Drake's ROY chances than being ground down by Luzardo all day.
Drake will have a chance to go head-up against the main ROY competition, Cade Horton, on Wednesday. That game, he should start. There will, however, be games when Murphy is the right choice to catch (like yesterday's Waldrep start) and maybe Ronald needs rest -- or whatever it takes to regain his HR stroke.