How the Braves Can Squeeze More Value Out of Their 2026 Lineup
Optimization, not overhaul, is the real opportunity for Atlanta
It’s like the Atlanta Braves are out to personally ruin every newsletter I write.
From just last week alone, Atlanta’s front office responded to three different newsletters with roster moves that made the article outdated within days (or even hours) of its release.
On Monday, we previewed the bullpen options, followed by a discussion on Wednesday about how Atlanta’s remaining offseason spending was likely in a holding pattern until the medical reports on Joe Jiménez came back. On Saturday, they went ahead and re-signed slider god Tyler Kinley to a deal for 2026, all but guaranteeing him a bullpen slot. We then wrote about the final options off the bench on Friday, using Thursday’s designation of Vidal Bruján for assignment as our catalyst to make Brett Wisely the favorite for the 13th position player spot. Wisely was then designated for assignment on Friday afternoon so the Braves could claim pitcher George Soriano off of waivers from the Baltimore Orioles.
So let’s try to be a little more ‘evergreen’ here and talk about Atlanta’s lineup construction. Not where Ronald Acuña Jr. is going to bat, as he’ll likely resume manning the leadoff spot, but everyone else around him. What’s the optimal mix of slug and on-base ability to score runs? Let’s talk about it.
There’s some research on this
The excellent Substack “Down on the Farm”, which mostly covers minor league baseball, did a study recently on the positive or negative impact of a lineup composed entirely of elite power hitters (using Cal Raleigh as a stand-in) and supplementing it either with a close-to-league-average power hitter (using Riley Greene) or a league average on-base focused hitter (using Jake Cronenworth).
While it’s behind the paywall, the key takeaway there is that a blend is best and the proper construction, in the league-average, neutral context, is to build a power-heavy lineup and supplement it with on-base hitters rather than add even elite power hitters to on-base heavy lineups.
Essentially, don’t put Cal Raleigh on the Cleveland Guardians; put Juan Soto on the Atlanta Braves.
The end result of the research came to the conclusion that four OBP hitters and five power hitters is the ideal distribution, with the caveat that the research wasn’t able to completely model the interactions between roster spots.
(The counterpoint here is that they found the max difference in a season is 71 runs, which is not nothing, but only about 10% of Atlanta’s total production last season. There’s utility to be gained here, sure, but it’s also around a half-run per game in the theoretical when looking at the least and most-optimized lineups and likely impossible to be accurately modeled in the real world due to the myriad lineup interactions and other variables.)
Let’s assign each Braves hitter a category - OBP, power, or elite (marked by great stats in both categories) and discuss the ideal way to deploy them next season. To do that, we’re going to pull player production from FanGraphs THE BAT projections for 2026.
Classifying the Braves hitters
Let’s put each of Atlanta’s hitters into one of three groups: Elite, slug, or OBP.
To be elite, I’m deciding a hitter needs an ISO of .200 or better as well as a walk rate better than MLB average. That leaves two names: Ronald Acuña Jr. (.209 ISO, 13.02% walk rate) and Matt Olson (.206 ISO, 12.1% walk rate). While I do think Drake Baldwin can eventually get there, as he hits the absolute crap out of the ball1, he’s not projected for a .200 ISO just yet.
Everyone else gets dropped into two or three buckets - I’ll explain that one in a minute.
SLUG: Austin Riley, Michael Harris, Sean Murphy, Mike Yastrzemski (versus righties)
OBP: Drake Baldwin, Jurickson Profar, Ha-Seong Kim
I’m sure you can tell that Ozzie Albies and Mauricio Dubón are both missing here. Sadly, I’ve got them in the “Just A Guy” category right now - Ozzie’s never walked much and needs to show his power’s back after this most recent broken bone, while Dubón looks the part of an on-base focused guy against lefties (.283 average, 127 OPS+) without the actual walks (5.8% walk rate), but has watched his overall OPS+ drops for three consecutive seasons, from 97 to 87 to 78.
How to deploy them against righties
Ronald’s leading off. I’m sorry, but that’s where he is at his best, and the psychological impact of first-inning runs is too significant to give up.
Running through all of the different permutations, the lineup that generated the most runs looks something like this:
RF Ronald Acuña Jr.
CF Michael Harris II
C Drake Baldwin
1B Matt Olson
3B Austin Riley
LF Mike Yastrzemski
DH Jurickson Profar
2B Ozzie Albies
SS Ha-Seong Kim
But here you see the limitations with the model. Looking at slug and on-base as the inputs, it doesn’t know about the free-swinging ways of Michael Harris and how often some of his at-bats result in strikeouts due to extreme chase2. So let’s tweak it, keeping speed and player preference in mind, and see what we get:
RF Ronald Acuña Jr.
DH Jurickson Profar
1B Matt Olson
3B Austin Riley
C Drake Baldwin
SS Ha-Seong Kim
LF Mike Yastrzemski
2B Ozzie Albies
CF Michael Harris
In my mind, this lineup hits a bunch of sweet spots: The former MVP gets the most at-bats over a season at leadoff, with Profar giving the team a second on-base threat (and decent speed) ahead of the other elite hitter in Matt Olson. Riley over Baldwin is a question of if Riley’s back to his 2021-2023 form; if not, Baldwin bats cleanup and you end up with back-to-back lefties3. While I’m nervous about potentially putting a slow-footed roadblock in front of Kim’s desire to steal more in 2026, this does layer the speed in the lineup with baserunning threats in both the top and bottom halves.
Just for fun, I took out the constraints I imposed on the simulator (Acuña batting leadoff, not having three consecutive hitters of the same handedness, etc.) and ran it for sheer volume of runs. It gave me Baldwin in the #8 hole. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Acuña
Profar
Olson
Riley
Harris
Kim
Albies
Baldwin
Yastrzemski
While I do like the ability of the bottom to turn over the lineup, it’s just not the best place for one of your best situational hitters in Drake Baldwin. I get it. The final number came out to +14 runs over my constraints, which isn’t enough to shake things up. It’s the kind of gap that shows clearly in simulations but barely shows in real standings and gets erased by one week of bullpen variance.
Also, just for fun, I re-ran it for the worst lineup I could possibly get and here’s what it came out with:
Albies
Kim
Profar
Yastrzemski
Baldwin
Acuña
Riley
Olson
Harris
Best power hitters buried at the bottom, speedster stuck behind the lineup’s slowest player, and a JAG leading off. Sounds about right. This lineup came out only two-tenths of a run less than the best lineup, ending at 4.57 versus 4.76.
Does this really matter?
At the end of the day, lineup construction does matter, but not nearly as much as the individual performance. Think of this like budgeting: being frugal with your money by making coffee at home and forgoing avocado toast does virtually nothing if you make poverty wages. This is similar - optimizing the lineup doesn’t accomplish much if Austin Riley isn’t back to pre-injury form or Ozzie Albies and Michael Harris spend the first half of the season being two of MLB’s ten worst qualified hitters again. If Ronald Acuña Jr. gets hurt and misses time, you can’t exactly make up for his missing production by re-optimizing the lineup.
But also, as an amateur lineup nerd, I’m always watching to see how many different lineups the team uses. In that magical 2023 season, Atlanta used a total of 80 different batting orders, with the most common being used twelve times. By contrast, the uber-injured 2024 roster saw 119, with the most common being used only six times. Last year was technically worse than 2024, with 120 different lineups and the most common being used just five times.
Now that Walt Weiss is manager and he’s discussed more days off for everyone without the last name “Olson”, as well as not having a set designated hitter, I’m curious how many different lineups the Braves roll out in 2026. I’m setting the O/U at 110.
Now, if only the season would go ahead and get here already.
Scouting term
Or the fact that he likes hitting 9th, saying “it has my heart.”
Which is fine, honestly.
I believe Ozzie is going to make fans pay for their low ball expectations for him in 2026. He has been injured and I believe he will be in the top 5 2nd baseman in the game.