Two days later, I still don’t know how I feel about the 2026 Atlanta Braves.
On the one hand, they rebounded from all of the injuries (and the loss of Jurickson Profar) to win over 90 games and the NL East, and then got the “Phillies in the playoffs” monkey off their backs.
But on the other, they laid an egg in the NL Division Series against what felt like a beatable Dodgers team, scoring only two runs across the two home games, failing to cash in even a single one of their 18 walks, and went 1-for-23 with runners in scoring position while leaving 28 runners on base across the four games.
And now, Atlanta’s front office needs to figure out who they are. Before we step back and look at the individual transactions, dates, etc of the offseason, let’s introduce the four most pressing questions facing this front office, with the answers dictating which direction they’ll go this winter.
In no particular order, let’s talk about it.
What’s up with this offense?
At one point this season, I found myself saying the true Atlanta offense probably wasn’t the world-beating juggernaut of early April (118 wRC+ through April 15th), but also wasn’t the worst-in-baseball 65 wRC+ disaster of June.
The true talent level, I believed at the time, was somewhere in the middle.
It turns out that assertion was more true than we’d care to admit. Atlanta finished the 2026 season 20th in offense, with a wRC+ of 97, and they did that despite finishing 7th in home runs with 204.
Part of the reason that Atlanta graded out so poorly offensively is that they were unsustainably dependent on the home run, with 42.2% of their total runs coming via long ball, the 10th-highest mark in baseball.
They weren’t supplementing the power with many of the traditional small-ball avenues, either: Their 7.7% walk rate was 28th in baseball, ahead of only sub-.500 teams in Toronto and San Francisco. When those runners did get on, Atlanta wasn’t particularly adept at moving them over, finishing 24th in stolen bases with 83 and 27th in sacrifice bunt attempts with 18.1
Just playing a contact-oriented style of baseball was also largely out - Atlanta’s strikeout rate of 21.6% was 11th in baseball, but a lot of their contact was suboptimal. Using wOBA (Weighted On-Base Average, which weights offensive outcomes based on their run value), Atlanta’s .314 ranked 20th in baseball.
No, this team lived and died via the long ball. Most of the roster features swings and approaches optimized for producing barrels. The problem is, their top-five barrel rate of 8.6% and their top-ten hard-hit rate of 39.8% produced, as we already mentioned above, a lot of solo home runs.
And it feels like the talents of these players is somewhat incompatible with hitting coach Tim Hyers. Hired two years ago away from Texas to replace homer-enthusiast Kevin Seitzer, Hyers is an advocate for working counts until you get a strike in the part of the zone that you’re skilled at covering.
And to his credit, the Braves were 2nd-best in MLB at not taking hittable pitches, believe it or not, sitting at just 14.5% called strikes against their offense.
But as we discussed last month, just because they were taking pitches doesn’t mean they were drawing walks, and it’s because of when they took those strikes. Half of those called strikes were to open an at-bat, while 21.2% of their strikeouts came on a called third strike.
If you want raw numbers: 3,421 called strikes, with 1,693 of them opening an at-bat and 281 ending it.
This is an offense built to slug, and several members of this offense just aren’t equipped to work counts and draw walks. Stop asking them to change their approach; supplement the roster with additions who are good at doing that stuff, and let your lineup construction balance out the offense.
The new hitting coach, if the team does indeed make a change there, needs to understand the offense’s limitations and stop asking them to be something they’re not equipped to be. The Braves don’t need to make their existing hitters become patient contact hitters; they need to add hitters whose existing skills diversify the offense.
Is Austin Riley fixable?
There may not be a more frustrating hitter on this Braves team than third baseman Austin Riley, who finished the regular season with an 81 wRC+. Among Atlanta position players with 100 or more plate appearances this season, only Jim Jarvis (57), Sean Murphy (55), and Ha-Seong Kim (8!) had worse production, with Riley coming in 12th on the roster.
And that’d be bad enough if he were a journeyman third baseman, holding down the hot corner for a top prospect that’s almost in Atlanta. But from the player with the largest contract in team history, a 10-year, $212M deal that runs through 2032, it’s untenable.
Atlanta needs to figure out what to do here.
Apple TV’s Heidi Watney came on Braves Today earlier this season and discussed how significant abdominal injuries/surgeries, like the core muscle repair that Riley dealt with last year, can have lingering effects long after the player’s returned to the lineup.
"I’ve talked to so many players who had that core muscle surgery, that sports hernia, they say it takes two years to come back from that. That the first year, you just don’t feel right at the plate because you use so much of your hips and your torque for your swing. And it takes a solid full year . […] There's one period of time where you can be back on the field, and then there's another period of time where your body feels right again.”
To her point, Riley himself has discussed needing to adjust his swing for the new body he’s working with, saying that he was going to work on his swing plane over the offseason. There was a lot of (digital) ink spilled this season about the changes and tweaks that were made to his swing, including a dipping front shoulder in May, issues with his stride in July, and getting more into his back hip in August.
And figuring out which version of Austin Riley they’ll have going forward - the MVP-caliber hitter of 2021-2023, the slightly above-average version of 2024 & 2025, or the bottom-of-the-order 2026 version - is instrumental to determining the ceiling of the offense as well as where the team needs to focus their additions.
It feels incredibly unlikely that they consider moving on from him already - a generous view of his struggles can tie each of the previous three seasons to injuries and their downstream effects, and this team tends to give the benefit of the doubt to their veterans, sometimes for too long.
I’m inclined to believe 2027 will be a defining year from Riley, one way or the other; either he’ll be closer to the “aircraft carrier” of old, or he’ll continue to be subpar and the Braves will reach the point where they’re willing to look for an exit strategy.
Who plays shortstop?
Ever since the Atlanta Braves saw Dansby Swanson depart in free agency after the 2022 season, it’s been a revolving door at the infield’s most demanding defensive position. Orlando Arcia. Vaughn Grissom. Braden Shewmake. Nick Allen. And this year, the trio of Mauricio Dubón, Ha-Seong Kim, and Jim Jarvis.
The problem is, both Dubón and Kim are free agents.
Sure, the Braves have shortstop prospects in the system, but not only did none of them make it past Double-A, they combined for just 265 plate appearances at the level this season. As excited as I am about the trio of John Gil (161 PAs), Alex Lodise (102), and Tate Southisene (2 PAs, as he broke his hand on a HBP in his first game after the promotion to Columbus), counting on one of them as the starting shortstop to open 2027 is not something a team with World Series aspirations should do.
And so the depth chart is Jim Jarvis…and that’s it.
And free agency isn’t exactly overflowing with robust options, either, as 31-year-old J.P. Crawford was moved off the position by the Mariners (and hit .221/.335/.352) and the other options are…Kim and Dubón.
Someone needs to play shortstop, and it shouldn’t be a position change for Austin Riley or entrusting the job to Jim Jarvis.
Atlanta needs to figure out if they can get one (or both) of their internal options back on a new deal, or if swinging a trade for a shortstop makes more sense. We’ll spend a lot of time breaking this down after Alex Anthopoulos addresses it at his upcoming end-of-season press availability.
How to reinforce the rotation
By the time Atlanta got to the postseason, they were channeling the 1948 Boston Braves.
That team gamely won the NL pennant behind the two-man rotation of Warren Spahn and Johnny Sain, prompting the now-familiar refrain of “Spahn and Sain and pray for rain.”2
By October, it was “Mahle and Sale and pray for hail”. Atlanta played seven postseason games across their two series, with the first two and last two started by the Sale/Mahle combo and the trio in the middle all being bullpen games.
When you back up to the regular season, Atlanta’s #4 in innings was veteran lefty Martín Pérez, with 142 across 30 appearances (26 starts).
Both Mahle and Pérez are free agents this winter, meaning the Braves are already set to lose one of their two postseason starters and one of their top four pitchers by regular-season innings unless somebody re-signs.
Some reinforcements could be walking through the door, if everything goes according to plan. Bryce Elder, who went down in September for a knee scope, is expected to be fine by spring training. Spencer Schwellenbach, a playoff-caliber starter who last pitched in June of 2025, finally had a surgical repair of his broken elbow from last summer. Joey Wentz, expected to be lefty swingman for the team this year, went down in spring training with a torn ACL but is expected to make a full recovery before next season.
But there are also unknowns. Spencer Strider hasn’t returned to the field after going down with elbow inflammation in June, the third different injury (hamstring, oblique) he’s suffered since returning from 2024’s internal brace surgery. Reynaldo López, in the midst of yet another injured list stint for his balky right shoulder, could potentially need yet another arthroscopic procedure on the joint. And splitter maven Hurston Waldrep is having elbow reconstruction surgery and is expected to miss all of 2027 while he rehabs.
All of that leaves a depth chart at the moment with a lot of question marks:
Chris Sale
Spencer Schwellenbach
Spencer Strider
Grant Holmes
Bryce Elder
Reynaldo López
Every single one of those players has spent time on the injured list in the last two seasons, and all but Elder were on the 60-day version of it.
More rotation additions are needed.
Is it possible Anthopoulos revisits the Jacob deGrom trade that was nixed by the player at this year’s trade deadline? Does he finally wade into the free agency waters and grab a starter or two? Is Mahle destined to come back on a multi-year deal, which he explicitly said on Wednesday night he’d do if the opportunity presented itself?
Anthopoulos has set a high bar in the past, insisting that any addition needed to be an “impact starter” because they were holding space for some of the options they have.
That ship has sailed. I’d argue that at least two additions are needed, and depending on the offseason health reports on Schwellenbach, Strider, and López, maybe even three.
The Braves don’t have to answer all four questions immediately. But until they know what they believe about the offense, Riley, shortstop and the rotation, every offseason move is going to be solving a problem they haven’t fully defined yet.
We’ll spend plenty of time over the next week trying to define them.
As an avowed bunt hater, I’d like to see this number below 10. It has its moments, but giving away an out for 90 feet is almost always a terrible trade-off for an offense to make.
This line isn’t actually in the poem. Penned by Boston Post sports editor Gerald V. Hern, it actually reads:
“First we’ll use Spahn then we’ll use Sain
Then an off day, followed by rain
Back will come Spahn, followed by Sain
And followed, we hope, by two days of rain”