Who Plays Shortstop in Atlanta Might Not Be the Point

The 2026 Braves will go as far as their aircraft carriers take them, not as far as their shortstop does

Longtime Marquette basketball coach Al McGuire used the term “aircraft carrier” to describe the kind of star every offense needs: a large, imposing presence who can generate power, steady the lineup, and carry a team through high-leverage moments. Baseball has those players, too.

The Atlanta Braves have several, in fact - outfielder Ronald Acuña Jr., first baseman Matt Olson, and third baseman Austin Riley.

With shortstop Ha-Seong Kim sidelined by a torn finger tendon that will keep him out until midseason, much of the public conversation has shifted back to a position group that has been a problem for Atlanta for years. But it’s those aircraft carriers, not whoever ends up starting at shortstop, that will ultimately determine the fate of the 2026 Braves. Let’s talk about it.

None of the shortstop options had impactful bats

Losing Ha-Seong Kim was a gut punch for a team that’s had virtually no production out of shortstop since Dansby Swanson departed after the 2022 season. From 2023-2025, Braves shortstops produced a collective -3.4 bWAR, one of the worst marks in the league.

So at the end of the day, downgrading from Kim to Dubón isn’t necessarily that impactful. If either player could come out to at least 1.0 WAR next year, that’d be the first time any Braves shortstop with 100 or more plate appearances came in to even that level since Dansby’s 5.5 bWAR in 2022.¹

Even after the Kim injury, FanGraphs’ The Bat projection system still expects both players to finish as positive contributors, with Kim expected to produce 1.4 fWAR in 87 games and Dubón with 0.6 fWAR in 83 games (which feels low).

And that’s where raw WAR totals stop telling the story people think they do.

Despite the historically poor showing the last three seasons, shortstop wasn’t the biggest area to gain for the Braves in 2026.

WAR doesn’t scale linearly

Okay, so stay with me here.

The concept of Wins Above Replacement is, essentially, how much better or worse any given player is than a replacement-level player. We all accept that this is how that works - you imagine a generic create-a-player at the position and calculate how much better (or worse) the actual player was to the theoretical.

And because a player is being evaluated off of a theoretical baseline, most MLB players fit into a standard bell curve - many are within just a few WAR of that replacement-level player. A commonly used rule-of-thumb chart from FanGraphs shows us that All-Stars are typically four to five WAR better than that replacement-level player.

Getting anything positive from shortstop is an improvement over the negative results from the previous three seasons, and even the projections I shared above for Dubón and Kim add up to a 2.0 WAR player, which is on the low end of “solid”.

But going from zero to two isn’t actually that hard, in the grand scheme of things. Sure, it’s been hard for Atlanta at this particular position, but overall, going from near replacement level - say Nick Allen’s 0.7 fWAR - to 2.0 fWAR isn’t ultimately that impressive at the end of the day.

137 hitters put up 2.0 WAR last year, including such luminaries as Jeff McNeil and Romy Gonzalez. Heck, Ozzie Albies put up 2.1 WAR.

But going from four WAR to six WAR? That moves the needle.

Exactly eleven players, including one Braves hitter in Matt Olson, hit the 6-WAR mark last season. Nine different teams were represented in that group and five of the nine made the postseason, with the only exceptions being the Braves, Kansas City Royals, New York Mets, and Texas Rangers.²

The aircraft carriers need to deliver

First baseman Matt Olson, despite hitting ‘only’ 29 home runs last year, led the NL with 41 doubles and paced the team with his 6.0 bWAR. He’s now delivered 20.7 bWAR in his four seasons in Atlanta, one of the best marks on the team in that span.

But behind Olson weren’t the other juggernauts of Austin Riley and Ronald Acuña Jr. With both players playing shortened seasons due to injury, their opportunity for impact just was not there. While Acuña had a healthy 3.0 WAR in his 95 games, Riley was worth just 1.3 bWAR in the midst of a relatively disappointing .737 OPS/106 OPS+ campaign.

And when you run the numbers, that’s not good enough.

Last season, the only positions on the field for Atlanta that returned any sort of notable WAR Above Average were first base, catcher, and right field. Austin Riley ‘and the boys’ at third base were good for just 0.1 WAR over average, as was Michael Harris in centerfield. Even Atlanta’s designated hitters, mostly Marcell Ozuna, were worth -0.1 WAR Below Average last year.

Atlanta needs the aircraft carriers to, well, carry the offense.

There is not a championship-contending version of the 2026 Atlanta Braves that doesn’t have the trio of Ronald, Olson, and Riley pushing for 100 home runs and 280+ RBI. That trio needs to combine for a .367 wOBA and an ISO of over .200. Ronald needs to be a superstar, while Olson needs to find the power stroke and we need the 2021-2023 Riley back.

Sure, having a full season of Jurickson Profar is going to help, given that Atlanta’s non-Profar left fielders were worth negative WAR last year and are largely still unsigned or on minor league deals. Sure, Yastrzemski and Baldwin combining at designated hitter will be more productive than the injury-sapped Marcell Ozuna was last year.

But this whole battle plan doesn’t work without the firepower of the aircraft carriers. There are ancillary contributors, sure - Profar’s a valuable support piece, and Baldwin’s potential is a top-five offensive catcher in baseball.

None of that matters if we get the Austin Riley of 2024 & 2025 (.760 OPS, 111 OPS+). There’s only so much that your role players can do if the team leader in homers hits just 29, like Olson did last year. Antoan Richardson’s addition as first base coach doesn’t go as far if you have two total players with double-digit steals and barely over 100 attempts as an entire offense.

The margin for error is at the top, not the bottom

The Braves don’t need to solve shortstop to contend in 2026. They need their stars to be stars again.

This roster can survive average play from shortstop. It can survive role players underperforming. What it cannot survive is another season where its biggest bats merely blend into the crowd.

When WAR is scarce at the very top of the league, that’s where seasons are won and lost. Atlanta doesn’t need more two-WAR solutions. It needs its aircraft carriers back on the water. If Ronald Acuña Jr., Matt Olson, and Austin Riley deliver at that level again, the rest of the roster suddenly looks a lot less fragile. If they don’t, no amount of shuffling at shortstop is going to matter.

Fixating on shortstop is understandable. But if the Braves fail in 2026, it won’t be because of the glove at six. It’ll be because the aircraft carriers never left the harbor.

1. Braves shortstops in 2022, which is mostly Dansby Swanson and his 162 games played, led all of MLB in 3.3 WAR Above Average for the position.

2. If you’re curious, the Seattle Mariners had two players in Cal Raleigh (7.4) and Julio Rodriguez (6.8) while the Cubs had two in Nico Hoerner (6.2) and Pete Crow-Armstrong (6.0)