Why Would Atlanta's First Offseason Signing Be Another Catcher?

The Atlanta Braves are reportedly bringing in veteran Austin Nola on a minor league deal. What can it tell us about their plans for next season's roster?

The stove isn’t exactly hot, but it was turned on.

The first two signings of the MLB offseason have happened, with the Houston Astros officially signing right-hander Nate Pearson to a one-year deal and the Atlanta Braves reportedly signing veteran catcher Austin Nola to a minor league deal with an invite to spring training.

The signing was first reported by Bob Nightengale of USA Today, although the team has not yet confirmed the news and the transaction is not yet official.

Nola himself is not a very exciting add. The older brother of Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Aaron, Austin is a career .247/.323/.364 hitter across parts of six major league seasons. He’s a roughly average defender behind the plate, being better at blocking than framing or controlling the running game. It’s very much a backup profile.

But adding a catcher at a position where the organization has both Drake Baldwin and Sean Murphy at the major league level and veteran Sandy León plus waiver claim Chuckie Robinson (who is on the 40-man roster) in Triple-A Gwinnett seems redundant. What can we discern about next season’s roster from the move? Let’s talk about it.

A good sign for Baldwin’s playing time

One of the talking points around the pending free agency of designated hitter Marcell Ozuna was that not having a player that could only take that spot on the lineup card means that the Braves could either regularly give veterans a “half-day” or rotate a hot bat through the DH spot to keep them in the lineup.

And that’s great news for Drake Baldwin.

Atlanta really started to give Baldwin some run at the designated hitter spot coming out of the All-Star Break, with ten of his twelve DH appearances coming after the Midsummer Classic. And after a few games of that arrangement, the Braves changed the roster to match, calling up veteran Sandy León on July 21st as a third catcher.

The issue here is the league’s roster rules on using your designated hitter in the field. Under the hypothetical scenario Atlanta was trying to avoid, were Baldwin the designated hitter but needed to move behind the plate to cover for an injury to Sean Murphy, Atlanta would lose the DH for the rest of the game and be forced to either have the pitcher of record take an at-bat or send up a pinch-hitter. By adding another catcher, that bench piece could enter the lineup behind the plate and the game would continue as normal.

My first thought when it comes to the signing of Austin Nola was that scenario - Baldwin getting a majority of his reps at designated hitter, with Jurickson Profar, Ronald Acuña Jr., and even Sean Murphy rotating in on the days Baldwin’s behind the plate. This would relegate Nola or León to spending most of their time as a bench piece that might get one start a month, which…okay. Three or four starts at designated hitter and three behind the plate per week is a reasonable expectation for Baldwin, with a long stretch without off days in the bulk of summer requiring him to get an entire day off here and there. That would free up Sean Murphy, the better defender of the two, to catch four days a week and perhaps fill in once for Baldwin in the designated hitter role, were he to be on a hitting streak at the time.

But there’s another possibility as to why Nola is joining the Braves.

Will Murphy be ready to start the season?

You may remember when news of Sean Murphy’s hip surgery came down the pipe, the timeframe given by the Braves to reporters for the recovery of his labral tear was “four months” to heal and the catcher being in spring training with very few, if any, restrictions.

The expert that we spoke with, sports medicine and hip preservation surgeon Dr. Benedict Nwachukwu with New York’s Hospital for Special Surgery, said that in his experience, it’s typically longer than that. “While most athletes can return to play in a 6–8 month window, catchers may require a more cautious approach to ensure their hip can tolerate repetitive squatting, blocking, and quick transitions out of the crouch. The core rehab timeline is similar, but the position-specific demands can extend the final return-to-play progression.”

(Dr. Nwachukwu’s experience includes a stint as the team doctor for the Chicago White Sox and being the Co-Director of Clinical Research for the Sports Medicine Institute at HSS, in addition to his duties as team physician for the New York Red Bulls and a medical consultant for the NBA Players’ Association. He did not, however, personally examine Murphy.)

The addition of Nola to the organization’s Triple-A pairing of León and Robinson may be a tacit admission by Atlanta that their initial timeline for Murphy’s return was a bit aggressive.

If Murphy is not ready for Opening Day, my assumption is that one of these three backups would be on the initial roster while Baldwin got a majority of the starts behind the plate. Once Murphy returns, which likely would not take very long in this scenario, that third catcher could either stay in Atlanta or return to Gwinnett. If they’re playing well, it’s even possible a minor trade could happen, getting them a full-time backup job somewhere else in exchange for cash considerations or a lottery-ticket type prospect.

While the likelihood of that trade providing value to Atlanta on the field would be low, those types of trades - moving a guy so that he can get playing time elsewhere - are the moves that free agents (and their representatives) pay attention to as an example of that organization “doing right” by their player.

What else can we learn from this?

Operating on the assumption that Atlanta would like to have a third catcher on the roster for 2026, I think it tells us about the low likelihood of acquiring a full-time starting-caliber bat for the outfield and rotating them through the DH spot.

But again, that’s an assumption. It’s entirely possible, and even likely, that the team is still going to pursue that offensive addition, while running the other catcher at DH is the fallback plan if the plan to add a starting-caliber bat does not come to fruition. While the corner outfield bats available in this winter’s free agency class are either going to be out of Atlanta’s comfort zone financially (Kyle Tucker) or rather underwhelming (Max Kepler, I guess?), the trade market could potentially be active with corner options this winter.

Going off of different reports, we’ve heard names from Taylor Ward (Angels) to Lars Nootbaar and Brendan Donovan (Cardinals) or Matt Wallner and Trevor Larnach (Twins) all potentially on the market this winter.

As Atlanta is also looking for a starter, it’s possible they attempt a package deal to kill two birds with one stone with some of these teams:

Twins: Wallner/Larnach paired with Pablo López or Joe Ryan
Cardinals: Nootbaar/Donovan paired with Sonny Gray
Angels: Ward paired with Yusei Kikuchi
Athletics: JJ Bleday paired with Luis Severino

The quality of those options obviously varies wildly, but so do the prices - I’d imagine Gray and Donovan would cost the most, with Bleday and Severino being the cheapest, and every other pairing ending up somewhere in the middle.

And honestly, I’m not even convinced the Braves need a full-time outfielder. Give me a right-handed outfielder that can hit lefties well like Rob Refsnyder (.302 BA, 159 wRC+ vs LHP) or Miguel Andujar (.389 BA, 171 wRC+) and let’s call it a day.¹

We’ll see where Atlanta goes throughout the winter. But as always, the actual player they added yesterday in Austin Nola isn’t nearly as intriguing as what it tells us about everything else at play here.

1. Andujar has also played both first and third base, so that defensive flexibility doesn’t exactly hurt