The Braves have quite a few items on their offseason to-do list.

There’s the enormous, three-year-running hole at shortstop, where the club will hopefully work out a deal of some kind with Ha-Seong Kim.

Lord knows the starting rotation could use a reliable, take-the-ball-every-fifth-day arm to bolster a good-but-injury-prone group.

And the bullpen is in search of a closer (and probably another high-leverage arm, too).

The one spot on the roster that hasn’t garnered much discussion in the early days of the offseason is designated hitter. When Alex Anthopoulos met with the media for an hour last week, the name ‘Marcell Ozuna’ was not said once, nor was the DH position really discussed. It is a sizeable opening for a club that has played Ozuna in that spot virtually every day since the DH position came over to the National League a few years ago.

So, what will the Braves do in 2026? Let’s examine a few options.

To be clear, I don’t think Kyle Schwarber is going to call Atlanta home for the next 4-5 years. But he is an absolute tank at the top of the order and would transform the group around him.

Unfortunately for the Braves, Schwarber is coming off a season that will get him MVP votes. He probably made himself upwards of an additional $50 million in the last six months, and he was already primed for a big pay day before going nuclear this summer in Philadelphia.

There has also been talk of Pete Alonso playing some DH to expand his market, but that feels unlikely for the Braves for a multitude of reasons.

The downside of a designated hitter like Ozuna and Schwarber is they only hit. There is no positional versatility, and it prevents the Braves from utilizing the position to give other players a day or two off their feet without losing their bat in the lineup. Jurickson Profar isn’t exactly a gold glover in left field, Ronald Acuña Jr. has a lengthy list of lower body injuries at this point, and Michael Harris II has suffered a fair share of injuries, too.

To me, this feels like the leader in the clubhouse all of two weeks into October.

Drake Baldwin was fantastic this past season. He made 97 starts at catcher and 12 at DH with a stellar 125 wRC+.

Sean Murphy, streaky as always, was just OK. He made 76 starts at catcher and 7 at DH before ending his season early with a torn hip that had apparently been bothering him for years. He ended the year with a 97 wRC+.

Using a catcher’s bat at DH feels like limiting your upside offensively. Baldwin is a terrific hitter as a catcher; he’d be merely good as a DH. Murphy is league average offensively as a catcher, but his bat would be pretty mediocre as a DH.

The challenge, of course, is you want Baldwin’s bat in the lineup every day without burning him out by August. Catching in Atlanta during the summer is brutal work. Ask Brian McCann, who openly talked about running out of gas during the second half of seasons.

Murphy will be recovering from hip surgery this offseason, and Atlanta expects him back by the start of spring training. Unless they trade him and the three years remaining on his deal, Murphy is going to factor in somehow. But to try and guess what level of offensive production Murphy will give you feels like spinning a wheel with 10 outcomes.

They run it back with Ozuna

One interesting possibility is bringing back Ozuna on a cheap one-year pact. Ozuna carried a 114 wRC+ last season that was a roller coaster of highs and lows. That won’t nuke your lineup at the DH spot.

That being said, Ozuna will turn 35 in a month, and his batted ball data took a sharp turn from his stellar 2023-2024 campaigns. He is beloved in the clubhouse, but given his age and trends offensively, it’s possible bringing him back for one more season would be setting money on fire when it could be used to add an impact starter or shortstop.

One variable: performance aside, the Braves love Ozuna and what he does in the clubhouse. Players have credited him for helping them get out of slumps with their swings, and he is seen as an older brother for many of the Latin players in the locker room. That means something. It may not mean he gets another contract, but I could see it happening.

To wrap this up, the Braves have options as we approach Halloween. The designated hitter position may be down the totem pole for the offseason priorities, but it is a big decision they will have to make in the coming months.