A year ago, the Atlanta Braves were in negotiations for a potential blockbuster trade, but the other team wanted catcher Drake Baldwin in a package along with four or five other players. The other team wouldn’t budge on Baldwin, but the Braves weren’t parting with their then-No. 1 position player prospect, so the proposal died. Braves fans are glad it did.

Baldwin, who emerged as a franchise-cornerstone type player in 2025, was named National League Rookie of the Year on Monday, beating out Chicago Cubs pitcher Cade Horton in one of the closest races in recent years. Baldwin received 21 first-place votes, ending with 183 points overall. Horton received the other nine first-place votes and finished with 139 points.

Baldwin is the sixth Braves player to win NL Rookie of the Year since 1990 and third in the past eight seasons, after Michael Harris II in 2022 and Ronald Acuña Jr. in 2018. No other NL team has had multiple rookie-of-the-year winners in that stretch, and no AL team had more than two.

A season to remember.

Congratulations to Drake Baldwin, the 2025 National League Rookie of the Year! pic.twitter.com/IWUSrXHq0b

— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) November 11, 2025

Baldwin was thrust into the Opening Day lineup with no previous major-league experience because veteran Sean Murphy fractured a rib in spring training. Baldwin immediately showed he could figuratively keep his head above water, and soon after proved that he was ready to thrive. And he did, all season.

The 24-year-old hit .274 with 19 home runs, good enough for an .810 OPS and 126 OPS+. He led NL rookies with 80 RBIs in 124 games and 446 plate appearances, including 85 starts at catcher and 12 at designated hitter.

Because Baldwin won the award and was on the Opening Day roster, stayed with the team all season and was a top-100 prospect entering the season, the Braves will receive an extra draft pick at the end of the first round in next year’s MLB Draft. It’s a recent MLB rule and the pick is known as a Prospect Promotion Incentive (PPI) pick.

That extra pick could also be helpful if the Braves were to sign a free agent who turned down a qualifying offer from his former team, in which case the signing team gives up a draft pick to the team from which the player received the QO.

When asked on the final day of the season about the huge strides he made and his rookie performance, Baldwin smiled and said, “Definitely pretty satisfying. You can think you know as much as you want to before the season starts, but once you do it, it’s kind of a whole different beast. So being able to go out there and just learn so much about myself and the game of baseball at the big league level is pretty cool.

“Definitely gonna take a couple days to look back on it and just kind of soak it all in and realize how far I’ve come and all the people who’ve helped me get there. Everyone (on the Braves team) just made me feel like I belonged here, and it was a very cool year.”

Once Murphy was recovered from his rib injury, Baldwin shared catching duties with veteran, but in the second half, Baldwin was already getting more starts. Murphy had season-ending hip surgery in the second week of September. He is expected to be ready for spring training, but that’s not a certainty.

After posting a .731 OPS through April, Baldwin had a robust .389 batting average and 1.003 OPS in May, and finished with an OPS of .800 or above in each of the last three months of the season. All the while, pitchers lauded his communication and game-calling abilities, as well as his defensive skills, the latter being an area that Baldwin worked diligently to improve in his past two major-league spring trainings.

“Catching is a very tough ask from young guys,” Braves veteran ace Chris Sale said in late September, when he explained why he thought Baldwin should win the award. “You’ve got a guy that’s got to worry about hitting. And then he’s got, 13, 14-plus pitchers that he’s got to deal with — personalities, stuff in-between games, stuff like that. And we asked a lot of him early and we’re certainly asking a lot of him now with Murph being gone.

“Even early on, you’re talking about a guy that really came out the first month, his numbers weren’t great, but some of the peripherals were really kind of jumping out at you. I mean, this guy probably had more 100-mile-an-hour hit baseballs with nothing to show for it. And the frustration of that could be overwhelming. And it’s easy to take it out on defense, which he never did. I think for a young guy to be able to not only deal with that, but to overcome that and do his job behind the plate and excel behind the (plate) is special.”

Brian Snitker, who retired as Braves manager after the season, said watching Baldwin’s growth was a major bright spot in a what was a disappointing season for the club, one that dealt with numerous pitching injuries and missed the playoffs for the first time in eight years.

“It’s way more than I anticipated a young guy would accomplish,” Snitker said. “He’s just matured, got more confident, and his whole game has picked up. And he’s so much better today than he was (Opening Day) in San Diego. He is light years ahead of where he was then even, right now, after all the experience. And hopefully he’s gonna hoist the Rookie of the Year trophy in six weeks. He’s been such an impressive young man and young player.”

Now, he’s got that trophy.