The Atlanta Braves are looking to rebound heading into the 2026 season, and they will have a new manager at the helm with Walt Weiss taking over for Brian Snitker after being promoted from bench coach. Weiss will face some crucial lineup decisions next year, and one of the biggest questions is who will fill the designated hitter role.
The team no longer has Marcell Ozuna on the active roster after he served as the everyday DH for the past six seasons. Ozuna had an impressive tenure in Atlanta, even finishing fourth in NL MVP voting in 2024, but following a drop in production last year it is unlikely he returns.
Advertisement
Scott Coleman of Hammer Territory recently gave his thoughts on how Weiss might approach the vacancy. “That’s something that Walt has talked about a few times now since getting the job. I think at the winter meetings, he said that, hey, we want our players to be out there every day, but there’s going to come a point in time where we need to get someone off their feet for just one night or utilize the DH,” Coleman explained.
He continued, “And in recent years, one, I don’t know if the Braves necessarily had the bench to accommodate multiple days off for these players. And two, now that Marcell Ozuna has left the organization and probably won’t be back. Ozuna was DH-ing virtually every single day of the season. Now they have an open DH spot, and I think Walt Weiss will use that to his advantage.”
Coleman then pointed to several possibilities. “He can rotate Acuna there. He can rotate Profar there. He can rotate Mike Yastrzemski, one of their offseason additions there. And even if Austin Riley likes to go out there every single day, maybe they give Riley an afternoon off and keep him in the DH spot just to keep everybody fresh. I imagine that Weiss will be a little more open to rotating his players in and out of the lineup than Brian Snitker was the last handful of years.”
Advertisement
One option Coleman did not mention was a move the Braves regularly used in 2025. The team often slotted either catcher Sean Murphy or catcher Drake Baldwin into the DH role to get both bats into the lineup. Murphy remains a productive hitter, while Baldwin is coming off a breakout campaign that earned him National League Rookie of the Year honors.
Weiss’s willingness to rotate stars through the DH spot and keep the roster fresh may mark a shift from Snitker’s more rigid approach, giving the Braves a new dynamic as they chase contention in 2026.