The Atlanta Braves had what can only be described as a woefully year. They were wracked with injuries to their rotation and lineup which led to a 76-86 record. good for 4th in the NLE. It was the first time Atlanta has missed the playoffs since 2017 and spelled the end for long time manager Brian Snitker. It\u2019s clear the Braves are at a crossroads, especially with a farm system considered weak, yet the roster does include some formidable talents and some excellent young players along with established stars? Was this just an injury generated blip that will see the Braves return to power in the NLE or has the organization between eclipsed by the Mets and the Phillies?<\/p>\n
I reached out to Ivan the Great, one of the editors at Battery Power, and he was kind enough to answer some questions about his take on the Braves offseason and the issues they face going into 2026.<\/p>\n
So far, the Braves have added Ha-Seong Kim, Robert Suarez, Mike Yastrzemski, Mauricio Dub\u00f3n and Jorge Mateo this offseason. Is this likely it and if not, what are the key areas that still need addressing?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s probably it. The Braves could probably use a lower-risk starter given that pretty much their entire rotation is high variance due to missing time with injury last year, but prices for durable starters have gone off the rails over the last few years, so I don\u2019t think it\u2019s necessarily something to expect. The flip side is that the Braves tend to operate by drawing a line in the sand about acquisition prices, but then being very opportunistic if they see something that comes in below that price \u2013 so you can\u2019t rule out a late-breaking roster shuffle if an opportunity presents itself. That said, as prices for quality players of all stripes continue to rise, don\u2019t bank on that, either.<\/p>\n
The 2025 season was the least successful for the Braves since 2017. Is that largely attributed to injuries to key players or are there any underlying issues the team is facing to be competitive in 2026?<\/p>\n
There was a point last season where I asked our community this question \u2013 framed as a binary choice between either the roster needing to change, or everything but the roster needing to change. To a person, every single respondent said the latter. Injuries are injuries, but the team was also horrendously injured in 2024 and weathered it okay, all things considered.<\/p>\n
To avoid beating around the bush, I think the most succinct-if-a-little-too-glib correct answer is that the Braves have a very well-built roster, but do (or did, or have done) a lot of stupid stuff with it, and that level of \u201cstupid stuff\u201d hit a new high in 2025. The team consistently snubbed its nose at stuff like the times-through-the-order penalty and leverage, but was usually fine because the bats were outslugging everyone. The coup de grace, then, came in the offseason, when the powers that be, apparently spooked by a catastrophically large input-output gap on offense for much of the 2024 season, wheeled around to an offensive approach that was directly at odds with what the team had implemented from both a roster construction and coaching perspective from 2019-2024. A team of sluggers was asked to draw more walks and fight the ball off the other way, and it basically destroyed the season.<\/p>\n
None of us have any idea whether \u201cdoing stupid stuff\u201d is an underlying issue, or if things will magically be fixed with some turnover in the coaching staff in the offseason. We\u2019ll have to wait and see. In general, you don\u2019t expect a team\u2019s talent to play down because who would bother with such a huge unforced error, right? But that\u2019s what we\u2019ve seen on the pitching end from this team here and there over the last few seasons, and then we saw it on the hitting side last year.<\/p>\n
Which players really took the biggest steps forward this year for the club?<\/p>\n
I think it has to be Drake Baldwin to start. He wasn\u2019t really even in the conversation for the Opening Day roster, but Sean Murphy\u2019s injury led to a Rookie of the Year campaign. Baldwin\u2019s approach to hitting sort of goes against the grain of his teammates but also happened to dovetail really well with what the team was hoping the bats would do offensively. Given Sean Murphy\u2019s bizarre status (playing through worse than a run-of-the-mill hip injury for multiple years), Baldwin has leapfrogged his way to being a key cog in this machine.<\/p>\n
Hurston Waldrep had a nice run down the stretch last year, but he looks like he has a bunch of stuff to work through. That\u2019s true of most young pitchers, but I think Baldwin took a definitive, huge step forward, and everyone else, Waldrep included, isn\u2019t really in the same tier.<\/p>\n
The Braves\u2019 farm system is generally considered to be weak at the upper levels compared to most other clubs. Is there a likely world where one of their top prospects like Richie or Caminiti has a legitimate shot at the bigs this year, or is it most likely they\u2019ll stay put until 2027 at the earliest? <\/p>\n
One thing we know about the Braves is that they\u2019ll promote you when they think you\u2019re ready. They don\u2019t care at all about outside evaluations, and they don\u2019t seem to care about anything that you could likely garner from a stat sheet either. They have internal benchmarks and once you hit them, you\u2019re going to be thrown into the fire, irrespective of innings at level or whatever. To that end, I don\u2019t know how to speculate about a legitimate shot at promotion, since it depends on Caminiti and company hitting benchmarks that are totally opaque to me. Didier Fuentes got a promotion last year and didn\u2019t stick \u2013 one of the few times a prospect call-up who appeared rushed to the majors by this regime didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
The one thing possibly working against another out-of-nowhere promotion is that the Braves have a bunch of rotation options, at least until injuries strike. Grant Holmes and Reynaldo Lopez could start or relieve depending on health and needs, Bryce Elder is kind of like the proverbial bad penny, and AJ Smith-Shawver should return eventually. That means that if prospect promotion were a combination of \u201creadiness\u201d and opportunity previously, the opportunity may be more constrained this time around.<\/p>\n
Of the remaining FAs, which would fit best for the Braves, even if it\u2019s a bit of a stretch they\u2019d land there?<\/p>\n
The QO and personality issues probably pose a challenge with regard to Framber Valdez, so I guess Chris Bassitt is the next man up in that regard. Whether Bassitt is truly a \u201cfit\u201d is hard to say, because it depends on whether the Braves consider him good enough to start a playoff game \u2013 that seems to be their (self-professed) bar for shelling out for a starter acquisition. If he is, then I think it\u2019s not even a stretch that they add Bassitt eventually, as he helps smooth out the innings burden across the rotation. If not, then I have no idea \u2013 Zac Gallen also requires the loss of a draft pick. Maybe Zack Littell? Bassitt seems like the easy answer, though.<\/p>\n
Assuming you could put on the \u2018accept all trades\u2019 button, what would an ideal but still realistic target be for you before ST starts?<\/p>\n
Once upon a time this offseason, I would\u2019ve said Otto Lopez, as he fits pretty much everything the Braves like, want, and need: undervalued relative to inputs and production, an approach that fits with 2025-Braves but could also benefit from the instruction of 2019-2024 Braves, and at a clear position of need. That ship has not only sailed with the Braves re-adding Ha-Seong Kim, but was probably never really tied up at the pier anyway.<\/p>\n
The alternative is for some starters that aren\u2019t really on the trading block but would\u2019ve been nice if they were: Joe Ryan, Pablo Lopez, the largely unheralded Jose Soriano, that sort of thing. Other names that I could throw out in this tier would be MacKenzie Gore, Shane McClanahan, Drew Rasmussen, Yusei Kikuchi, and Sandy Alcantara \u2013 none are perfect but that\u2019s the sort of thing I expect from the Braves if \u201cforce trade\u201d were a reality and they couldn\u2019t go too off the rails. (In other words, they didn\u2019t abuse their power to get Cole Ragans or something.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Atlanta Braves had what can only be described as a woefully year. They were wracked with injuries…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":536068,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2394],"tags":[191,46,4166,5,192,70965,4],"class_list":["post-536067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-atlanta-braves","tag-atlanta","tag-atlanta-braves","tag-atlantabraves","tag-baseball","tag-braves","tag-know-your-enemy","tag-mlb"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115950051896851681","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}