The Braves completed their first homestand Wednesday, taking series from the Royals and A\u2019s to start the season 4-2. That\u2019s quite a bit better than the 0-7 start of 2025. Here are five brief takeaways through six games:<\/p>\n
1. Drake Baldwin living up to the hype<\/p>\n
The Braves\u2019 second-year catcher was phenomenal, completing the homestand with four RBIs Wednesday. There were lofty expectations for Baldwin entering the year. He\u2019s already looked the part of an All-Star, but he\u2019ll obviously have to maintain it. The Braves should be excited, though, by Baldwin\u2019s continued progression. He looked like the team\u2019s best hitter at points. Baldwin is hitting .318 (7-for-22) with three homers and seven RBI thus far.<\/p>\n
2. The top four in the rotation: So far, so good<\/p>\n
Chris Sale delivered two stellar outings, which was expected. Reynaldo Lopez, Grant Holmes and Bryce Elder followed with their own good efforts. Overall, the Braves\u2019 top four starters surrendered four runs over 23 innings. Jose Suarez was less inspiring in Tuesday\u2019s loss, but the expectations are lower there. That spot will be rotated (and it seems as if veteran Martin Perez will make that start in the next turn). <\/p>\n
The Braves need reliability from their top four. They received it through one turn. Will Lopez and Holmes hold up over time? We\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n
3. The biggest bats haven\u2019t yet emerged<\/p>\n
The Braves enjoyed three combined RBIs from Matt Olson, Austin Riley and Ronald Acu\u00f1a Jr. The trio combined for three extra-base hits and zero home runs. Credit to the lower portion of the Braves\u2019 lineup, which deserves most of the credit for the team\u2019s offensive success. Remember, if the bottom of the order is getting on, that\u2019s setting up Acu\u00f1a, who could rejoin MVP talks this summer. He only hit .150 over the homestand (though he reached base four times Tuesday), so he\u2019ll be due his first hot streak of the season soon enough.<\/p>\n
4. The team\u2019s depth is improved<\/p>\n
This appeared to be the case in spring, and though it\u2019s only been six games, the Braves have reason to be optimistic about their depth. Mauricio Dubon, their shortstop fill-in while Ha-Seong Kim is sidelined, hit .412 with five RBIs. Don\u2019t be swayed by a couple of defensive miscues; there\u2019s a reason Dubon is a Gold Glove-winning utility man. <\/p>\n
Dominic Smith, meanwhile, provided what will probably be one of the season\u2019s best moments with his walk-off grand slam last weekend. He\u2019s 5-for-13 to start his Braves career. Credit to catcher Jonah Heim, as well. He hasn\u2019t made an impact offensively, but he caught Sale\u2019s and Elder\u2019s scoreless outings, drawing constant praise from manager Walt Weiss. There will be a case for the Braves to carry three catchers when Sean Murphy returns in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n
5. Baserunning \u2026 <\/p>\n
New baserunning instructor Antoan Richardson arrived with a lot of excitement. But the Braves hurt themselves more on the bases in the past week than helped. They were caught on three steal attempts, tied for most in the majors, and they\u2019re one of four teams to have only stolen one base. The Braves had a nice week, but that\u2019s an area to clean up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Braves completed their first homestand Wednesday, taking series from the Royals and A\u2019s to start the season…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2394],"tags":[191,46,4166,5,192,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-660596","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-atlanta-braves","8":"tag-atlanta","9":"tag-atlanta-braves","10":"tag-atlantabraves","11":"tag-baseball","12":"tag-braves","13":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116340240819548553","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660596","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=660596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}