MLBTR Podcast: Twins And Orioles’ Injuries, The Guardians And Angels’ Quiet Offseasons, And Chris Sale’s Extension
The latest episode of the MLB Trade Rumors Podcast is now live on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts! Make sure you subscribe as well! You can also use the player at this link to listen, if you don’t use Spotify or Apple for podcasts.
This week, host Darragh McDonald is joined by Steve Adams of MLB Trade Rumors to discuss…
- Twins right-hander Pablo López requiring Tommy John surgery (3:20)
- The Orioles losing Jordan Westburg due to a partially torn UCL in his elbow (13:15)
- The Guardians signing Rhys Hoskins to a minor league deal but doing little else this winter (23:45)
- Angels owner Arte Moreno making some curious statements (35:50)
- The Braves and Chris Sale signing an extension (47:35)
- Tony Clark resigning as executive director of the MLBPA and being replaced by Bruce Meyer (53:40)
Check out our past episodes!
- The Tigers’ Rotation, A Brewers-Red Sox Trade, And Late Free-Agent Signings – listen here
- Twins Front Office Shake-Up, The Brendan Donovan Trade, Eugenio Suarez, And More! – listen here
- Examining MLB’s Parity Situation – Also, Bellinger, Peralta, Robert, And Gore – listen here
The podcast intro and outro song “So Long” is provided courtesy of the band Showoff. Check out their Facebook page here!
Photo courtesy of Jonah Hinebaugh, Imagn Images
Braves Extend Chris Sale
The Braves announced Tuesday that they’ve signed veteran left-hander Chris Sale to a one-year, $27MM contract extension with a $30MM club option for the 2028 season. (Atlanta is one of the few teams that publicly discloses contract terms itself.) The Wasserman client was slated to reach free agency this coming winter but will instead stick with Atlanta through at least 2027.
Sale, 37 next month, is entering his late thirties but remains as effective as ever. Atlanta acquired the southpaw prior to the 2024 season in exchange for Vaughn Grissom in a deal with the Red Sox that turned out to be a coup. Since joining the organization, Sale has pitched to an otherworldly 2.46 ERA (2.84 SIERA, 2.38 FIP), with a strikeout rate of 32.2% and a walk rate of 5.9%. Those elite rate stats earned him his first career Cy Young Award in 2024, although a ribcage fracture in 2025 has limited his overall workload in Georgia to a total of 303 1/3 innings.
Injuries were the story of Sale’s career for several years prior to his arrival in Atlanta. For the first nine years of his big league tenure, the lefty was utterly elite with seven All-Star appearances and six top-five finishes in Cy Young voting for the White Sox and Red Sox.
That portion of his career ended in emphatic fashion as Sale struck out then-Dodger Manny Machado to secure the 2018 World Series for Boston, but come 2019 Sale struggled for the first time in his career. While his peripherals remained elite, he posted a pedestrian 4.40 ERA and was limited to just 25 starts due to injuries. He’d go on to make just nine starts between 2020 and 2022 before returning to the mound for most of the 2023 season with a 4.30 ERA in 20 starts.
Sale may not be a true workhorse, but he’s been more durable in recent seasons and will now look to continue the high note he’s found in Atlanta as his career begins to wind down. Both Sale himself and president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos recently indicated to reporters (including MLB.com’s Mark Bowman) that they hoped the remainder of the 2024 Cy Young winner’s career would be spent in Atlanta, and now he’ll remain under club control until the end of his age-39 campaign. Sale told reporters (including Chad Bishop of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution) after news of the extension broke this morning that the deal came together quickly after those comments were made early in camp.
“[Anthopoulos] said what he said, I said what I said, and we just kind of looked at each other like, ‘Are we serious?'” Sale said, as relayed by Bishop. “And I called [my agent] and was like ‘Hey, call Alex, figure something out.’ You know, we made our pitch, they made their pitch, and we just kind of met in the middle. I mean, I feel like this was [done in] like, a week.”
Sale will be looking to not only put the finishing touches on a compelling Hall of Fame case but also lead the Braves back into the postseason after a rough 2025 season. He’s the undisputed ace of an Atlanta staff that looks very intimidating when at full strength but now figures to enter the season without either Spencer Schwellenbach or Hurston Waldrep. Both young righties had surgery to remove bone spurs/loose bodies from their right elbows earlier this month, and neither has a clear timetable for his return.
Instead, Sale will be joined by Spencer Strider, Grant Holmes, and Reynaldo Lopez in the rotation as things stand, with a handful of depth arms in competition for the fifth starter job. It’s a group that could clearly use an additional quality arm, but it remains to be seen if Anthopoulos will manage to add someone like that to the mix before the season begins. Whatever may happen with the rotation in 2025, however, the Braves can now move forward with the assurance that one of the game’s most elite hurlers will be staying in town for the foreseeable future.
From a payroll vantage point, there doesn’t appear to be any immediate impact on the 2026 season. The contract is structured as a new deal beginning in 2027, so it doesn’t change Atlanta’s baseline cash payroll or its luxury tax payroll for the upcoming season.
Sale’s deal does tack on $27MM of luxury considerations to the 2027 budget, although the Braves already had substantial money coming off the books at season’s end. Ha-Seong Kim ($20MM), Raisel Iglesias ($16MM), Joe Jimenez ($9MM), Aaron Bummer ($9.5MM), Mauricio Dubón ($6.1MM), Jonah Heim ($1.25MM) and Jorge Mateo ($1MM) are all free agents at season’s end, and the only notable arbitration raise Atlanta faces will be Schwellenbach’s first trip through the process. As things stand, RosterResource projects a $176MM luxury payroll for Atlanta in 2027 — about $84MM shy of their current mark.
ESPN’s Jeff Passan first reported the extension and the 2027 salary.
Braves Announce Creation Of BravesVision
The Braves today announced the launch of BravesVision, a team-owned media entity which will broadcast the club’s games and make them available on television and via streaming. Fans will be able to deal directly with the team to access the broadcasts with no local blackouts. This will include all regular season games except those which are subject to national exclusivities. For those with questions about the details, the club released an FAQ page.
Up until recently, Atlanta was one of several teams with a regional sports network (RSN) deal with Main Street Sports, formerly known as Diamond Sports Group. That company’s portfolio of MLB clubs has been shrinking in recent years as they have hit financial trouble, largely caused by cord cutting. As of the start of this year, Main Street still had deals with nine MLB clubs, including Atlanta. The company missed some payments, which caused all nine teams to terminate their deals in January.
Earlier this month, six of those teams pivoted to having the league handle the broadcasts. Atlanta was one of the three still undetermined, but with some signs they would launch their own broadcast network, which has effectively come to pass with this announcement.
It’s difficult to say how this will impact the club’s bottom line in the long run. As of a few years ago, Atlanta was getting more than $100MM annually from their RSN deal. Travis Sawchik of MLB.com has reported that clubs who have lost their RSN deals and pivoted to new arrangements have been bringing in about 50% less than before, on average.
Atlanta is going a slightly different route than most of the other clubs in this position. The majority of them have handed the reins over to the league. The Rangers have been an exception, as they launched their own network a year ago, with Atlanta now following in that example. Evan Grant of The Dallas Morning News spoke to some team officials about the situation in October. Those employees spoke highly of the increased ratings of the new arrangement but were more cagey about whether the club made as much money as they had on their previous RSN deal.
Down the line, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has a goal of marketing a streaming package that includes the rights of as many clubs as possible. It will be challenging to get them all on board since many of the large-market clubs have healthy RSN setups that they own or co-own. They will have some reticence about joining a more centralized arrangement that would see them sharing TV revenue with smaller markets.
For fans, today’s news seems to largely be a positive. Due to a dispute in 2024, there were times where the club’s games weren’t even available to some cable subscribers in the local area. Now the majority of the club’s games should be accessible to fans everywhere.
Photo courtesy of Brett Davis, Imagn Images
Spencer Schwellenbach, Hurston Waldrep To Undergo Elbow Surgery
Braves righty Spencer Schwellenbach underwent surgery to remove loose bodies from his right elbow today, manager Walt Weiss told the team’s beat this morning (link Mark Bowman of MLB.com). Fellow righty Hurston Waldrep, who was also diagnosed with loose bodies in his elbow this spring, will undergo a similar operation on Monday. Weiss and the Braves have not put a formal timetable for a return on either young righty. Schwellenbach is already on the 60-day injured list, and Waldrep will surely join him there whenever Atlanta needs to open another 40-man spot.
Neither revelation is especially surprising, but both are notable all the same. Schwellenbach suggested that an arthroscopic procedure was likely last week when he was placed on the 60-day injured list. He said at the time that he was unsure what the recovery time period for such a procedure would be, and the team provided no further details today. Beyond the fact that he’ll miss at least the first 57 days of the seasons — the Opening Day IL placement can be backdated by three days — Schwellenbach can just be considered to be out indefinitely.
It’ll be the same story for Waldrep, who was cleared of structural damage to his ulnar collateral ligament in a recent MRI but found to have loose bodies in his elbow as well. As with Schwellenbach, Waldrep implied that surgery was likely when telling reporters that the loose bodies in his elbow “probably need to be dealt with.”
Heading into camp, Schwellenbach and Waldrep looked like locks for rotation spots. Schwellenbach missed time last summer with an elbow fracture but had completed five to six bullpen sessions, by his own estimate, before feeling pain at the end of a session a bit more than two weeks ago. The 2021 second-rounder has been brilliant since making his MLB debut in 2024, pitching to a combined 3.23 ERA with a 25.2% strikeout rate and 4.4% walk rate in his first 234 1/3 MLB innings.
Waldrep just debuted last season and wasn’t quite as cemented on the starting staff, but he was the heavy favorite for Atlanta’s fifth starter gig. In 56 1/3 innings last year (nine starts, one relief appearance), the 2023 first-rounder posted a tidy 2.88 ERA with a 24% strikeout rate and 9.6% walk rate. He also posted a 4.42 ERA in 19 Triple-A starts, shaking off a rocky stretch early in the season with a pristine 1.99 ERA over his final seven minor league starts before being promoted.
With Schwellenbach and Waldrep sidelined indefinitely, Atlanta’s rotation includes Chris Sale, Spencer Strider, Reynaldo Lopez and Grant Holmes. It’s a talented quartet, but Sale has a lengthy injury history and has only had one fully healthy season since the 2017 season wrapped. He won the NL Cy Young Award in that lone (mostly) healthy year, but there’s considerable injury risk for the lefty, who’ll turn 37 next month.
Strider, meanwhile, posted pedestrian results and rate stats during last year’s return from UCL surgery. Lopez made only one start in 2025 due to arthroscopic shoulder surgery. Holmes suffered a UCL tear last summer but has been rehabbing it without surgery and is said to be full-go this spring.
All four of the Braves’ set-in-stone rotation members come with some combination of injury, performance and/or workload concern. Be that as it may, the organization continues to downplay the possibility of bringing in further help from outside the organization. Gabe Burns of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently wrote that the Braves’ previously reported interest in Chris Bassitt (who’s since signed in Baltimore) and Lucas Giolito (still unsigned) was overstated. There’s been speculation that perhaps president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos is simply at or close to the budgetary limit set by ownership, though the team obviously wouldn’t publicly disclose that even if it were true.
In-house options to round out the staff include Bryce Elder, Joey Wentz, José Suarez, prospect Didier Fuentes (still just 20 years old) and non-roster veterans Martín Pérez, Carlos Carrasco and Elieser Hernández.
MLBTR Podcast: The Tigers’ Rotation, A Brewers-Red Sox Trade, And Late Free-Agent Signings
The latest episode of the MLB Trade Rumors Podcast is now live on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts! Make sure you subscribe as well! You can also use the player at this link to listen, if you don’t use Spotify or Apple for podcasts.
This week, host Darragh McDonald is joined by Anthony Franco of MLB Trade Rumors to discuss…
- Tarik Skubal winning his arbitration hearing against the Tigers (1:30)
- The Tigers loading up the rotation by signing Framber Valdez and also Justin Verlander but losing Reese Olson for the year (13:25)
- The six-player trade between the Red Sox and Brewers headlined by Caleb Durbin and Kyle Harrison, with Milwaukee then signing Luis Rengifo (24:15)
- The Orioles signing Chris Bassitt and losing Jackson Holliday to injury (35:35)
- The Diamondbacks signing Zac Gallen and potentially losing Corbin Carroll to the injured list (44:30)
- The Braves losing Spencer Schwellenbach and maybe Hurston Waldrep while showing little urgency about bolstering the rotation (52:20)
- Tony Clark stepping down as MLBPA executive director, recorded as the news was still trickling out (59:15)
Check out our past episodes!
- Twins Front Office Shake-Up, The Brendan Donovan Trade, Eugenio Suarez, And More! – listen here
- Examining MLB’s Parity Situation – Also, Bellinger, Peralta, Robert, And Gore – listen here
- What The Tucker And Bichette Contracts Mean For Baseball – Also, Nolan Arenado And Ranger Suarez – listen here
The podcast intro and outro song “So Long” is provided courtesy of the band Showoff. Check out their Facebook page here!
Photo courtesy of Junfu Han, Imagn Images
Latest On Braves’ Rotation
The Braves’ rotation has been a talking point in the early days of spring training, with a few injuries already popping up, leading to speculation about the club looking for an external addition. Atlanta has been connected to pitchers like Lucas Giolito and Chris Bassitt this offseason but Gabriel Burns of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that the club’s interest in those two pitchers was overstated. Burns says they did not seriously pursue Bassitt before he signed with the Orioles and have not been involved with Giolito, who remains a free agent.
It’s a curious spot for the club to be in. Injuries to the starting rotation played a huge role in tanking the 2025 season. They went into the campaign as contenders but ended up at 76-86. Just about every starter got hurt, so that the only guy to surpass 126 innings was Bryce Elder, who posted a 5.30 earned run average.
Going into the winter, general manager Alex Anthopoulos said that bolstering the rotation would be a “point of emphasis” but he hasn’t made any significant changes there. He clearly had some money to spend but has invested it elsewhere, having signed outfielder Mike Yastrzemski, infielder Ha-Seong Kim, as well as relievers Robert Suarez and Raisel Iglesias to eight-figure deals.
That left the rotation looking vulnerable coming into camp and the picture has only gotten worse since then. Spencer Schwellenbach was placed on the 60-day injured list last week due to elbow inflammation. Hurston Waldrep is now getting checked out due to his own elbow soreness.
The rotation still has some upside, in theory, but with question marks everywhere. Chris Sale is the ace but he’s about to turn 37 years old and has been very injury prone in recent years. Spencer Strider missed most of 2024 due to elbow surgery and had lackluster results when he was back on the mound last year. Reynaldo López only made one start last year due to shoulder surgery. Grant Holmes was diagnosed with a partial tear of his ulnar collateral ligament last year and is currently trying to return while avoiding surgery.
That group could be a strong front four if everyone is healthy and pitching well but that’s a massive if. The depth beyond that group is also questionable. Martín Pérez and Carlos Carrasco are in the organization on minor league deals but neither inspires a ton of confidence. Didier Fuentes is a notable prospect but he’s only 20 years old and got shelled when called up in emergency fashion last year. Jhancarlos Lara and José Suarez are on the roster but seem to be depth/swing types. JR Ritchie is another of the club’s top prospects but he has only 11 Triple-A starts under his belt.
There’s an argument for adding a reliable veteran to strengthen the back of the rotation, even if it doesn’t raise the ceiling much, but Anthopoulos recently said the club is looking for a playoff-caliber starter. Up until fairly recently, the starting pitching market still had a lot of attractive names on it but Atlanta has not pounced on that opportunity. Guys like Bassitt, Zac Gallen, Nick Martinez, Justin Verlander, Jose Quintana, Chris Paddack, José Urquidy, Tomoyuki Sugano, Aaron Civale, Miles Mikolas, Erick Fedde, Griffin Canning and Germán Márquez have agreed to modest one-year deals in the past week or so.
Perhaps the club will still pivot to add some reliable innings. If they don’t like Giolito, the market still features Zack Littell, Max Scherzer, Patrick Corbin, Tyler Anderson, Marcus Stroman and others.
It’s also possible the club is out of dry powder. RosterResource projects them for a $264MM payroll and $260MM competitive balance tax number. That payroll is about $50MM above where they finished last year and the CBT number puts them within $4MM of the second tier of the tax, which they may not want to cross.
If it’s the case that there’s no spending capacity left, it looks like a strange offseason for the club. They invested in several areas of the roster but didn’t target the area that was supposed to be a primary focus. Perhaps Anthopoulos can line up a trade of a young pitcher who is cheap and controllable, but the price on such pitchers will be high. Maybe they’ll get lucky and their guys will stay healthier than last year but the injury bug is already biting before spring games have even begun.
Photo courtesy of James A. Pittman, Imagn Images
Braves, Dominic Smith Agree To Minor League Deal
The Braves have agreed to a minor league deal with first baseman Dominic Smith, per Chad Bishop of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The Roc Nation client will be a non-roster invitee in big league camp.
A former first-round pick and top prospect, Smith looked to be breaking out in 2019-20, when he slashed a combined .299/.366/.571 with 21 homers in only 396 plate appearances for the Mets. He tried to play through a small tear in his right shoulder’s labrum the following season and saw his numbers unsurprisingly crater. In 2024, Smith suffered a broken hamate bone in his right hand that required surgical repair, and surgeons suggested at the time that he may have had a stress reaction in that hand for several seasons, based on the way things looked in the aftermath of the injury.
From 2021-24, Smith tallied 1538 major league plate appearances but hit only .241/.311/.360 — nowhere close to that 2019-20 peak. Some degree of regression always seemed likely, but a decline so precipitous was nonetheless a bit surprising. Knowing with the benefit of hindsight that Smith was playing through multiple injuries of note help to explain that yearslong dip.
The 2025 season wasn’t back to peak levels, but Smith took 225 plate appearances with the Giants and posted an above-average .284/.333/.417 batting line (111 wRC+). He was heavily shielded from lefties and hit only .200/.259/.280 in 27 plate appearances versus southpaws, but Smith tagged righties at a stout .296/.343/.436 clip. He also posted a respectable .255/.333/.448 line in 45 games with the Yankees’ Triple-A club before landing in San Francisco.
There’s no obvious path to regular playing time in Atlanta for Smith — not with Matt Olson entrenched at first base and a rotation of four veterans to split time between the outfield and designated hitter (Jurickson Profar, Ronald Acuña Jr., Mike Yastrzemski and Michael Harris II). Smith gives Atlanta some depth at first base in the event of an Olson injury, however, and he could step into a more prominent DH role if there’s an injury to any of those four outfielders.
The Braves’ bench is also pretty light on offense, with utilityman Brett Wisely and fourth outfielder Eli White penciled into roles at present due to both being out of minor league options. Smith isn’t your quintessential big lefty bat off the bench, but he’s coming off an above-average season at the plate (particularly against righties) and at least has some minimal experience in left field in addition to his large sample of work at first base.
The Braves only just reacquired Wisely last week (for cash) and as such certainly are not fully committed to giving him a roster spot. White can handle all three outfield positions while Jorge Mateo and Mauricio Dubon (who’ll start at shortstop while Ha-Seong Kim is on the injured list) give the Braves plenty of defensive versatility if they want to carry a more limited lefty bat like Smith on the bench to begin the season.
Braves’ Hurston Waldrep Dealing With Elbow Soreness
Braves right-hander Hurston Waldrep is dealing with soreness in his throwing elbow, and will visit Dr. Keith Meister tomorrow in Dallas for a consultation, manager Walt Weiss told reporters (including MLB.com’s Mark Bowman). Waldrep has already undergone an MRI that didn’t reveal any structural damage, though the scan did reveal some “loose bodies,” as Weiss described the matter.
“There’s some things in there that shouldn’t be there, I guess. I think it’s fairly common with pitchers,” Weiss said. “I don’t want to elaborate on the loose bodies, because I’m not totally sure, but it probably needs to be dealt with. I don’t know what that looks like as far as procedure or anything, but I guess Dr. Meister will let us know.”
Selected 24th overall in the 2023 draft, Waldrep made his MLB debut less than a year after his draft date, though he was tagged for a 16.71 ERA over his first two starts and seven innings. The righty was then placed on the 15-day injured list due to elbow inflammation and spent about six weeks on the shelf before he was activated and optioned back to Triple-A for the remainder of the 2024 season.
Waldrep didn’t return to the Show until last August, and made a much better impression the second time around. Waldrep started nine of his 10 appearances, delivering a 2.88 ERA, 49.7% grounder rate, 24% strikeout rate, and 9.6% walk rate over 56 1/3 innings. While the lack of control left something to be desired, Waldrep did an excellent job of limiting big contact (4% barrel rate) and both his splitter and 95.9mph sinker were plus pitches.
This solid performance didn’t guarantee Waldrep a spot in the 2026 rotation, as the Braves were seemingly set with a projected top five of Chris Sale, Spencer Strider, Reynaldo Lopez, Grant Holmes, and Spencer Schwellenbach. There was also an expectation that Atlanta would pursue more starting pitching this winter in a nod to the injury concerns that their incumbent starters dealt with in both 2025, and throughout their careers.
Though Spring Training has just gotten underway, the injury bug has already made an unwelcome return to the Braves’ camp. Schwellenbach has already been placed on the 60-day IL due to elbow inflammation, and now Waldrep looks to probably be facing some kind of IL stint. Even if the visit to Dr. Meister doesn’t lead to any major developments, the Braves will probably shut Waldrep down until his discomfort lessens, and a season-opening stint on at least the 15-day IL seems likely so Waldrep can complete his pre-season ramp-up.
With Waldrep out of the picture, Bryce Elder, Joey Wentz, Didier Fuentes, and minor league signings Martin Perez and Carlos Carrasco remain in the competition for Atlanta’s fifth starter job. On paper, the Braves still have a good amount of rotation depth, though the argument that the team could or should acquire more starting pitching has only gotten louder in the wake of these latest injury concerns.
President of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos said on Friday that the team remained on the hunt for more of a front-of-the-rotation type that could start a playoff game, rather than a pure depth starter. Looking at the list of remaining free agent starters, Lucas Giolito (who has been linked to the Braves on the rumor mill), Max Scherzer, or Zack Littell could potentially fit the bill, though it might be hard seeing any of that trio displace a healthy Sale, Strider, or Lopez as Atlanta’s top choices in a playoff rotation. Obviously, the first concern for the Braves in the wake of a 76-86 season is just to get into the postseason altogether, and a lack of healthy pitching was one of the key reasons behind Atlanta’s disappointing 2025 campaign.
Jurickson Profar Underwent Sports Hernia Surgery In November
Braves outfielder Jurickson Profar told reporters (including Mark Bowman of MLB.com) this morning that he underwent surgery for a sports hernia back in November. The procedure required six weeks of recovery time and he enters camp without any restrictions. Per Bowman, Profar indicated he first felt discomfort due to the issue back in September and it flared up again during offseason workouts.
Profar, 33 later this week, is in an uncertain place as he heads into his second season with Atlanta. The switch-hitter’s 2024 campaign with the Padres was nothing short of phenomenal and saw him live up to his pedigree as the sport’s former #1 overall prospect. He earned his first career All-Star appearance and Silver Slugger award that year, slashing .280/.380/.459 with a 139 wRC+. He swatted 24 homers and stole ten bases in 158 games and paired a 15.1% strikeout rate with an 11.4% walk rate. That brilliant season earned Profar a three-year, $42MM contract in Atlanta, but his time with the Braves was derailed almost immediately by a PED suspension. That left him to serve an 80-game suspension that wiped out the first half of his 2025 season.
Once Profar returned to Atlanta, he managed to pick up more or less right where he left off. In 355 plate appearances from his reinstatement in July to the end of the season, Profar slashed .248/.358/.446 with 14 homers and nine steals. He struck out 15.8% of the time while walking at a phenomenal 13.2% clip, giving him an overall wRC+ of 126. Profar’s use of a performance-enhancing substance will surely cast doubt on his numbers for some, and as the veteran gets deeper into his 30s he’ll surely suffer age-related decline. For now, though, it’s easy to pencil the switch-hitter in as a likely above-average contributor to the Braves lineup.
Those contributions figure to come primarily at DH, at least to start the year. Profar doesn’t seem especially enthused about the change. Bowman notes that when asked about primarily playing DH this year, he “gritted his teeth, smirked, and made it clear he’s not excited about the role.” Even so, Profar did say (as noted by Gabe Burns of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution) that he’s willing to help the team however he can.
To that end, it’s hard to argue that the best version of this Braves roster doesn’t have Profar at DH. He’s long been among the weakest defenders in the sport according to defensive metrics, and with DH Marcell Ozuna having been replaced in the lineup by the defensively solid Mike Yastrzemski it makes plenty of sense to get him off the grass Perhaps that could change at some point in the season, depending on the performance and health of the club’s other outfielders. Another potential x-factor could be Sean Murphy, who is slated to begin the year on the injured list but could factor into the DH mix (alongside fellow catcher Drake Baldwin) upon his return to action.
For now, though, the Braves will need to take every advantage they can get as they look to make up ground against the Phillies and Mets in the NL East. The club is coming off its worst season since Alex Anthopoulos took over baseball operations in 2018, and getting a full season out of a healthy and effective Profar figures to be one way Atlanta will try to get back on track. Of course, they’ll also need better health and productivity from the rest of a lineup that saw key players like Austin Riley, Michael Harris II, and Ozzie Albies take steps backwards at the dish last year, and better health from pitchers like Chris Sale and Reynaldo Lopez will be crucial as well.
Ha-Seong Kim Could Return In Early May
Just over a month after signing a one-year, $20MM deal to come back to the club, Braves shortstop Ha-Seong Kim went down with a torn tendon in his finger. The team announced the initial recovery timeline to be four to five months. Kim is trending toward an earlier return. General manager Alex Anthopoulos told reporters, including Mark Bowman of MLB.com, that there’s hope Kim could come back in early May.
Kim popped up as an option on MLBTR’s list of 60-day IL candidates, though he was more of a long shot. Atlanta will likely do what it can to avoid making that move if there’s any chance Kim can be back on the early end of the timeline. The recent update from Anthopoulos makes a 60-day IL placement all the more unlikely.
The Braves scooped up Kim off waivers from Tampa Bay late last season, with the Rays looking to duck the shortstop’s $16MM player option. Atlanta wasn’t able to get Kim back on the player option, but did convince him to sign for an extra $4MM as a free agent. He was set to return as the club’s starting shortstop.
Kim delivered solid production in his final three seasons in San Diego, including a 17-homer, 38-steal season in 2023. He also netted a Gold Glove award that year. Kim then landed in Tampa Bay as a free agent. The Rays gave him a two-year, $29MM deal with an opt-out, despite the fact that Kim was recovering from right shoulder surgery. He played just 24 games with the team.
Atlanta will likely patch together the shortstop position until Kim is healthy. The team acted quickly after the news broke, signing utilityman Jorge Mateo the very next day. Mateo has bounced around defensively in his six-year career, but he’s spent the most time at shortstop (294 appearances). The Braves acquired Mauricio Dubón in a trade with the Astros. Nick Allen, Atlanta’s primary shortstop last season, went the other way in the deal. Dubón is a candidate to mix in at the position. The Braves also re-acquired Brett Wisely as additional infield depth.
Led by the defensive-minded Allen, the Braves finished dead last in OPS at shortstop in 2025. Allen put up a .530 mark in 408 plate appearances. Orlando Arcia, Vidal Bruján, and Luke Williams were even worse. Kim slashed a middling .253/.316/.368 in two dozen games with Atlanta.
Photo courtesy of Jordan Godfree, Imagn Images