2026 Team Previews: Atlanta Braves
A detailed fantasy baseball oriented team preview of the 2026 Atlanta Braves
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Podcast
Intro
I have been a bit obsessed with the 2023 Braves. The fact that basically their whole lineup had career years (and that’s an understatement in many cases) at the same time, and then they all went back to their career norms after that. It’s suspicious, bro! You could really get a lot of CLICKS and ENGAGEMENT by doing that cool thing you can do with stats with the 2023 Braves. You know what I’m talking about, right? When you massage the numbers and selectively use stats to make your point while ignoring all of the data that goes against your point? Love that.
As I went through each hitter here, the same thing kept coming up. Like “man this guy was elite in 2023 but then has been way worse the last two years”. I’m not ready to accuse the Braves of cheating, I’m not even sure how that would work, but I am pretty much ready to throw that season out and just look at 2024-2025 with these guys.
It’s a solid roster, for sure. There’s some age, but they don’t have a real weakness anywhere if they all stay healthy. That was the issue last year. Sale, Schwellenbach, Strider, Acuna, and Riley all missed significant time. But they should all be good to go ahead of 2026, which makes this Braves lineup a playoff team and a threat to win the NL East.
Hitters
Ronald Acuna Jr.
Pos: OF
Age: 28
It’s been since 2023 that Acuna has played a full season. He’ll have a good shot to do it again this year. That fact alone means he’s a first-round pick again. He returned to the Braves lineup in late May. There were some highs, and there were some lows. But the end-of-season line was just fine:
→ .290/.417/.518, 21 HR, 9 SB, 24.8% K%, 17.2% BB%
A couple of things stand out. Let’s put the last five seasons’ worth of numbers up to get perspective.
The home run rate was awesome. Not a problem there. But the strikeout rate is a bit concerning, and he did not run with anywhere near the same aggression on the bases. He’s played 144 games in the last two with a 24% K%. In that insane 2023 season, you see, he was under 12%. But 24% has been the norm for him. What in the world happened in 2023 with so many of these Braves? I don’t want to get too conspiratorial with it, but that 11.4% K% almost feels like a typo.
I think we should be expecting around that 24% mark moving forward. We can forgive some of the stuff that went on last year because he was coming back from such a long time off and a major injury. But a 74% Zone-Contact%, sub-70% overall contact rate, and a 46% Swing% backs up a higher K%.
The steals will come back, at least a lot of the way back, with health. No doubt they wanted him to ease into it with the knee last year. He did not attempt a steal for a couple of weeks. But he was under a 10% attempt rate every month. I’d go back to a 25-35 steal expectation for Acuna. His speed was down (64th percentile sprint speed). There’s a good chance that comes up, but we’re also dealing with a guy on the wrong side of peak years.
The other thing that stood out was the super high walk rate, especially with the 46% Swing%. It was the highest walk rate in the league, and nobody over a 43% Swing% was anywhere close. That makes some sense when you think about it. Pitchers were afraid of his power, while not being nearly as afraid of his base running. A few of those key Braves bats (Riley, Ozuna, Albies, Harris) were either absent or struggling for most of the year, so it made sense to be careful with Acuna. He saw a very high 41% Ball% against, and a 120 FEAR SCORE (which is a mixture of strikes seen, fastballs seen, intentional walks, and other stuff like that, all graded on a scale where 100 is the league average).
If he gets the green light (and some of the sprint speed) back next year, they won’t be able to work around him like that.
I just can’t shake that 2023 season. The 41 bombs and 73 steals, really out of nowhere. He’s cleared 30 homers only one other time, and his next highest in steals was 29.
If he’s really going to be a 24% K% guy again (a fair projection in my opinion), you have the risk that Acuna is a .270 hitter with 25-30 bombs and 15-20 steals while not driving in many runs as a lead-off hitter who gets walked a lot.
That’s about as bad of a sentence as I can write about Acuna, and the worst I could do was say .270 with a 25-15 season. I’m just trying to make the point that we are a long time removed from “#1 overall pick” territory with the Braves phenom.
Projection
635 PA, 88 R, 26 HR, 92 RBI, 15 SB, .266/.365/.469
Note on this: I will be boosting his attempt rate up to 25% in a future update, so I’d up his steals to 23-25.
Ranking
Gunnar is really the only competition at this point in the ranking process, and it’s not too close. I’ll take my chances on Acuna.
Matt Olson
Pos: 1B
Age: 31
The best ability is availability, they say. I don’t personally think that’s true. I’d rather have someone who is slightly less available but also really good than someone who is always there, sucking at whatever they’re doing. But Olson has played 162 games in four straight years, which is an incredible thing to see.
Olson’s 2023 season went way better than anybody thought it would. His 2024 season went way worse than anybody thought it would. And then his 2025 season went about exactly how we thought it would. He has given us a little bit of everything. But it shows you the beautiful give-and-take of the game of baseball. Streaks, balance, regression. It’s a beautiful thing.
There is a balance to the universe, right? What goes up must come down. Short-term pleasures are usually long-term pain. Short-term pain is often a long-term benefit.
We aren’t at the point where we’re starting to really worry about Olson’s age, but it’s probably fair to say his best physical years are behind him. It’s a safe prediction to make that he won’t ever repeat 2023. And that seems to be true with most of these Braves. That 2023 was so, so weird. But I’ve done enough conspiricizing on that.
Here are the numbers that count for Olson from last year:
→ 24% K%
→ 12% BB%
→ 14.3% Brl%
→ 78.2% Zone-Contact%
→ .265 xBA
→ .371 xwOBA
→ 108.4 EV90
We could look at the trends data and all of the crazy detailed numbers we have in baseball.
But I think it’s best to just keep it simple with guys like Olson. He’s been remarkably consistent in K% and BB%. He’s the same guy every year. He’ll hit clean-up in an at least decent offense and drive in Ronald Acuna Jr. and others plenty of times. The home run floor seems to be 25, and there’s 40+ upside still in the bag.
The batting average won’t be .290 or anything like that, but he’s not going to give you a bad number in that regard. At this point, a .260 batting average works fine for your fantasy team, and Olson is capable of that.
Olson is a safe pick for power production that doesn’t hurt your team’s batting average. He’s a bit better in OBP leagues with the high walk rate and the .366 OBP we saw last year. And there’s ceiling for 35 homers and 120 RBI.
If anybody is super pro or super anti Olson, I’d just stop listening to those people. They’re overthinking things. This is a fair price on a proven player.
Projection
654 PA, 94 R, 30 HR, 83 RBI, 4 SB, .255/.348/.437
Ranking
I think Olson outdoes Kurtz in 2026 fantasy leagues about 40% of the time. They’re pretty close, and Olson is a lot safer or a bet. But Kurtz has the upside with the potential 50+ homers and .280 batting average. That’s mostly just about the fact that we haven’t seen much of him. We know who Olson is, and we’re still figuring Kurtz out. For the cost, give me Olson. But I’ll rank Kurtz ahead of Olson when viewing the full picture.
Austin Riley
Pos: 3B
Age: 28
Another name to add to the list of Braves who have not come close to their 2023 season. Riley hit .281 in that year with 37 bombs, 117 runs, and 97 RBI. Since then:
→ 2024: 110 GP, .256, 19 HR, 63 R, 56 RBI
→ 2025: 102 GP, .260, 16 HR, 54 R, 54 RBI
The main issue is the health. He hasn’t played a full season since that 2023 season. But he also hasn’t swung the bat like he did from 2021-2023 lately, slugging .461 in 2024 and then .428 last year. His K% also ballooned to almost 29% last year.
Things have gone the wrong way for Riley. But he’s still very young, and we can attribute some of this recent stuff to the fact that he hasn’t been healthy. I’d have my money on Riley having another 30+ homer season again sometime pretty soon. And this Braves lineup is just some health and good fortune away from being one of the better units in the league.
Riley can still smack the ball. His EV90 was way up at 109 last year. His barrel rate was 15.2%. He just whiffed too much (78% Z-Contact%) last year.
I wouldn’t count on a good batting average from Riley, although he has done that in the past, and he’s also one of the few guys in the league at this point who does not steal any bases at all.
Drafters aren’t giving us a discount this year. His ADP is around 70. He’s the #5 3B off the board in drafts right now. He’s one of the five guys who come before the big 3B cliff. So I’m in on Riley. I still view the guy as one of the best power bats in the league, and you could turn around and get third-round production out of him. All he needs is health, I think.
Projection
601 PA, 81 R, 27 HR, 79 RBI, 3 SB, .257/.320/.471
Ranking
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