Before the season started, it looked like the Atlanta Braves had their starting outfield set. They had Michael Harris II, Ronald Acuña Jr. and the newly acquired Jurickson Profar as starters. They had Jarred Kelenic as the fourth outfielder and added Bryan De La Cruz as another bench option to allow for a mini platoon with Kelenic in case an outfielder got hurt. Well, Profar was suspended before Acuña returned, and both Kelenic and De La Cruz were absolutely awful early on, which meant… the Braves went ahead and brought in another temporary fourth outfielder with MLB experience, in the form of Alex Verdugo.
Verdugo had clearly lost a lot of his prestige since the days when he was the key piece the Red Sox received in the infamous Mookie Betts trade with the Dodgers. In a vacuum, the $1.5 million the Braves handed Verdugo late in Spring Training wasn’t a lot of money for some outfield depth from a player who had produced decent results, relatively speaking. Before his 2024 stint with the Yankees, Verdugo posted a wRC+ that was league average or better in every season from 2019 to 2023, and the only one of those seasons where he massively beat a bad xwOBA was the shortened 2020 season.
Verdugo was signed on March 20. Since he missed most of Spring Training due to his late signing, he started the season in the minors to get some reps in and build up the season.
What were the expectations?
When Verdugo was signed, his role was outfield depth. Little did the Braves know that they would essentially be forced to start him. For the price paid, it was a low-risk move for a fourth outfielder, who would get some starts if a corner outfielder were to get injured. Verdugo managed 0.6 fWAR in 2024, and was projected to have about 1 fWAR in 2025, so that’s exactly the kind of guy you want on your bench… in theory. But then Profar got suspended, Kelenic and De La Cruz both started terribly, and Acuña wouldn’t be back until the end of May, so… Verdugo became a de facto starter, and things went absolutely horribly.
The only way you can argue that Verdugo’s season wasn’t a failure is if you note that the Braves paid him “only” $1.5 million. However, Verdugo himself probably disagrees…. just like almost any other argument. He made his debut for the Braves on April 18, but was left without a roster spot on July 1. However, that ignores the pain.
Overall, Verdugo ended up hitting .239/.296/.289, good for just a 66 wRC+. Sure, he massively underperformed his xwOBA, but he also played some pretty atrocious defense, which was really problematic for a guy known as the rare corner outfielder who is pretty good defensively. It ended up being by far his worst offensive performance since his twenty-five plate appearances in his rookie season of 2017. From an fWAR perspective, he came in at -0.9, which was by far his worst. It was his only negative fWAR season outside of his -0.1 production in that cup of coffee in 2017.
Through the first nine games of his season, it looked like Verdugo might succeed. He hit a slash line of .350/.395/475, a 144 wRC+. He had no HRs at that point, but did have five doubles. That span included two four-hit games and a 3/3 K/BB ratio, which is pretty impressive from a contact perspective over nine games when you think about it.
One of those four-hit games was his best of the season, a 6-4 loss to the Diamondbacks on April 27. Verdugo led off the first and third with singles, but was turned into a double play both times. In the fifth, with the Braves down three and two outs, he doubled for their first run. In the seventh, he had one of his biggest hits of the season, a single with two on and the Braves two down, scoring a run and putting the tying run on third base. But that run failed, and Verdugo’s walk to set up the tying run in the ninth also failed to produce results.
Through 14 games he had a 133 wRC+. Even on May 12, he did things like walk off the Nats and justify the Braves’ decision to bunt for some reason:
And then… problems Real to set.
After that first nine-game stretch, it was all downhill from there. Looking at its moving weighted basic average (wOBA) per month, we see a steady decline.
Looking at his rolling expected wOBA (xwOBA), we can see that his decline was not due to bad luck.
As cliché as it sounds, nothing went right after the first nine games, except for a stray multi-hit game or a big hit here and there. In a season where the Braves lacked outfield depth, Verdugo performed so poorly that he was unable to hold down a roster spot. Worse, he was so bad that he was actively hurting the team because of, say, the potential contributions of someone like Eli White, but the Braves stuck with him when they had no objection to jettisoning Kelenic and De La Cruz after significantly fewer PAs.
His offense was terrible and his defense was below average. Signing him made sense for the Braves when it happened, but it just didn’t work.
Part of the problem, of course, is that Verdugo was somehow ultimately not good at most things, but also apparently cursed. Of the 348 players who achieved at least 200 PAs this season, his xwOBA underachievement was the 13th largest. In other words, he had the 24th lowest wOBA among those 348 players, but his xwOBA was a completely boring 128th worst.
Of course, that doesn’t mean it was just bad luck. Verdugo’s hit/guide at all costs approach and his incredible passivity at the plate (he barely swung on half the strikes he faced) were extra maddening in the context of the entire team shifting its offensive approach to be more like… Verdugo. He had the lowest z-swing, highest z-contact, and second-lowest pursuit velocity of his career, while swinging on less than ten percent of first pitches (MLB average is 30 percent) and only 45 percent of pitches in the middle (MLB average is 76 percent), finishing with a near career-low walk percentage that was much lower than league average. Just like the team as a whole, it’s not really clear Why Verdugo chose to do everything he did in such an exaggerated way.
Oh, and the Braves played him in front of over 200 PAs. Kelenic was banned after 65 PAs and -0.5 fWAR. De La Cruz was banned after 50 PAs and -0.4 fWAR. It took Verdugo a whopping 213 PAs, more than half of which came in first place, and -0.9 fWAR before the Braves finally sent him home.
It’s worth noting that Verdugo went 0-for-14 in the final three games of a four-game set with the Reds in early May, also stinging the team and essentially giving them a taste of what he was going to do over the next two months. On May 6, the Braves scored a one-run victory in extras, but Verdugo both hit a bases-loaded grounder in the seventh to keep the game scoreless, then failed to bring in the walkoff run from third base to end the ninth. Two days later, he again failed to get the walkoff run from third to ninth, although the Braves ultimately won that game as well. It’s kind of crazy to have this situation happen twice in three games with nothing to show for it, but that’s what carrying Verdugo was like for the Braves.
To be honest, there may not be many prospects for Verdugo in 2026. It might be sad to see for some, because when he first made his MLB debut, he had a lot of hype, enough to be the main return in the Mookie Betts deal. He even had a few MVP down votes in the shortened 2020 season, though that seems kind of strange considering his .299 xwOBA that year. But baseball is cruel, and Verdugo’s profile as a “slappy bat with a limited ceiling that relies on good corner defense in the outfield to justify playing time” isn’t very exciting, and given the way he went flat in 2025, it’s not clear why anyone would be interested in him other than a deal. As a result, he will have to fight for a 2026 roster spot on an MLB team. He’ll likely have to settle for a minors deal and hope some fortune comes his way in terms of roster openings. But no one even showed any interest in him after the Braves cut him, so he may have to find another league to play in, at least until 2026.
Projections show Verdugo still likely to be better than replacement level for 2026, but just barely. Again, the profile just isn’t very interesting unless a team really wants to zig when everyone else is zigging, and the 2025 Braves showed that wasn’t exactly a great idea, so Verdugo is unlikely to make an MLB impact in 2026.
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