Should the Braves continue their catching situation as is or make an adjustment?
A common saying you’ll hear around baseball is young players need to play. Bench roles are usually better spent on veteran players who are used to staying ready without consistent playing time and developing players need to be in the lineup everyday to, well, develop.
The 2025 Atlanta Braves have found themselves in the predicament of deciding if this is hard-and-fast rule or one they can break. They currently have their top prospect, catcher Drake Baldwin, playing in more of a supporting role in the majors vs playing everyday in the minors. Starting catcher Sean Murphy has come back from his rib injury and has been a massive piece of the offense, which has relegated Baldwin to, at most, a couple of starts per week. Baldwin has done incredibly well in his role, showing maturity beyond his years to stay ready, but is it detrimental to his development to be sitting on the bench so often?
The Braves could, very easily, call up James McCann or Jason Delay or sign a catcher off the street to play in the traditional back-up role while a prospect at the level of Drake Baldwin plays everyday at AAA Gwinnett. This is the route most expected once Sean Murphy returned from his injury, and especially after Murphy returned with thunder in his bat, consistently providing elite offensive production again.
The story line most of spring training was Murphy was going to catch 75% to 80% of the time, which was part of the calculus of why the team opted to decline the $8M team option on clubhouse favorite Travis d’Arnaud. And obviously if your starting catcher is playing that much, having a top prospect serve as his back-up doesn’t make much sense given how many games he’d be sitting on the bench. Chadwick Tromp, remember him, was set to serve as Murphy’s primary back-up while Baldwin was supposed to be Gwinnett’s primary catcher.
But a funny thing happened while Murphy was still recovering from his injury; the quality of at-bats Baldwin was putting up simply couldn’t be ignored. Extreme levels of patience, advanced levels of plate discipline, hard hit balls from line to line, and all of that combined with the benefits of having another LH hitter on team and on the bench for late game situations.
The whispers became louder and louder that when Murphy came back, it would not be Chadwick Tromp staying around as the back-up, but the Braves top prospect. And sure enough, that’s exactly what happened.
But is this how they should continue?
Photo by Edward M. Pio Roda/Getty Images
Since Murphy was reinstated from the injured list on April 8, Drake Baldwin has taken just 26 plate appearances in almost 4 weeks. To his supreme credit, he has absolutely thrived since taking up this role, posting a 201 wRC+ in that time and an impressive batted ball profile to support it. In fact, it’s likely the only reason the Braves have continue with this setup is because of how much Baldwin has excelled, despite inconsistent playing time and sporadic at-bats. Had there been a noticeable drop in production or even at-bat quality once Murphy came back, Baldwin would’ve almost certainly found himself back in Gwinnett, with a different catcher serving as Atlanta’s back-up. But there’s been no drop, no decline, no red flags, and to the contrary, green flags everywhere.
Pitchers praise Baldwin’s maturity and preparedness with the respect to calling a game. Coaches rave about his work ethic. Anyone with eyeballs can see his quality at the plate. Being able to control the run game is probably the one knock you can fairly ding Baldwin for but the number of stolen bases the Braves have allowed isn’t entirely on him. Even Brian Snitker has acknowledged the pitchers need to help more in that area, holding runners better than they have so far.
So this seems like the setup for now. Braves will start Murphy around 70% of the time and Baldwin gets the rest, as well as potential pinch hit opportunities late in games. Murphy leads the team in homers despite missing the first 2 weeks of the season, so they really have to be careful how frequently they’re taking him out of the lineup. But Baldwin is their top prospect and can’t just be left rotting on the bench. He needs as much playing time as possible. It’s a delicate situation made even more complicated by the fact that they have a full-time DH in Marcell Ozuna who never comes out of the lineup, nor should he.
So is this the best way to handle this? Baldwin is certainly one of the best 26 players in the organization and therefore has earned a spot on the active roster but are they sacrificing too much of his development given their incumbent All-Star catcher looks very much like an All-Star again?
Baldwin is certainly learning tons more by being around major league pitchers and major league coaches every day, even when he’s not playing and you can argue that education alone is worth less playing time than he’d get in Gwinnett. But again, it’s a delicate balance and very easily can get detrimental if not handled correctly. But as long as his production and his process look as professional as they do, this is likely going to be his role.
As for next year, or the next year, or the next year (Murphy is signed for 4 more years), that’s TBD.