Drake Baldwin is in position to join long line of strong Braves catchers

It’s been a long time since the Braves had an extended problem at catcher. Drake Baldwin is coming to make sure that there are no problems while Sean Murphy is out.

Spring training is currently rocking and rolling (in the closest way possible that the idea of spring training can be associated with rocking and rolling) and usually around this time of year, if you aren’t worried about the Grapefruit League pennant race then you’re usually worried about making sure that all of the regular starters get through preseason without suffering an injury.

We’re barely into March and the injury bug has bitten the Atlanta Braves once again. Indeed, Sean Murphy got hit by a pitch earlier this week and now he’s on the shelf for the next 4-to-6 weeks due to cracked ribs. It really stinks to see that for anybody but especially for Sean Murphy. Injuries played a big role in derailing his 2024 season and while it’s good that this won’t take him out for all that many regular season games, this is still valuable time to get ready for the regular season without having to do soon the fly when the games actually count.

If Murphy was going to make a real bounce-back here in 2025 then a healthy start to the season would’ve been imperative in making that a reality. Now, he’ll have a tougher road ahead and it’s a bummer to see, really. I still believe that Sean Murphy will have a bounce-back season once he’s healthy but this definitely threw a rench in the early portion of those plans.

It also means that for the first time in a while, we’re going to have some serious questions for the Braves as far as catcher goes — and when I say a while, I mean a while. All the way back in 2017, I wrote an article on here about how the Braves really haven’t had a bad situation at catcher since the Fresh Prince days of 1993. I suppose now’s as good of a time as any to update how things have gone for the Braves at the catcher spot since I wrote that post.

• 2017: Tyler Flowers finishes the 2017 season with 4.3 fWAR, good for fourth-best in baseball among qualified catchers
• 2018: Flowers finishes 2017 with 2.0 fWAR and Kurt Suzuki backs him up with 1.0 fWAR for the season. Not spectacular but not bad by any means, either.
• 2019: Flowers comes in with 1.4 fWAR for the season, backed up by Brian McCann recording 0.9 fWAR for the season.
• 2020: Travis d’Arnaud finishes the shortened season with 1.9 fWAR, only 0.1 behind Salvador Perez for the best mark in baseball.
• 2021: Braves have their first tough year at the catcher spot for a long time. Travis d’Arnaud only plays 60 games and produces 0.9 fWAR. There’s a revolving door that includes Kevan Smith (remember him?), William Contreras, Stephen Vogt, Alex Jackson, Jeff Mathis and Jonathan Lucroy. The Braves had all of this going on and won the World Series. 2021 was a wild year, y’all.
• 2022: Travis d’Arnaud and William Contreras combine to form a mean 1-2 punch at the backstop. d’Arnaud finishes with 3.9 fWAR for the season while Contreras finishes with 2.0.
• 2023: The Braves trade Contreras to the Brewers, bring in Sean Murphy and Murphy promptly delivers a near-5 fWAR season in his Braves debut campaign. Travis d’Arnaud gets them over the 5-win mark by contributing 0.7 fWAR.
• 2024: Sean Murphy falls off of a cliff in his second season but Travis d’Arnaud plays the majority of games and salvages things with a 1.8 fWAR season behind the plate.

So there you have it: Ever since 1993, you could legitimately make the argument that the only year where the Braves weren’t getting reliable production from their catcher was 2021. Other than that, the Braves have been able to rely on consistent production from their catcher for over 30 seasons now. That’s an incredible run of form for any team and it really has helped the Braves over the years that they’ve had their ducks in a row when it comes to one of the more important positions on a baseball diamond.

So with that being said you can understand just how there might be a little bit of pressure on Drake Baldwin to come out of the gates swinging. Now granted, every fanbase hopes and prays that their top prospect will become a club legend for years and years to come but for Baldwin, I think it’s very clear that the Braves are expecting their top prospect to deliver the goods.

He’s gotten plenty of reps here in spring training already and that was before Sean Murphy went down due to injury. Before the injury, there were already murmurs about whether or not Chadwick Tromp had a firm grasp on the backup catcher role. Now that it appears that the backup catcher is going to be starting a decent amount of games going forward, those murmurs have turned into loud questions about whether or not Drake Baldwin will be ready to step into the starting role for Opening Day.

Again, it’s pretty clear that the Braves think they’ve got themselves something when it comes to Baldwin going forward. You know they’re feeling good when they’ve got Chris Sale giving glowing reviews like this to Mark Bowman at MLB.com:

“He’s got an unbelievable work ethic,” Sale said. “He’s got a great routine and he’s around all the right guys. That’s what you want from a guy who is in position to take over a very important position. He’s not afraid to ask questions and he’s doing all the right things.”

Sale gave this complimentary assessment after throwing four scoreless innings with Baldwin serving as his catcher in a 0-0 tie against the Twins on Tuesday at CoolToday Park. This was the first time the accomplished hurler had ever worked with the 23-year-old prospect, who ranks as MLB Pipeline’s No. 62 prospect and the Braves’ No. 1 prospect per MLB Pipeline.

“I thought he looked great back there,” Sale said. “He never looked overwhelmed and never looked overmatched. He was on point really. So, that was a lot of fun.”

Then you have Ian Anderson talking about him like this in another article:

“He’s awesome,” Braves starting pitcher Ian Anderson said. “I could stand here all day and talk about him. He’s so good in the locker room, and he loves being around the field. He’s one of the first guys to show up and one of the last guys to leave. I think that goes a long way for that position. He can hit. He’s probably one of the better hitting prospects I’ve seen.”

Now granted, this all could be just one big misdirection like when the Braves Media Apparatus went all in on Vaughn Grissom for an offseason before he ended up getting sent to Boston for some guy named Chris Sale. Still, I’m pretty skeptical since it’s clear that Baldwin is going to get an actual shot for a while — or at least he will if he continues to show out here in spring training. I think the Braves do believe in him, which makes it very trick to figure out what to do with him going forward since Sean Murphy is still here and still kicking when healthy.

With all of that being said, Drake Baldwin’s going to have to live up to a lofty expectation of Braves catchers while he’s out there. As I mentioned earlier, the Braves usually get strong production out of their backstop in any given season and while the pressure wouldn’t be on Baldwin to produce for the entire season, it’s not like this is going to be a situation where he’ll be treated with kid gloves, either. He’ll be in there for a reason and that reason is probably that the Braves believe that he’ll give them the best chance of winning for the time being.

There’s already plenty of hype surrounding Drake Baldwin and his impending arrival to the big leagues and now it appears that that chance will be coming sooner rather than later. It’ll be extremely interesting to see if Baldwin can continue the legacy of strong catching performance from Braves catches but if anybody appears to be up to the task, it’s this guy right here.