The Atlanta Braves are currently in a weird and unenviable position, which is a consequence of their own making thanks to the disappointing performance that they’ve delivered on the field in 2025. Earlier this month, the word on the baseball street was that the Braves would be selling at the deadline (for obvious reasons) but it wouldn’t exactly be a full teardown. The only players available were those who were on an expiring contract this season.
MLB insider Bob Nightengale of USA Today’s reporting seems to corroborate that. In his latest article, he re-iterated the rumor that Marcell Ozuna, Raisel Iglesias and Pierce Johnson were all available and would likely be shopped around at the deadline by the Braves. What’s new from Nightengale is a rumor concerning what the Braves are going to do during the offseason. Apparently, they are indeed going to be hearing other teams out when it comes to offers for Ozzie Albies, Michael Harris II and Sean Murphy as well.
It would make sense for the Braves to at least listen to offers for all three of those players. Personally, I figured that they’d probably try to give Albies and Harris one more year to figure things out at the plate before potentially undergoing an actual teardown if 2026 is more like 2025 and less like 2021-2023. It also makes sense for them to listen on offers for Murphy since, well, Drake Baldwin exists and it sure looks like he’s going to be a stud at backstop. This all sounds about right!
With that being said, we are talking about a catcher who will be turning 31 in early-October, a second baseman who has had a rough go of it at the plate for two straight seasons now and a center fielder whose season at the plate has been going so “well” that he received a noticeable ovation from the fans in attendance for taking his 11th walk of the season in his 95th game of the season. I’m sure the Braves will listen but I can’t imagine that anybody but Murphy would receive a huge haul in return.
Even still, there’s a long way to go from “listening” to “actively shopping” and for all we know, Atlanta could very well use this offseason to try to make up for their mistake of not investing properly into the squad depth instead of going into a mini-teardown. They can certainly afford to spend some money on the squad since, uh, the organization is hardly hurting for money at the moment. It’ll be extremely interesting to see which direction the Braves go in — do they believe that it’s time for a reset or do they think that their window for returning to the top of the baseball mountain with another World Series title is still open for the foreseeable future?
We’ll likely know based on the actions that the Braves undergo during this offseason. So while this season’s trade deadline may not be the most eventful one for any given team, the real storm may be lurking and laying in wait for us during this coming offseason. We’ll see what happens.
