Braves announce Game 1 lineup for matchup with Phillies
Game 1 of the National League Wild Card Series starts in under three hours, and the Braves have announced their lineup, shuffling things up quite a bit. Mauricio Dubon gets the nod in the cleanup spot with a left-handed starter on the mound in Jesus Luzardo. Drake Baldwin gets the start behind the plate instead […]
Game 1 of the National League Wild Card Series starts in under three hours, and the Braves have announced their lineup, shuffling things up quite a bit.
Mauricio Dubon gets the nod in the cleanup spot with a left-handed starter on the mound in Jesus Luzardo. Drake Baldwin gets the start behind the plate instead of Sean Murphy, with Mike Yastrzemski as the designated hitter and Ha-Seong Kim playing shortstop and batting ninth.
Game 1. #LetItFly pic.twitter.com/pX5jhaa6ln
— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) September 29, 2026
Based on how the season has transpired, the Braves don’t really have any good options when it comes to the bottom of the order. I probably would have expected Sean Murphy to start behind the plate because of his defense and potential upside offensively. He did have three hits in his final two appearances of the season, but it’s hard to really argue for a guy who hit just .182 this season with a .556 OPS.
Instead, the Braves will roll with Ha-Seong Kim at shortstop in the series opener. His struggles this season have been well-documented — hitting just .116 on the season — but he did show some clutch genetics over the last five weeks, coming up with multiple walk-off knocks. Perhaps Walt Weiss believes there’s some more magic in that bat with all the chips down, but this is a decision that will likely get scrutinized if it doesn’t work.
If it does work, though, and Ha-Seong Kim comes up with another critical base knock, Weiss is going to look like the Mad Hatter. It all goes down in about two-and-a-half hours.
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(Photo by David J. Griffin/Icon Sportswire)
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