This is the next player the Atlanta Braves should hand a contract extension

Because of a report from Ken Rosenthal last week, there’s been a lot of chatter surrounding the Braves reaching a contract extension with Drake Baldwin, who looks like he’s headed to his first All-Star Game after winning the 2025 NL Rookie of the Year award.

“The Braves, however, have yet to seriously engage Baldwin in discussions on an extension, according to people briefed on the matter,” Rosenthal reports for The Athletic. “Their hesitance almost certainly stems from the reason catchers rarely get big money — the wear and tear of the position, even with days at designated hitter offering occasional relief.

“The last catcher the Braves extended, Sean Murphy at $73 million over six years, provided $39.6 million of value in his first year with the club according to FanGraphs’ dollars metric, which is WAR converted to a dollar scale based on what a player would earn in free agency. But injuries cost Murphy nearly half his team’s games the past two seasons and the first 35 of this one.”

Alex Anthopoulos also recently addressed the situation, essentially offering a “no comment” response, noting that the Braves prefer to handle those matters internally. However, he did make it clear that he believes Drake Baldwin is going to be in Atlanta for a very long time.

With so many years still remaining on Baldwin’s rookie contract, though, an extension doesn’t necessarily need to be treated as an immediate priority. If we’re talking about players the Braves should probably be focusing on right now from a contractual standpoint, the conversation likely begins with Mauricio Dubón, who has been a revelation since arriving in Atlanta following an offseason trade with the Houston Astros.

Dubón’s versatility and clutch-hitting have directly translated into wins for the Braves this season. He’s primarily handled shortstop duties while Ha-Seong Kim recovers from injury, but he’s also shifted to center field while Michael Harris II has dealt with nagging injuries. There are only a handful of players in baseball capable of credibly playing every position on the diamond, and that versatility has become invaluable for a Braves team that has spent the first six weeks patching holes all over the roster.

On the season, Dubón is hitting .271 with a couple of home runs and a .741 OPS. Those aren’t exactly jaw-dropping surface-level numbers, but it’s the situations in which he’s produced that really stand out.

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W/ RISP: .308 average, .829 OPS, 21 RBIs

2 Outs W/ RISP: .421 average, 1.108 OPS, 14 RBIs

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Through not even 40 games, Dubón already has 21 RBIs with runners in scoring position, and 14 of those have come with two outs. For comparison, Nick Allen — the player Atlanta traded straight up for Dubón — finished with 22 RBIs total all of last season.

That kind of production has been a breath of fresh air at shortstop, a position that’s largely been an offensive black hole for the Braves since Dansby Swanson left for the Chicago Cubs in free agency.

Dubón probably isn’t going to rack up awards or stack All-Star appearances throughout his career. But every winning team has players that simply know how to impact baseball games in subtle ways — the Martin Prado types.

Dubón fits that mold perfectly, and with him amid the final year of his contract, the Braves would be wise to figure out a way to keep him in Atlanta for a few more seasons.

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(Photo by Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire)