Despite suffering through their first true cold spell of the 2026 season recently, the Atlanta Braves remain in great shape. At 48-28, they have the second-best record in all of baseball, and they just took a series from one of the best teams in baseball, the Brewers. However, that doesn't mean that everything has gone the Braves' way this season.
In fact, Atlanta seems to be pretty snakebitten at the moment. Ronald Acuña Jr. is on the IL again, which has been a pretty huge blow to the depth of the lineup. Michael Harris II has dealt with a couple of nagging injuries over the last month or so, and the rotation continues to deal with the losses of Hurston Waldrep, Spencer Schwellenbach, and now Spencer Strider.
Making matters worse, the Braves have several players whose underperformance this season is making it impossible to run away with the NL East right now.
These are the Braves players who are keeping Atlanta from running away with the NL East this season
Importantly, this is not a list of Braves players that need to be shot into the sun. In fact, all of them are players who have been really good players in the not-too-distant past. Instead, this is just a recognition of the reality that these guys have not played up to expectations in 2026, and that it has cost the Braves in 2026 and will continue to do so unless they turn things around.
Austin Riley
Might as well start with the most obvious name on the list. The Braves gave Riley an extension worthy of a true franchise cornerstone, and while that deal started off well, injuries have caused it to age like spoiled milk. This year has been particularly concerning because Riley was supposedly healthy. However, he has looked like a shadow of his former self with a .638 OPS through 76 games in 2026.
Unfortunately, this season is also the continuation of a decline that has been very pronounced since the end of the 2023 season. Perhaps everything wrong with Riley is in his own head, or the injuries have simply been too much to overcome, or some combination of both. Regardless, Riley's inability to impact the baseball has made Atlanta far more susceptible to lefties than we are accustomed to seeing. After all, why would opposing teams worry about stacking southpaws without any scary right-handed bats like Riley used to be to worry about?
Ronald Acuña Jr.
In a lot of ways, Ronald Acuña Jr.'s story is very similar to Riley's, albeit to a less severe degree this season. Acuña Jr. just can't stay healthy, and when he was on the field this season, the results have been pretty underwhelming. He has salvaged some value thanks to his ability to draw walks as well as quite the heater to close out the month of May, but the rest of Acuña Jr.'s game has not been great.
Without Acuña Jr. being a reliable source of offense at the top of the lineup, this Braves lineup is a lot less scary. Already having to cover for the absence of the human toilet known as Jurickson Profar, Atlanta's outfield depth was already being tested. With Acuña Jr. hurt and struggling when he does play, the Braves don't have their best right-handed bat, and their outfield looks like the Island of Misfit Toys.
Grant Holmes
At this point, most reasonable people would agree that Grant Holmes needs to transition to the Braves' bullpen. He simply can't perform beyond the first time through the order anymore. Unfortunately, the Braves have been forced to not even entertain that idea due to injuries, and that is a problem.
With Holmes in the rotation, manager Walt Weiss has to account for the fact that Holmes has a very good chance of only giving Atlanta a handful of innings in each start. That increases the bullpen's workload and often impacts Weiss' in-game decisions in tight games simply due to the fact that their relievers have to throw more innings with Holmes around. This isn't just about Holmes' performance (which has been very iffy), but also about how his specific shortcomings are actively hurting other areas of the pitching staff.
Reynaldo Lopez
This one is a shame, because it really looked like the Braves were going to get away with murder by converting Reynaldo Lopez back into being a starter. The first season of the experiment was a huge success, although it may have come with a cost.
After dealing with shoulder troubles going back to the beginning of the 2025 season, Lopez doesn't look anywhere close to the same guy he was. His velocity is down, and things got so bad that Atlanta was forced to move him into the bullpen. That is yet another arm that the Braves were counting on for their rotation in 2026 that has fallen short of expectations. In Lopez's case, he fell out of the Braves' rotation altogether.
Ha-Seong Kim
Finally, we come to one of the biggest disappointments of 2026 in Ha-Seong Kim. Everyone was well aware that the Braves needed a real shortstop. With a decent showing after being traded to the Braves, Ha-Seong Kim seemed like the guy who, at minimum, could be a bridge to the future. Instead, he has been one of the worst hitters in baseball since returning from the injured list.
In fairness to Kim, this hasn't really been his fault. He was already having to deal with the after-effects of a pretty serious shoulder injury before he hurt his finger after a fall during the offseason. Just like that, a guy who was already trying to play catch-up lost his entire spring training plus a month or so of the regular season. At this point, most fans are just counting the days until the Braves trade for either a leftfielder or a shortstop, because such a move would almost certainly mean that Kim's toothpick of a bat wouldn't be in the lineup very often at all.
Add us as a preferred source on Google