By now, Atlanta Braves fans that are plugged into prospects and the draft are already aware that the MLB Draft Lottery did not go well for the Braves as they moved down to the ninth overall pick. While the sting of that drop is blunted by the fact that they still have a top 10 pick as well as basically another first round pick at No. 26 thanks to Drake Baldwin's Rookie of the Year win, it was still a tough pill to swallow for fans (and team officials) hoping Atlanta could move up into the draft tier where there are several elite shortstop prospects.
However, this is the hand that the Braves have been dealt and they are almost certainly going to end up with multiple top draft prospects when the dust settles. In fact, multiple publications put out early mock drafts as soon as the draft lottery finished and...they are painful to look at from a Braves perspective (although both picks would be fascinating).
Early mock drafts post-Draft Lottery have the Braves picking Jacob Lombard and Gio Rojas
Before we go any further at all, it is important to note that early mock drafts like this are not firm predictions and definitely are not informed by intel from teams themselves. It is way too early to project where players will be picked and teams haven't even gotten their boards put together yet. In reality, late spring is the earliest people should be looking at mock drafts with any degree of confidence.
However, they are fun thought experiments and an early look at the draft scouting buzz and both Baseball America and MLB Pipeline put mocks out after the draft lottery. The fine folks at BA opted to have Atlanta picking high school shortstop Jacob Lombard who would be awesome to see at #9 overall (but he probably won't be there) and Pipeline went with prep lefty Gio Rojas who already has an upper 90's fastball and a nasty slider, but who also needs to work on his other offerings.
Unfortunately, these mocks are also a reminder that the Braves' biggest need (long-term shortstop) has multiple potential solutions available just a few picks ahead of where they ended up. UCLA shortstop Roch Cholowsky is one of the best college shortstop prospects we have seen in years and he is joined by a shorstop class of Lombard, Justin Lebron, and Grady Emerson who are all (probably) going to be gone by the time the Braves pick.
But again, it is still early and we always see someone who everyone thought was a consensus top 10 talent in the draft fall a bit further than they should have. We also could see Atlanta go underslot with their pick and try to add multiple first round talents. There are many months before we will get a sense of what the best strategy of the Braves in the 2026 MLB Draft, but it is pretty clear that the ideal path is no longer available to them given how the lottery went.