Atlanta will head into the spring with a set lineup, but will need to round out the bench before Opening Day.

We will wrap up our week-long look at the Atlanta Braves roster with a quick glance of where things stand on the position player side. The Braves have most of their core locked up long-term so there is no real drama as far as the starting lineup goes. There are questions on how they will fill out the bench, but given how they have chosen to use their reserves the last couple of years, which guy hangs out on the bench and rarely plays isn’t a big decision or priority.

The first thing that jumps out after a quick glance is that the Braves currently only have 11 position players on their 40-man roster — which is two short of the 13 position players that they will have to carry during the regular season. So, there is work left to be done. Additionally, Atlanta still has five open spots on the 40-man roster — and that doesn’t include the fact that Ian Anderson, Penn Murfee and Angel Perdomo will all begin the season on the 60-day Injured List, thus opening up three more spots. All in all, there is plenty of flexibility here, and we can expect the Braves will be extremely active on the waiver wire in the lead-up to the regular season.

Catchers: Travis d’Arnaud, Sean Murphy

The Braves had one of the best catcher tandems in the majors last season with Sean Murphy and Travis d’Arnaud. Atlanta’s catchers ranked third in the majors in fWAR despite both d’Arnaud and Murphy massively underhitting their xwOBAs; Braves catchers had a .369 xwOBA last year, a .023 lead over the second-place team, with that .023 gap equivalent to the difference between second and 11th in terms of catcher hitting inputs. Murphy posted a 129 wRC+ and slugged a career-high 21 home runs in his first season in Atlanta, but a massive xwOBA underperformance in August and an actual swoon to average-ish inputs in September made it look like he had an ugly second half. Murphy didn’t disappoint behind the plate, though, finishing third in the majors among in Baseball Savant’s Fielding Run Value and seventh in Fangraphs’ aggregate catcher value assessment.

Despite the addition of Murphy, the Braves extended d’Arnaud through 2024 and hold an $8 million club option for his services for the 2025 campaign. d’Arnaud missed about a month due to a concussion and ended up appearing in 74 games while posting an 83 wRC+ and 11 homers — which, again, came with a more-than-fine .330 xwOBA that he massively underhit.

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