This story was excerpted from Mark Bowman's Braves Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox. Zach Sweet wrote this edition of the newsletter.
ATLANTA -- Projecting Mauricio Dubón would eventually become the Braves’ primary shortstop was easy. Predicting that he’d also become the best option for the cleanup spot would have elicited some crazy reactions.
Yet, here we are entering the season’s most influential stretch with Dubón set to be Atlanta’s primary cleanup hitter moving forward.
“I saw him in the hallway and said, ‘If you're going to hit cleanup, you're going to have to go eat some more,’” manager Walt Weiss said.
Listed at 173 pounds, Dubón certainly isn’t the prototypical cleanup hitter. He has a .377 career slugging percentage (.393 this season) and a .676 career OPS (.708 in 2026). But those days of putting the big burly power hitter in the lineup’s fourth spot are done.
Yeah, it would be nice to put Austin Riley in that spot to split the two left-handed hitters occupying the third and fifth spots, Matt Olson and Michael Harris II. But while showing improvement with his .769 OPS since the break, Riley has still produced an alarming 39.1 percent strikeout rate during this span.
That’s far too much swing and miss for that spot.
So what are Dubón’s credentials for the cleanup spot? Well, overall this season, he’s hit .270 with a .315 on-base percentage. Not impressed? He’s matched a career high with 10 homers thus far. Still nothing? How about the fact that his average exit velocity, barrel rate and hard-hit percentage all rank in the bottom 20 percent of all MLB hitters?
Now that we’ve reviewed some of these archaic credentials, let’s remember the cleanup hitter’s primary role is to drive in runs and capitalize on as many run-producing opportunities as possible.
Well, Dubón meets those requirements. He is hitting just .242 with a .637 OPS in 333 plate appearances with none on base. But he is also hitting .325 (37-for-114) with runners in scoring position and .352 (19-for-54) with a .934 OPS with two outs and runners in scoring position.
To put this in perspective, Ozzie Albies (.306) is the only other Brave who has hit better than .300 with two outs and RISP. Drake Baldwin (.309) is the only Atlanta player who has hit above .300 with RISP. Riley has hit .246 with RISP and .185 with two outs and RISP. Olson has hit .226 with RISP and .200 with two outs and RISP.
“The thing I like is it's high contact,” Weiss said of Dubón, whose 12.3 strikeout rate ranks within the 93 percentile among MLB hitters.
Weiss said this a couple hours before Dubón fueled Tuesday night’s three-run first by hitting Tyler Glasnow’s 2-2 curveball to right field for an RBI single. The pitch was 0.83 feet off the ground. Would have been ball three. Instead it was just another example of the shortstop’s ability to put the bat on the ball.
Dubón also proved valuable in the eighth when Olson doubled and advanced to third base on a slap bunt. This wasn’t anything called from the dugout. Dubón knew he had to get the runner to third and did so by showing bunt, before pulling the bat back to slap a grounder to the right side. This positioned Olson to score on Albies’ game-winning single in uncontested fashion.
“Our 140-pound cleanup hitter threw in a run, too,” Weiss said with a laugh. “That's why he's there. It's because of contact and because he puts together at-bats like you’ve seen him put together. He’s just a tough out, especially in those situations with guys in scoring position, because he's using the entire field, and he can shoot the ball down the right-field line. He can also set you up and turn on something inside. I mean, he's just a really heady player.”
Olson leads the Majors in extra-base hits and Chris Sale is in the running for another Cy Young Award. But any conversation about who has been the most valuable Braves player this season has to at least include Dubón, the guy who became available because the Astros didn’t want to pay him approximately $6 million.
During the Aug. 3 media session that followed the Trade Deadline, I said, “It feels like Dubón should be the starting shortstop, and if Dubón is the starting shortstop, why would you keep [Jim] Jarvis up?”
After president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos replied by implying they were sticking with Jarvis as the primary shortstop, I said, "So Dubón will just be rotating [positions]?”
“I’m not into giving titles because things change,” Anthopoulos said.
Three weeks later, Dubón is the starting shortstop and the cleanup hitter. The more things have changed, the more valuable he has become.