The correct move to activate Ronald Acuña Jr. is to cut ties with Alex Verdugo

Per reports, the Braves are getting Ronald back for tonight's series opener. How do they make room for him on the roster?

Stuart Fairchild wasn’t in the original plan for the Atlanta Braves, and he can thank Jurickson Profar for that.

Coming off a four-game sweep at the hands of the San Diego Padres to open the season, the Atlanta Braves headed to Los Angeles to take on the Dodgers, reeling from the losing streak…and then things got worse, with news breaking on Monday morning that Profar was being suspended 80 games for violations of the league’s PED guidelines. The news was telegraphed by the acquisition of Fairchild, a glove-first outfielder who was designated for assignment by the Cincinnati Reds. Atlanta quickly acquired him for cash considerations, and he’s been on the roster ever since.

But with Ronald Acuña Jr. set to return to the Braves lineup today, per multiple reports, Fairchild’s roster spot as the fourth outfielder is tenuous. It shouldn’t be, though.

(UPDATE: The Atlanta Braves confirmed the news after the game.)

Let’s talk about it.

Verdugo has struggled for most of his tenure

Alex Verdugo, signed late in spring training, has led off in a majority of the games he’s played in for the Braves ever since being added to the roster in mid-April.¹

But what is sometimes lost in the initial excitement of his addition is that, with the exception of a few early outings, he hasn’t actually been that good.

Verdugo picked up two four-hit games in his first week with the team, sitting at a .341 average and with more walks (four) than strikeouts (three) at the end of his first ten games. The team was hot, too, going 8-2 in that stretch.

But since then, Verdugo’s been more pedestrian. Entering today, he has just three multi-hit games in his last eighteen contests and is batting under .200 with more than double the number of strikeouts (nine) to walks (four).

The team has actually started platooning him, starting Stuart Fairchild versus lefties since Verdugo is just 2-23 against southpaws. He’s gotten three games off in the last week, entering twice as a pinch hitter late.

Unfortunately, while his offense has not shown up recently, he’s also not adding value in other ways and is actually actively hurting the Braves.

The inputs have cratered

Verdugo has always had an odd profile, running a high batting average with lower power, but also backing that up with solid defense and okay baserunning.

That’s all out of the window this year.

Verdugo’s defense has cratered to the worst on the team despite barely breaking 200 defensive innings, coming in at -2 OAA in his 228 innings in left field. (By contrast, he was a +3 OAA last season for the Yankees in 1,308 innings, predominantly in left.) This mostly boils down to his range, sitting at 13th-percentile -3 OAA.

His arm remains strong, with a 93rd percentile 92.1 mph arm strength, but he’s also had several plays where he attempted to throw out a speedy runner at home and has been wildly late, rather than hitting the cutoff man and preventing the batter from taking second.

Some of the defensive issues stem from his lost foot speed - no longer a plus runner, he’s lost almost a full foot per second of speed from last season, sitting at 26 ft/sec this year, a 21st percentile mark. But he’s also suffering from a poor ‘jump’, going from an above-average reaction to merely average and from an average ‘burst’ to a well-below-average mark in that regard.

Reaction (distance above/below MLB average covered in first 1.5 seconds): from 0.8 feet to 0.2 feet
Burst (distance above/below MLB average covered in the second 1.5 seconds: from 0.2 feet to -2.2 feet
Route (how efficient the route is, as compared to MLB average): from -0.5 feet to 0 feet

He’s actually improved to league-average efficiency with his routes, but is taking significantly more time to get to the ball. And MLB’s publicly available research tells us that burst, where he’s taken the biggest hit to prior performance standards, is the most predictive component of an outfielder’s jump. Several outfielders, Ronald Acuña Jr. among them, make it work defensively despite having poor reactions. But poor burst is a killer — it matters about three times more than reaction does.

That lost foot speed also manifests in his baserunning. While not his strength for a few seasons now, it’s cratered to the worst part of this game. His -1 Baserunning Run Value is 12th percentile and the worst mark on the team, shocking when you consider that this team also employs some of the slowest baserunners in baseball with Matt Olson (24.8 ft/sec), Sean Murphy (24.7 ft/sec), and Marcell Ozuna (24.4 ft/sec).

Fairchild brings a lot more versatility

As we touched on above, the assumption is that Stuart Fairchild will be on the chopping block when Ronald returns.

He shouldn’t be, though.

Fairchild’s one of the fastest players on the Braves bench, with a 28.6 ft/sec sprint speed that is 85th percentile in all of baseball and slower than only speedster Eli White, who holds a 98th percentile 29.8 ft/sec mark.

While he’s hitting just 4-30 overall, he’s also scored six runs, stolen two bases, and went 2-3 with two runs and an RBI just last week when starting against Washington. In his career, he’s hit .242 against lefties, which has been a major factor in his recent starts in place of Verdugo against southpaws.

But he also gives Atlanta much better defense, being positive for his career in Outs Above Average and having played all three outfield positions. While his arm isn’t as strong as Verdugo’s, he has already resulted in +2 Fielder Runs on preventing baserunners from advancing thanks to great accuracy.

Additionally, because things like this do matter, it’s also worth pointing out that Fairchild has multiple years of team control remaining. His service time clock was at 2.114 entering this season, so were he to stay on the MLB roster all season, he’d still have three years of pretty cheap arbitration salaries available prior to reaching free agency in 2029.

Is this a perfect plan?

It is not, no. The Braves will not only lose a lefty option off of the bench in Verdugo, they’ll also be vulnerable to continued decay in Eli White’s offensive performance.²

But I do think the “lefty off the bench” thing can be mitigated somewhat in Sean Murphy’s starts, as Drake Baldwin will be the go-to pinch-hitting option for Atlanta.

We all know what Atlanta will do here

Despite all of the reasons I gave, we all know what the Braves will do here. Alex Verdugo will remain on the roster, in part because he’s a veteran and partly because he’s a lefty.

While I don’t know if Fairchild or utilityman Luke Williams will be the one that gets moved out to make room for Ronald, it’ll be a shame to lose multiple years of team control of Fairchild or lose the versatility of Williams just to keep an offensively AND defensively challenged Alex Verdugo.

UPDATE (11:20 AM): The Braves have chosen to designate Orlando Arcia for assignment, potentially ending his tenure with the organization if he elects free agency or is claimed off of waivers.

1. He’s batted eighth in one of his twenty-eight games, but that was after he entered as a pinch-hitter. Every time he’s been in the starting lineup, it’s been at leadoff.

2. After hitting .318/.375/.614 with two homers, seven RBI, and 14 runs scored in April, he’s batting only .250/.289/.333 in May with no homers, six RBI, and eight runs scored.