ATLANTA -- The Braves are heading into the stretch run with an unexpected name penciled into the cleanup spot, and it’s not the kind of move anyone would have forecasted a few months ago.
Mauricio Dubón, who was easy enough to envision as Atlanta’s primary shortstop, is now set to be the club’s primary cleanup hitter moving forward. That’s a long way from the usual image of a No. 4 hitter, and manager Walt Weiss wasn’t shy about poking fun at it.
“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,’” Weiss said.
Dubón is listed at 173 pounds, and the numbers don’t exactly scream classic middle-of-the-order slugger. He owns a .377 career slugging percentage and a .676 career OPS, with those marks sitting at .393 and .708 this season and in 2026, respectively. But the Braves are no longer operating by the old rule that the cleanup hitter has to be the biggest power bat in the room.
There’s a case to be made for Austin Riley there, especially if Atlanta wants to separate the two left-handed hitters around him, Matt Olson and Michael Harris II. Riley has improved to a .769 OPS since the break, but the strikeouts are still piling up at an alarming 39.1 percent during that stretch. That’s too much swing and miss for a spot that’s supposed to cash in runs.
Dubón’s overall profile is unusual for the job. He’s batting .270 with a .315 on-base percentage this season and has matched a career high with 10 home runs.
His average exit velocity, barrel rate and hard-hit percentage all rank in the bottom 20 percent of MLB hitters. On paper, that doesn’t look like cleanup material.
But the cleanup spot is about damage in the right moments, and Dubón has been doing exactly that. He’s hitting only .242 with a .637 OPS in 333 plate appearances with nobody on base, but with runners in scoring position he’s at .325, going 37-for-114. With two outs and runners in scoring position, he’s hitting .352, going 19-for-54 with a .934 OPS.
That stands out even more when you line it up against the rest of the Braves. Ozzie Albies is the only other Atlanta hitter above .300 with two outs and runners in scoring position at .306, while Drake Baldwin is the only other Brave above .300 with runners in scoring position at .309.
Riley has hit .246 with runners in scoring position and .185 with two outs and runners in scoring position. Olson is at .226 with runners in scoring position and .200 with two outs and runners in scoring position.
“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 that a couple of hours before Dubón helped drive a three-run first Tuesday night by lining Tyler Glasnow’s 2-2 curveball to right field for an RBI single. The pitch was 0.83 feet off the ground.
It would have been ball three. Instead, it became another example of Dubón’s knack for putting the bat on the ball.
He showed that value again in the eighth inning. After Olson doubled and moved to third on a slap bunt, Dubón made the play on his own rather than waiting on a sign from the dugout. He showed bunt, then pulled the bat back and slapped a grounder to the right side, moving Olson into position to score on Albies’ game-winning single without any trouble.
“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 mix for another Cy Young Award. Still, any discussion of Atlanta’s most valuable player this season has to include Dubón, the player who became available when the Astros didn’t want to pay him approximately $6 million.
Back on Aug. 3, during the media session after the Trade Deadline, the shortstop picture was already coming into focus. When asked, “It feels like Dubón should be the starting shortstop, and if Dubón is the starting shortstop, why would you keep [Jim] Jarvis up?” president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos responded by indicating the Braves were sticking with Jarvis as their primary shortstop.
When the follow-up came - “So Dubón will just be rotating [positions]?” - Anthopoulos answered, “I’m not into giving titles because things change,” Anthopoulos said.
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