The Braves may be out of the postseason, but plenty of familiar faces are still leaving fingerprints on October. Some have done it the right way. Others have spent these playoffs reminding everyone why big expectations can turn into ugly exits fast.
That’s the case for a few former Atlanta players who were supposed to matter for new teams in the 2026 postseason and simply didn’t deliver when it counted.
Freddie Freeman is the headliner here, and his playoff run came in two very different acts. Against the Braves in the first three games of the NLDS, he put up a 1.371 OPS and launched a pair of home runs.
But once the Dodgers ran into the Brewers in the NLCS, the bat went quiet in a hurry. Los Angeles was swept in four games, and Freeman managed just one hit in the series, a single in Game 1.
There may be some comfort for Braves fans in the fact that Freeman won’t be getting another ring this year, and his lack of production was a major reason why.
Max Fried’s departure from Atlanta never carried the same bitterness, and the Braves hardly got burned for letting him go. The Yankees handed him an offer nobody really expected Atlanta to match, and the move made sense for everyone involved.
In the postseason, Fried had a strong moment against the Red Sox in the Wild Card round, but the Rays gave him trouble in the NLDS. In Game 3, he allowed four runs over 5.2 innings, and that outing came in the loss that ended New York’s run.
Dansby Swanson also entered October with a clear expectation attached to him: the defense would hold, and the bat would need to contribute more. The Cubs believed enough in that idea to give him $177 million, but the offensive return has not matched the investment. His 2026 production dipped, and in the playoff series against the Padres, he didn’t record a hit at all.
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Braves Jurickson Profar Situation Just Took A More Troubling Turn
Jurickson Profars situation with the Braves had already become one of the more jarring off-field stories in recent memory after MLB handed him an 80-game suspension for testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs under the Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program. A second suspension, announced before the following season, pushed the matter far beyond a standard discipline issue and turned it into a major roster and payroll setback for Atlanta.
Profar then reportedly went silent with people around the team, changing his contact information and cutting off communication just as the Braves were trying to absorb the fallout. The later penalty carried even steeper consequences, with MLB issuing a 162-game suspension for a second PED violation and wiping out his full $15 million salary, deepening a situation that had already become troubling for the club. [Read more 🡒]
Braves Prospects Already Face Tough Questions In Arizona
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The challenge, of course, is that the results have not exactly been clean across the board. Briggs McKenzie has had trouble finding the strike zone, and Tanner Bauman has been searching for sharper outings as well, leaving the Braves with more questions than answers for now. For a group of players that is supposed to be using Arizona as a springboard, the Fall League has already become a reminder that development rarely moves in a straight line. [Read more 🡒]