Braves Bulletin: How Drake Baldwin is avoiding sophomore slump, and more notes

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Pitchers continue to shut down hitters, even when not having their best day. Plus, Drake Baldwin has continued to avoid regression. Here are some takeaways from the last six games: Without Ronald Acuña Jr. leading off, the Braves have had a carousel of hitters sharing his spot. Baldwin, however, has recently taken up temporary residency since he first led off May 4. His bat has made a difference as long as he has been in the majors, and this weekend against the Red Sox was no different. His first swing Friday was a solo shot to center field on the first pitch lefty Connelly Early threw that night. Baldwin not only became the first catcher to hit a lead-off home run in modern franchise history, but also the first Braves designated hitter to do so. Baldwin smoked the second offering from Payton Tolle, another rookie Red Sox left-hander, 421 feet with a 106.2 mph exit velocity for a one-run lead. The 25-year-old has up until now avoided a sophomore slump by adjusting to pitchers rather than resting on his NL Rookie of the Year credentials. “It’s a constant battle of trying to get better at your weaknesses but also be ready for your strengths,” Baldwin said. “Because they might throw a pitch that’s in a place you can hit hard. There’s no perfection to that, but you just try to be as good as you can on a daily basis.” It doesn’t seem like he’s slowing down. Baldwin is hitting .301 with a .928 OPS, and his 13 home runs are the most by a catcher, one ahead of former Braves prospect Shea Langeliers, who was dealt to the A’s in the Matt Olson trade in 2022. Baldwin has even seen more success facing left-handed pitchers despite being a lefty hitter, which doesn’t happen often. He is hitting .342 with seven home runs, 16 RBIs and a 1.087 OPS against them compared with .274 with six homers, two RBIs and a .826 OPS against right-handers. As well as Baldwin has hit, there’s a good chance he’ll return to the two-hole once Acuña is activated. That time likely won’t come on the turf in Miami out of precaution; LoanDepot Park is where Acuña tore his ACL in 2021. With Grant Holmes (Tuesday), JR Ritchie (Wednesday) and Spencer Strider (Friday) failing to reach the sixth inning in their starts, the Braves bullpen was active this homestand. It threw 22 1/3 innings, to be exact. “That’s the part of winning a lot of games, right?” manager Walt Weiss said. “We play a lot of close games, and we won a lot of games, so we’re using those guys, but they do need to get full resets.” And there isn’t much rest in sight with the Braves scheduled for seven games before their next planned day off. But for a team that opened May with a stretch of 13 games in 15 days, the workload is starting to catch up. The effects of the taxed bullpen were seen in the first two games of the Red Sox series. In the opener, Strider went 5 1/3 innings with just a two-run lead. Weiss went to high-leverage options Dylan Lee, Robert Suarez and Raisel Iglesias. The game went to extras, and Weiss was forced to use rookie Didier Fuentes in the 10th inning despite a three-inning workload three days before. Weiss said he’d hope to give the 20-year-old an extra day of rest but had to use him in that spot. Fuentes would have returned for another inning, but Mike Yastrzemski saved him extra work with a walk-off double. The next night, Bryce Elder reached the eighth inning, then gave up a two-run homer on his 100th pitch of the night, giving the Red Sox a 3-2 lead they never relinquished. Weiss said afterward that Elder would not have pitched the eighth if high-leverage arms had been available. That led to Martín Peréz’s pitching in the ninth inning and pushing back his planned Monday start in Miami to Tuesday. Luckily for the Braves, Holmes rebounded with six shutout innings in his start Sunday and could have gone at least another inning if not for a rain delay. Atlanta’s challenge now becomes balancing the urgency to win games with avoiding further wear and tear on a group already being stretched thin. When Sean Murphy went on the injured list, the Braves re-signed a familiar friend in Sandy León, who has played in the organization in three straight seasons. He had been released by the Braves so he could pursue a playing opportunity in Mexico but had not appeared in a game before agreeing last week to serve as Atlanta’s backup catcher. León won’t match Murphy’s offensive production — León has a career 57 OPS+ compared with Murphy’s 109 — but his big-league wisdom is being tapped by the pitching staff. “(For Sandy) to be able to handle a pitching staff, to slow the game down for a pitcher that’s having a tough inning or a tough outing, that’s invaluable,” Weiss said. León, who has played in 14 big-league seasons, was behind the plate for starts by Strider as well as Ritchie and Elder, both of whom he frequently caught while working with many young Braves pitchers since first playing in Triple A for the Braves in 2024. “He’s very creative,” Elder said. León’s presence on the field has also been pivotal, giving Baldwin, who started 25 games behind the plate before Murphy was injured on a catcher’s interference May 10, more time to focus on hitting. “It’s good mentally,” Baldwin said. “You get in the same routine, and you are able to come in and get your cage work in and all your pregame work and make it as consistent as possible on a day-to-day basis to go and have the best at-bats you can.” Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms