Braves May Have Surprise Answer to Profar Void After Suspension

NORTH PORT – The Atlanta Braves were put in a precarious position after Jurickson Profar’s second season with the club will be marred by a PED suspension. The outfielder will miss the entirety of the 2026 season, just one season after missing the first half of the 2025 season for another failed drug test.

The Braves were expecting Profar to rotate between designated hitter and left field, and his suspension left a void in both roles. However, the solution may already be on the roster.

Mike Yastrzemski, or ‘Yas’ for short, signed with the Braves in December on a two-year contract, and that agreement will prove to be far more meaningful than anyone could have envisioned at the time.

The Profar suspension was just the latest in what has been a flurry of reports that have buried the Braves during spring training. Pitchers Spencer Schwellenbach (elbow) and Hurston Waldrep both underwent surgeries that will leave the early part of the season in doubt. At the same time, shortstop Ha-Seong Kim (finger) and catcher Sean Murphy (hip) are also rehabbing from their respective injuries.

So far this spring, Yastrzemski has impressed. He is 9-for-17 (.529) with a double and four home runs during the spring. His flashy glove has also done its job in left field and has already thrown out a runner trying to stretch a single into a double.

He will, by no means, be expected to carry this sort of production into the regular season. Yastrzemski will slot into a loaded Braves outfield that features a league MVP and a lineup littered with former All-Stars, but production like this will be what takes this lineup to the next level.

The bottom of the Braves’ lineup struggled last season, and the poor performances hurt the overall production of the team as they worked through cold spurts in the heart of the lineup. Even modest production from Yastrzemski would stabilize a part of the lineup that struggled for consistency last season.

Yastrzemski is a high-floor player, but with one critical Achilles Heel – he struggles with left-handed pitching. His OPS against right-handed pitchers is a whopping 161 points higher than when he faces a left-handed pitcher. He struggles with both getting on base and hitting for power, meaning the Braves may have another issue a few times per week.

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That was supposed to be spelled by Profar, but that ship has sailed on the Braves. Alex Anthopoulos could still look to add some depth to the outfield to remedy this, but may opt to lean on the right-handed Eli White to make spot starts this season.

Spring training performances rarely guarantee regular-season success, but they can reveal opportunity. For Yastrzemski, that opportunity may have arrived sooner than anyone expected. If he continues to produce in the role the Braves envisioned for Profar, the veteran outfielder could turn what looked like a depth signing into one of the more important moves of Atlanta’s offseason.