It’s been a couple of days now since the news hit Braves Country like a meteor falling out of the sky. Ha-Seong Kim is now set to miss all of spring training and at least a couple of months of the regular season
on top of that. This is after he reportedly slipped on ice while walking around in his home country. He slipped on ice. The Braves will have to do without their starting shortstop for nearly half of the season because of a patch of ice.Part of my coping mechanism is simply repeating what
happened out loud so that it sets in. I’ve done that multiple times over the past couple of days and as you can see, I’m still doing it. It’s just wild to think about but also when you consider the injury luck that the Braves have had for two full seasons now (and hopefully this is as bad as it gets for this season in particular), it’s somehow not out of the ordinary, either. This is just another injury or unintended absence that the Braves will have to deal with, just like what they had to deal with for large portions of both the 2024 and 2025 regular seasons.
The only good news about this injury to Kim is that it happened in mid-January and that this is a position that the Braves at least did a good job in fortifying with their offseason business. Now, don’t misunderstand what I’m about to say here when it comes to Maurico Dubón (and Jorge Mateo as well after the Braves brought him in on a one-year, $1 million deal shortly after the news about Kim’s injury broke): It’s definitely not ideal to have Dubón holding down the fort at shortstop for a long stretch of time. Sure, you heard people like Alex Anthopoulos and Walt Weiss both talk about how they’d be fine with Dubón being the starting shortstop while that was still a possibility before Kim’s signing changed the depth chart around here.
With that being said, there’s a reason why agreed to pay Kim $20 million for just one season (and hopefully more, since I’d imagine that the Braves would still be interested in keeping Kim around once he recovers and hopefully rebounds) at shortstop: It’s because they absolutely needed Kim and the offense that he could potentially provide at that position. There’s no question that Dubón is going to provide solid-to-great defense for the Braves at the shortstop spot while he holds down that spot. There’s a very big question as to whether or not Dubón will hit enough to where they won’t be desperately missing Kim’s potential of plate production. Atlanta already went through nearly one full season with paltry plate performance from the shortstop spot and it was clear that they didn’t want to have to deal with another season of that.
Unfortunately, it’s looking like that might be the case. Dubón is coming off of a season where he finished in the tenth percentile of all batters when it came to Batting Run Value (-12. Negative twelve!) and his two best finishes in that category came in 2023 when he finished in the 44th percentile and then in the COVID-shortened 2020 season where he logged a 47th-percentile finish — both only gave him a Batting Run Value of 1 for the season. Jorge Mateo also isn’t going to be hitting balls off of outfield walls on a regular basis either, as he’ll be entering 2026 as a career 75 wRC+ hitter with a high-water mark of 87 wRC+ back in 2024. Nacho Alvarez Jr. also has plenty of professional experience as a shortstop and could see some time there as well but he doesn’t have the glove to keep up with Dubón or Mateo and he certainly doesn’t hit much better than those two, either.
Plain and simple, this was just about one of the worst ways for the Braves to start off their season and we’re not even to the point where pitchers and catchers have reported for camp, yet. I mentioned in earlier articles that the Ha-Seong Kim signing essentially tied together all of the other offseason moves that the Braves made in order to make it all make sense. That signing was the finishing touch on an offseason painting from Alex Anthopoulos that wasn’t quite a masterpiece but still one that anybody would love to hang in their home.
Now, their biggest offseason signing won’t be around for a significant period of time and it’s certainly going to hamstring the Braves at the plate for as long as it takes Kim to eventually return and also get going as well. There’s no telling when we’ll finally see this Braves team at full strength but I doubt that it’ll be any time before July at this rate.
So while there’s no way around Kim’s injury not being a major blow to the 2026 Braves, it’s not a death sentence, either. The pitching squad still figures to be coming into this season fully healthy and if the Braves can simply maintain a healthy rotation then that alone could help them return to Postseason relevance in this upcoming season.
Additionally, the Braves have also upgraded their bullpen over the course of this offseason, they figure to be at full strength with a much-deeper outfield than last season’s team had to offer and the infield is still full of players who are either solidly capable of playing their position or fully capable of being stars as well. The hole at shortstop is a significant one to fill but you could certainly do with worse options than Dubón and Mateo as being half-season replacements.
So while this completely absurd and equally lame injury for Ha-Seong Kim is terrible news for the Braves, it’s still not the end of the world for this squad. I can absolutely understand if anybody’s feeling nervous about the injury bug that has hounded this team for over two seasons now continuing to float around this squad but at this point, there’s nothing we can do about it except continue to hope that everybody else can stay out of harm’s way and avoid stepping on an injury mine like Kim did.
The Braves are still set up pretty nicely for 2026 — they’ll just have to find a way to stay afloat and competitive before we see the complete vision of this team on the field in action. They’re set up well to do so but it’s also totally understandable if you’re already counting the days until Ha-Seong Kim returns to the starting lineup in Atlanta. It’ll just be a lot warmer outside than it is right now once he does finally return.
