Ozzie Albies having a club option for 2026 really killed my momentum. Or, perhaps more accurately, the Braves not immediately exercising said option killed my momentum. It’s mostly my fault, because of
course they were going to — for a marginal cost of $3 million, it would be almost as insulting as the original deal in the first place to show him the door at this point. Still, I had started this series with Matt Olson and then followed up with Michael Harris II, which meant that in order of playing time in 2025, Albies was next. But, with him not formally in the fold, I went on to other things, and then all sorts of other stuff happened. Anyway, here we are: the Braves did eventually exercise the option, so Albies will be a Brave in 2026, and now, let’s talk about his future production.
Career-to-date, status
Albies burst into MLB in very exciting fashion, putting up nearly 10 fWAR in his first 1,630 PAs from 2017-2019 (that’s a pace north of 3.5 fWAR/600). His skillset across those years wasn’t very consistent (great defense in 2018, great hitting in 2019), and that inconsistency has marked the rest of his career. He had standout years in 2021 and 2023, while dealing with injuries and just being kinda meh in 2020, 2022, and 2024. Because of massive year-to-year swings in even his xwOBA, it wasn’t reasonable to look at his 2024 (.302 xwOBA, 1.3 fWAR in 435 PAs) and say he was now cooked, since he had an even worse xwOBA in every even-numbered year of his career to date.
Albies has another $7 million option, this time with no buyout, for 2027. While the Braves will probably exercise that one, too, it’s not infeasible that his 2026 is so bad that they don’t — just not very likely.
Recent performance
All the above said, 2025 combined the worst of a lot of worlds for Albies. He had a .298 xwOBA, his first time following up one bad-xwOBA season with another, his defense tipped back into below-average-for-an-MLBer, and to cap it all off, he suffered a hamate bone injury late in the year, which might linger and hamper his production in 2026. Beyond that, and as noted for Harris, Albies seemed to struggle with the Braves’ revised offensive approach — while he did set a career-low strikeout rate and a career-best walk rate (aside from his two months of play in 2017), he mostly achieved these “feats” by A) taking more strikes and B) making contact with non-strikes more often. Neither of those is inspiring at all, and it’s not surprising that the tradeoff thrust upon him in exchange for more walks and fewer strikeouts was sewer-level contact quality. He probably tried his best at the new assignment, but the road he took to get the desired results was bad, and it’s not clear he should’ve been working on it at all in the first place.
In the end, Albies had a second consecutive 1.3 fWAR season in 2025, though this one came in 667 PAs. It was also the first season of his career where he didn’t outhit his xwOBA. The magic may not be fully gone, but it’s definitely faded.
Forecasting
Same brief disclaimer: once upon a time I built a projection system to try to mirror/get at the workings of Steamer and ZiPS. I called it IWAG. You can figure out what that means, maybe. I’m bringing it back for this series of posts. Here’s Albies, for 2026. IWAG has no flags for “had a hamate bone injury late in the prior season,” so just keep that in mind.
Albies’ three most recent seasons have shown a decline — great in 2023, average-y but with missed time in 2024, and below average in 2025. It’s not surprising that the projection systems, including IWAG, basically meet in the middle here. Steamer has Albies rebounding a lot more offensively; meanwhile, IWAG and ZiPS basically mirror one another.
As you can see, IWAG’s point estimate is propped up by the tail. The mode outcome is not great — well below average, especially when you account for the possibility of missing more time, as Albies does tend to hit the shelf here and there.
Your turn
Alright, I’ve given you the info. Well, some info. You may have your own info. With that, I ask you:
- Rounded to the nearest fWAR, how much will Ozzie Albies produce in 2026?
- How confident are you in your choice? Go with a scale from 1-5, where 3 is “I dunno, reasonably confident,” 5 is certain, and 1 is “I am participating but have no confidence in my choice and don’t want the fact that it will likely be incorrect to affect my place in any theoretical standings all that much.”
