Veteran backstop Jonah Heim’s stay in Atlanta was brief, but he helped the Braves temporarily bridge the gap between the team’s starting catcher and his injured handcuff.
How Acquired
The Atlanta Braves signed Heim to a big league contract on February 10, 2026, after he’d lingered on the free agent market and Sean Murphy’s recovery from late-season surgery in 2025 looked like it was going to prevent him from being ready for the start of the 2026 regular season.
What were the expectations?
Heim, who was an All-Star and Gold Glove winner in 2023,
was coming into Atlanta to be the (initial) primary back-up to reigning Rookie of the Year winner, Drake Baldwin. Heim had been a regular starter with the Texas Rangers, having played in 124 or more games for four consecutive season. His 2024 and 2025 campaigns saw his production crater: after 2.7 fWAR in 2022 and a career-high 4.0 in 2023, Heim posted marks of 0.0 and -0.4 the following two years. The decline was across the board: he both hit worse (from a 103 wRC+ in 2022-2023 to a 71 wRC+ in 2024-2025), and his once-vaunted defense fell into “truly abysmal” territory.
Projection systems ahead of the 2026 season were still splitting the difference, figuring he was something like a below-average regular, with a well-below average bat balanced by still being able to play catcher fairly well.
The Braves didn’t need him to do much else; they just needed him to hold down the fort for a while.
2026 results
Heim started 12 games behind the plate for Atlanta, giving the team a .231/.311/.410 slash line. In some ways, that was better than expected… but really, it was just the result of outhitting his xwOBA in a 45-PA sample. His .277 xwOBA as a Brave was basically the same as his .279 xwOBA in 2024-2025. While a tiny sample, he continued his trend of being rated poorly by defensive metrics, with no recovery whatsoever from the depths he started to plumb after 2023 in that regard.
Heim started intermittently for the first six weeks of the year, while Sean Muprhy was out. In a bittersweet twist of fate, he had his best game as a Brave on May 3, hitting a homer (his only homer as a Brave) and a double against the Rockies on May 3. However, Murphy was activated, and Heim ended up designated for assignment and subsequently traded to the West Sacramento Athletics for cash.
For the Braves, that ended up being fairly awkward, as Murphy ended up with another lengthy injury stint a week later, and the Braves had to make do with options that were even worse than Heim. It got even more dire when Baldwin also hit the shelf, and the catcher situation started to look like the 2021 Kevan Smith et al. disaster.
For Heim, though, things ended up similarly unfortunate, but in a more circuitous way. Heim was a semi-regular for the Athletics, logging 345 PAs in 93 games. He finished with -0.6 fWAR, a new career low, in large part due to a continued, and worsening inability to actually play the catcher position all that well. But, the way he got there was particularly painful, as he was actually hitting fairly well for his new team (105 wRC+) through the end of June, until once again falling apart down the stretch. Basically, Heim finished at a 66 wRC+, which involved a 103 wRC+ through June, and a 44 wRC+ from July-afterwards. The Braves didn’t miss aggregate-production-in-2026 Heim, but they did miss May-and-June Heim… not that it really works that way.
What went right?
Heim did manage to become an unexpected regular with the Athletics, something that probably wasn’t in the cards for him after how bad he was in 2024-2025.
His aforementioned final game with the Braves was great, and not in the stat-padding way. His homer turned a 1-0 deficit into a 2-1 lead, and then he added a lead-extending sacrifice fly and a two-run double, both of which came in fairly close games.
While these didn’t come with the Braves, Heim also had two epic games for his new team in the span of 11 days. On June 8, he was a big part of a barnburner against the Brewers, hitting a game-tying pinch-hit homer in the tenth (an inning the Athletics started down four runs). Then, he did it again against the Angels, this time a two-run shot in the ninth that set up a walkoff walk victory an inning later.
Another thing went right for Heim — perhaps one unexpected given his defensive issues. No one in baseball was better at gaining value via ABS: Heim’s 4.3 runs above average led MLB.
What went wrong?
Heim, a switch hitter, hit much better from the right-side in 2026 — so much so that he faced a few right-handed pitchers as a right-handed hitter. He simply couldn’t hit righties, though, which was an issue given how much playing time he got. Overall, his 2026 season was his third straight year with a drop in production. Outside of a few categories like chase rate, Heim rated poorly, bottom third or worse, in most offensive, defensive and base-running metrics according to Baseball Savant.
The real issue, though was his defense: you can tolerate a platoon-ish catcher even if he has a weak bat against right-handed pitchers. What you probably can’t tolerate is a guy who gives away runs in all three of framing, throwing, and blocking — even if he gets some of those back through his mastery of the challenge system.
Only two catchers were definitively worse at blocking than Heim in 2026. Combine that with below-average performance in framing and throwing out baserunners, and it’s a recipe for bleeding value.
Heim didn’t have a particularly bad game as a Brave: his worst WPA performance before he was sent west was an 0-for-2 against Tarik Skubal in a game the Braves won (one of his outs was a double play ball). He had many grislier performances down the stretch, but we won’t dwell on those.
2027 outlook
Heim, who will start the 2027 season at age 31, is likely in his full-time back-up portion of his career, and even that might be optimistic. Maybe his ability to hits righties rebounds… or maybe his defense does, but neither has shown any inclination of happening. He’ll likely land a job somewhere in 2027, pending the occurrence of an actual season, but if he gets an MLB deal this time, it might be the last one he gets. He’ll still be projected for above-replacement, well-below average performance, but even that seems like a tough sell given how poorly he’s played for three seasons now. Never-say-never on a return to Atlanta, but that seems doubtful.
