It’s been a wild ride for Orlando Arcia, as far as his Braves tenure was concerned. He went from fringy addition to heavily-relied on roster depth to starter for a historic offense… and then crashed back down to earth. Heading into 2025, it seemed like he was going to be the presumptive starter for the Braves for a third straight year, even as fans were souring on his status on the depth chart. But, it didn’t take long at all for him to get supplanted.
How acquired
The Braves acquired Arcia from the
Brewers on April 6, 2021, in a trade that sent Chad Sobotka and Patrick Weigel the other way. At the time it was a low risk move to add a depth piece with pedigree and the potential to change his approach for the better — basically, an upside play. Back in 2015, Arcia was ranked as the Brewers top prospect and was widely considered a Top 100 prospect in the sport. That being said, he never really lived up to his prospect rating, but his new team didn’t need him to: with Dansby Swanson and Ozzie Albies locked in as the middle infield starters, he did not have to live up to the hype anymore since he would be a utility guy at best for the Braves.
In the end, Sobotka never made another MLB appearance, and Weigel has only pitched four innings in the bigs since the trade. All things considered, any positive output was icing on the cake after the trade it took to land him.
What were the expectations?
Arcia struggled in Atlanta after the trade, but spent the next two seasons being an average-y bat with decent shortstop defense. He set a career high with 2.4 fWAR in 2023, which came with him outhitting his xwOBA a bit. Things came crashing down in 202, though, as he managed just a 72 wRC+, which was the second-worst for anyone qualified for the batting title that year. Given that his 2024 struggles made his decent offensive performance from the two prior years far less of a sure thing, expectations weren’t that high. Sure, you could hope that it was 2024 that was the fluke year.
The projection systems didn’t agree, though, heavily factoring in his 2024 performance, as well they should. He was projected for somewhere in the 80-90s range for wRC+, which combined with his reasonable defensive aptitude gave him projections in the 1-2 WAR range. Basically, Arcia’s 2024 knocked him down from the “fine regular” pedestal into the “below average regular / should probably be a bench guy on a good team” tier. But, he still seemed like the team’s presumptive shortstop starter… until he just wasn’t.
2025 results
The Braves soured on Arcia real quick. Was some of it lingering discontent from 2024? Was it because his Spring Training seemed bizarre, even beyond the realm of regular Spring Trainings, because Arcia repeatedly had a series of one- or two-pitch PAs where he tended to weakly ground out and then go back to his spot on the bench? Was it simply that light-hitting offseason addition Nick Allen starting looking way more appealing in light of Arcia’s 2024, Allen’s defensive aptitude vis-a-vis Arcia’s early season misplays, and/or Allen’s batting profile fitting in better with what the Braves were trying to achieve early in the season? There’s no way to know, but whatever the reason(s), Arcia started four of the team’s first five games, got kicked to the bench for a week, started three more games, and then basically became a full-on bench cheerleader before the Braves parted ways with him in late May.
In the end, Arcia got just 32 PAs across 14 games with the Braves, managed a 21 wRC+, and played tiny-sample, uncharacteristically-poor defense when he was on the field. He was scooped up by the Rockies, and got 182 more PAs, where he didn’t fare all that much better. The defense was fine, but a 36 wRC+ in a larger sample surely wasn’t, and thus he finished with -0.9 fWAR in 214 PAs, a third of that accumulated in his few weeks of play with the Braves.
What went right?
Not much went right for Arcia, and his time with the Braves was so bad in such a short time that they apparently felt few regrets about showing him the door rather than even keeping him around for depth purposes.
As mentioned, he bounced back defensively with Colorado and provided decent value there, his bat aside. He had a few nice games for the Rockies — two hits in his first appearance, a homer in the game after, and some key hits against the Cubs in August — but it was a pretty terrible season for him.
Amazingly, he somehow managed three positive WPA games with the Braves in 2025, despite his horrid batting line overall. The best of these came on April 9, after his first bench stint, where the Braves lost a 4-3 game in spite of Arcia’s contributions. Arcia went 2-for-4 in the game with two singles, including a game-tying hit in the sixth.
Short of a seeing-eye single that somehow eluded two Phillies fielders, there’s not much to highlight during his time with the Braves in 2025.
What went wrong?
It is probably clear at this point that what went wrong with Arcia was his bat. He couldn’t retain the improvements that led to his 2022-2023 performance, and once the defense looked like it might slip, the Braves figured that it made more sense for Allen to grab the starting role instead.
Arcia’s downfall can be attributed to a few things, but largely, he got away from what worked for him while he was able to hit at a decent clip. Starting in 2022, he changed his approach to essentially wait out a fastball or changeup he could hit. His pitch recognition was still poor and he chased breaking pitches a fair bit, but by essentially changing his strategy to one where he waited out and guessed at something he could handle slash ambush, he mitigated at least some of his pitch recognition issues and improved his contact quality. By 2024, though, all that selectivity and pseudo-patience had evaporated and his swing rates crested up and above league average, which meant a bunch of weaker contact that undid all of his earlier gains.
Combine that with him botching a couple of plays defensively, and there just wasn’t much reason to keep him around. He certainly wasn’t on the roster to bunt… which might have been the death blow for his roster spot, given what the Braves were doing for whatever reason early on.
2026 outlook
Arcia hit free agency after his Rockies stint. He’s going to be 32 next year and has literally been the worst hitter in baseball by both wRC+ and xwOBA with 800+ PAs over the past two seasons. Yeah, he’ll probably get a minor league deal and might be some kind of backup utility infielder type somewhere, probably on a non-contender. The shortstop free agent market is awful this year, which might help him a bit. Odds are Arcia’s career is not over because his glove is useful, but if he wants to keep a roster spot, he will need some luck to go his way, and he will also need to work hard this offseason on his hitting. Part of the frustrating thing, likely not just for him but for the Braves, is that he had something that worked, and it was his own decisions, whether consciously made or not, that upended the improvements he made.
That said, you can’t figure he’ll right the ship just because it seems like he can, so for the moment, he projects as an 0.5-1.0 WAR guy over a full season, which is basically just generic bench player territory.
