As a man with a long beard, I am really in love with Jake Fraley’s beard. We have a similar hair color, but mine doesn’t come in quite as full as his. It’s really a magnificent beard. I probably need to
try rounding mine out a bit more and see if that helps.
Oh, baseball. Right.
It feels hard to believe, but Fraley is already 30 years old. He debuted when he was 24, but he didn’t get substantial playing time until he was 26. He’s spent the last few seasons being a competent fourth outfielder, but he wasn’t able to quite break through with Atlanta this season, and was lost on waivers early this offseason.
How acquired
The Atlanta Braves basically spent all of 2025 trying to create a competent outfield. An opening seemed to arise in mid-August when the Reds DFA’d Fraley for … reasons. The Braves claimed him and what was left off his $3.13 million salary (I guess that might be enough of a justification, given that it’s the Reds…), and they briefly stuck him into the outfield mix.
What were the expectations?
Fraley has been a competent fourth outfielder for a number of years.
His overall career line currently sits at .248/.333/.402 making him basically the most major-league averagest hitter. He hits for a decent average, takes a few walks, and knocks a few out of the park. Even better, he steals bases pretty frequently, nabbing more than 20 stolen bases in both 2023 and 2024. And the lefty can variously play each outfield position. He’d even managed to run an xwOBA overperformance for three straight seasons, though the extent to which this was due to him slapping the ball past fielders or just luck is unclear. This is basically what you’re getting …
It’s not exactly exciting, but it’s solid offensive production. And you don’t hit him against lefties (career 46 wRC+).
And he was replicating it with the Reds in 2025, so I’m not really sure what the issue was. He wasn’t pretending to be more than a 1-WAR-per-half-season platoon outfielder, and he wasn’t. But Atlanta was probably expecting that to be what he brought to the table.
2025 results
Fraley was doing just fine in Cincy, hitting a standard for him .232/.332/.387 (98 wRC+). Theoretically, the Reds wanted to get him somewhere he could play more, but well, the Reds outfield wasn’t really that great and my guess is that Cincinnati was probably just trying to save some money.
Fraley came to Atlanta, and he got into nine games before a strained oblique ended his season in September. His most memorable game with the Braves was probably his first, where he went 3-5 in a 12-1 drubbing of the Marlins. In that one, Matt Olson homered, and Ronald Acuña was … say it with me … plunked by the Marlins in retaliation. The benches cleared.
Basically, the Braves got him, gave him a start, used him as a pinch-hitter, gave him a few more intermittent starts, and then he pulled an oblique after not playing for over a week, and that was pretty much it. All in all, he had a 92 wRC+ and 0.0 fWAR as a Brave, to go with his 0.3 fWAR as a Red. It was his worst total since 2020, but he wasn’t really that different production-wise than what he had done since then.
What went right?
Fraley continued to be who he’s always been. He was a near league-average hitter, played defense, and ran the bases. It’s not sexy, but it works for a bench role. It’s certainly enough to continue keeping him employed.
He did also hit a grand slam against the Mariners as a Red. Red still lost.
He also had a big game on August 31, where he entered as a pinch-hitter. With the Braves down by a run, he had a two-out, pinch-hit single to put the tying run on second, but the inning ended after a Nacho Alvarez Jr. groundout. Two innings later, with the game now tied, he reached on an infield “single,” and eventually represented the winning run as he scored on Drake Baldwin’s two-out, two-run homer.
What went wrong?
Being a platoon hitter and a fourth outfielder heading into your 30s means teams are more likely to move onto their younger … cheaper versions of the same player. It’s harder than you probably think to find a player like that, but at the same time, it’s not exactly a player you fret about losing.
A perfect microcosm of this is what just happened. Atlanta DFA’d him, and he was claimed by the Rays. On one hand, Atlanta could try to use the money that would have gone to Fraley in his last year of arbitration toward something more impactful. On the other, the Rays were happy to claim him. Fraley didn’t have a huge leash in 2025 because of his profile, and his profile is the main thing that went wrong.
That and the oblique. (And the fact that he stopped outhitting his xwOBA.)
He also had a really miserable game on September 1, where a Braves bullpen meltdown led to a walkoff loss at Wrigley Field. Fraley went 0-for-4 with a walk, but was thrown out trying to steal after said walk. He also struck out in extras after the Braves bunted the ghost runner to third, in what was his most costly play of the season from a WPA perspective.
2026 outlook
Mostly what I said before. He now heads to Tampa Bay, and Steamer projects him around basically what he’s always been: 0.5ish WAR as a part-time player, somewhere around 1 WAR per 600 PAs. Fraley isn’t quite to the age where he falls off a cliff, and Tampa Bay should be willing to see what’s there.
That being said, I can see them DFA’ing him in a month when something more intriguing comes along, especially since he will likely get something akin to $3.6 million in arbitration and the Rays are nothing if not cost-conscious. If nothing does, they’ll go to arbitration with him, and if something more intriguing comes along, they’ll cut bait before the total guarantee of that arbitration-awarded salary kicks in. If nothing does, then they’ll carry a perfectly helpful fourth outfielder into the season until something more intriguing comes along.
Such is the life of a player a la Jake Fraley.
