Braves face a tough stretch without Drake Baldwin and Aaron Bummer

MIAMI — It was a given that the Braves would encounter some rough waters along the way this season. It’s appropriate those treacherous tides came while the team is in South Florida.

“The message is always onward, you know, it’s just the nature of this game,” Braves manager Walt Weiss said Wednesday at loanDepot Park. “If you look, even at spring training, we lost four starting pitchers (Hurston Waldrep, Spencer Schwellenbach, Joey Wentz and Spencer Strider). Lost a left fielder (Jurickson Profar) during spring training. Lost our catcher (Sean Murphy), our shortstop (Ha-Seong Kim) before spring training.

“So, this group is pretty battle-tested. I feel like we’re deep enough, talented enough, have the right mindset to get through these things. And we will. We’ll be fine. We’ll continue to pitch well and think we’ll continue to win games.”

The Braves arrived in Miami on Sunday night. They lost 12-0 to the Marlins on Monday. On Tuesday, star catcher Drake Baldwin was placed on the 10-day injured list, and reliever Aaron Bummer was released. Starting pitcher JR Ritchie was optioned back to Triple-A Gwinnett.

None of that signaled the end of the world for the first-place Braves but certainly raised the red flag that difficult seas are ahead.

“Everyone deals with this. It’s part of a major league season. And I keep talking about this, virtually every team is gonna deal with their fair share of injuries,” Weiss said. “So, it’s tough when it happens to your best players, but that’s when you got to find a way to get through it and guys got to step up.

“I always use the example of ’21 when we were under .500. We lost our best player (Ronald Acuña Jr.) in August, and then we went on to win the World Series. None of it made sense at that point. The math didn’t really add up, but that’s how this game is sometimes. I think that the bottom line is when you pitch well, and we’ve pitched really well this year, (Monday) night was certainly an outlier, and if we continue to do that, we’re going to continue to be a really good team.”

Baldwin has a strained oblique, a common baseball injury that Strider has already dealt with — and came back from — this season. It’s the first time in Baldwin’s young career he has been on the injured list, and Weiss said the 25-year-old was in Atlanta on Tuesday for an MRI to determine the severity of the injury.

The 2025 National League Rookie of the Year Award winner was having an All-Star start to ’26, leading the Braves in hits (57), on-base percentage (.389) and average (.303), tied for the team lead in RBIs with 38, and second in home runs (13) and OPS (.932).

Baldwin’s 13 home runs lead all MLB catchers, as does his 24 walks.

The Braves now have to turn to Chadwick Tromp and Sandy León to fill the gaping void left by Baldwin’s absence in the lineup.

“Truth be told, we’re losing arguably our best hitter,” Weiss said. “(Baldwin’s) been unbelievable. But I’ve talked about our depth, I’ve talked about how we’re equipped to deal with the challenges of a major league season, and this is one of those examples.”

The loss of Bummer isn’t necessarily a hit from a production standpoint, but it’s a bitter pill to swallow, nonetheless. The veteran left-hander had ample opportunity to prove worthy of the $13 million contract he and the Braves negotiated ahead of the 2025 season, but the bottom fell out Monday when he couldn’t find the strike zone — and when he did throw strikes, the Marlins hit back-to-back homers, one a grand slam and one a solo shot.

With six more games until the team’s next scheduled off day, the Braves called up lefty Dylan Dodd, who had been on a rehab assignment with Triple-A Gwinnett, and Victor Mederos, who had also been at Triple-A. Dodd pitched two games in April before being placed on the injured list with thoracic spine inflammation, an injury which he explained Tuesday caused pain and his back to lock up.

Mederos was acquired by the Braves from the Angels in April and will make his debut with the team this week in the same city he attended high school.

“It’s definitely God’s timing. It’s perfect,” Mederos said. “I’ve been up and down for the last three, four years and never got to come to Miami. What a blessing it is to be able to come here and be able to play in front of the home base. Just very blessed and very thankful to God.”

Ritchie was a casualty of all the moves, through no real fault of his own. The right-handed rookie made five starts for the Braves, the last coming Monday, in which he was charged with six earned runs on six hits. That didn’t truly tell the whole story, as some defensive miscues and questionable rulings from the loanDepot official scoring contributed to his pitching line.