For a couple of months there, it seemed like the Atlanta Braves had pulled off a coup of a deal, with Dominic Smith seeming primed to put up one of his best seasons since the pandemic. It didn’t turn out that way, but Smith still ended up finding himself right in the thick of it when it came to Atlanta and the Postseason.
So let’s get right into how things went for Dominic Smith here in Atlanta during the 2026 season. How did he go from being one of the hottest hitters on the team to essentially being planted on the bench to suddenly being in the lineup in a win-or-go-home situation? Let’s get into it.
How Acquired
The Braves and Dominic Smith initially agreed on a minor league deal back in February of 2026. Once it became clear that Smith had done enough in Spring Training to make the ballclub on the Opening Day roster, the Braves signed both him and Kyle Farmer to split contracts for the 2026 season. Smith’s version of the split deal paid him $1.25 million in the majors, and the majors were where he spent his entire season.
What were the expectations?
As a non-roster invite to spring training, the expectations were pretty low. Even when he made the roster, it was clear that he was here as a bench option that could do some work as the DH, potentially get some time in the outfield and serve as the “Break Glass in Case of Emergency” option to play first base if Matt Olson either got hurt or replaced by a clone who believed that it was time for a day off.
With that being said, there was some hope that Smith could provide some production off the bench. He did finish with a .325 wOBA and 111 wRC+ over 225 plate appearances and 63 games with the San Francisco Giants in 2025, so it wasn’t like his bat was just completely gone. Atlanta was hoping that he’d be able to tap into that vein of form while wearing a Braves uniform.
Still, even that decent-ish performance was undercut by a much worse xwOBA (.306), as well as the fact that Smith hadn’t hit at all since the shortened 2020 season. To wit, he had a .300 wOBA, .316 xwOBA, and -0.6 fWAR in over 1,760 PAs from 2021-2025. He was projected to be barely above replacement level in 2026, which made it kind of a concern that the Braves were heading into the 2026 season with Smith holding a roster spot. Those concerns were immediately allayed, and then un-allayed over the long arc of the season.
2026 Results
At the end of the day, this ended up being a bit of an underwhelming season for Dominic Smith. He played in 108 games (his most since 2023) and reached 300 plate appearances for the first time since 2024. He ended up with a slash line of .253/.311/.383 with a .304 wOBA (that was very close to his .301 xwOBA), .130 Isolated Power, 9 home runs and 91 wRC+.
Smith did get plenty of reps as the DH throughout the season, but that came to a halt once September rolled around. He (famously) received only 13 plate appearances during the month of September before not just making the NL Wild Card Series roster, but actually starting in the deciding game as well. Despite the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments concerning Walt Weiss’s decision to give Smith a start in the decisive Game 3 of the series (despite him ending Game 2 by leaving his bat on his shoulders), Smith ended up delivering a couple of hits in the series clincher in order to validate the decision on a what-ended-up-happening basis.
Outside of that performance in the Wild Card Series and early on in the season (which we will get into), this was by no means a spectacular season for Dominic Smith. It was certainly fun at times but there’s a reason why he ended up finishing the season underwater in fWAR at -0.5.
He didn’t strike out a ton, he didn’t whiff a ton either, though when he did hit the ball, decent contact was far from a given with a career-worst xwOBACON. Unfortunately, the big impact from Dominic’s bat was hard to find throughout the course of the season and those big moments that we all wanted to see (and got a little used to) during the early portion of the season were few and far in between.
Probably the biggest indictment of his season from a big picture perspective is that after he started slumping, the Braves had no alternatives other than to keep playing him, which is how they committed a half-season to a guy notably below replacement.
What went right?
Hoo boy, those first two months from Dominic Smith were fantastic and chockfull of some vintage Big Dominic Smith Moments at the plate. Up until May 31, Smith hit .325/.356/.496 with a wOBA of .367, an xwOBA of .369, 133 wRC+, five homers and 25 RBI. A 133 wRC+ for the whole season would’ve made Smith one of the top six DHs in all of baseball according to that metric in particular, and it would’ve made for a career year for Smith. Things were even crazier in April, as he managed a wOBA and xwOBA near .400 in his first 70ish PAs of the year.
He got off to just about as good (and dramatic) of a start as you could get in the 2026 season, as he hit a walk-off grand slam on March 28 against the Royals in order to complete a come-from-behind victory where Atlanta went into that frame down 2-0. Absolutely wild stuff — especially when you consider that this was his debut for the Braves!
Smith then came up with another big hit on April 14 against the Marlins, which is when he turned a 5-3 deficit in the bottom of the eighth inning into a 6-5 lead with one swing of the bat on a bases-clearing double. That wasn’t the biggest hit of the year for the Braves, but it definitely was for Smith, and it placed into the top-five teamwide.
He had a three-hit game on April 10 against Cleveland, the aforementioned April 14 game was of the three-hit variety as well, he racked up four knocks on May 12 against the Cubs and then he capped off his two-month heater with three hits against the Reds on May 29. That time when it felt like Smith was rarely missing the chances he took was a really wonderful time, wasn’t it?
How did Smith do it? It wasn’t anything all that strange or unusual. He was hitting the ball hard in the air. Smith has always been somewhat of an oddity — a big guy with prodigious raw power who employs a slow, slap-oriented swing, but he leaned into that somewhat less during the first two months. It was still a slow swing oriented to contact most of the time, and he actually swung hard more often after May ended, but he just so happened to connect on his powerful swings in a helpful way over those two months. Part of it, though, was that similar to his teammates, Smith was much more in swing mode, especially early in the count, in April and May. He then got very passive, and it seemed like his ability to do damage went right along with it.
What went wrong?
When June rolled around, the entire Atlanta offense got frigid-cold at the plate, and this included Dom Smith. In fact, Smith never really recovered from that team-wide dip in form during June — from June 1 until the end of the regular season, Smith hit .192/.275/.288 with a .254 wOBA (.248 xwOBA), an Isolated Power number of just .096, four homers and 57 wRC+. The magic was well and truly gone and it got to a point where Smith was basically benched for much of the final month of the season.
Remember how I mentioned all of those multi-hit games for Dominic Smith early on in the season? Well, from August 1 until the regular season concluded, Dom had a grand total of six (6) hits. Five of those hits occurred during the month of August and the sixth one came after the Braves had clinched the division. The fact that he did come up with those two hits in Game 3 of the Wild Card series was a bit miraculous considering how little game action he was getting up until that point.
As noted above, Smith actually started swinging noticeably harder after his early success. But, he became so passive it was almost a joke — he swung at over 70 percent of strikes in April and May, and that rate just kept declining, such that by September, he was barely swinging at 50 percent of the strikes he saw. Combine that with the fact that despite him swinging harder, his contact was much poorer, and you have “how to ruin a great start in four months.”
Credit to Smith for continuing to do the work behind the scenes, but also when you take his level of production from June onwards into consideration along with the team itself starting to get its full complement of players back from injury, it makes sense why Smith didn’t get too much action down the stretch.
Smith’s worst game of the year was… unique… which is fitting for his season as a whole. On July 5, well after he had shed any semblance of offensive competence, the Braves hosted his old team, the Mets. Smith hit into a double play to stifle a Braves rally (they had already scored three runs) in the first, and then made a couple of outs later in the game as the Braves trailed by a couple of runs. But then, the ninth happened, and things got wild for Smith and company. The Braves were getting blown out, 10-3, at the start of the frame, thanks to Carlos Carrasco being allowed to turn a 5-3 deficit into a 10-3 nightmare. But, Smith singled as the second batter in the bottom of the inning, and a Drake Baldwin grand slam and a bunch of other stuff later, the Braves were down 10-9, with both the tying and go-ahead runs in scoring position, with Smith coming up for the second time in the inning. He got ahead 2-0. He took a strike. He tried to capitalize on a fastball above the zone, but couldn’t catch up to it. Devin Williams followed with a changeup around shin-high, and Smith missed that, too. Game over. It feels like April-May Smith would’ve transformed that into another Big Dom Smith Moment, but alas, he did not.
As a minor note: Smith had a bizarre 5 PA-based line in the playoffs. His slash line was .400/.400/.400, because he struck out three times and managed two weak singles. It’s hard to know what the Braves were expecting, but in a weird way, that feels about right.
2027 Outlook
Well, Smith is a free agent and as of right now, it doesn’t seem likely that there will be a reunion in the cards. Again, he rarely saw the field towards the end of the season and that’s not the type of thing that would indicate that a team would be interested in keeping a relationship going. Surely there will be more Big Dominic Smith Moments in the future, but they likely won’t come with the Braves.
Still, Smith’s a left-handed bat and he’s got two months of proof that he could very well perform at a high level if he can figure out a way to harness it long-term. Maybe not deciding to watch half the strikes you see go by is a starting point in that endeavor. That should be enough to ensure that an organization will give him a shot in spring Training, so we definitely haven’t seen the last of Dominic Smith in the big leagues. It just appears likely that he’ll be an “old friend” rather than a returning player.
All that said, he’s projected to be replacement level or just barely above it at this point (and given 2026, it makes sense), so if a team does add him and use him, it’ll be for vibes and/or a lack of other options, kind of like the Braves in 2026.
