<img alt="Atlanta Braves v Cincinnati Reds" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/wqfMtSfsyBFFazthRHvXBXPTGpo=/0x188:3078x2240/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73695921/2173967214.0.jpg">
Photo by Justin Casterline/Getty Images
The veteran’s third stint with the Braves gave him an opportunity to serve as a regular, but he faceplanted into an awful season There was a point, early in 2024, when it seemed like the stars could have been aligning for Adam Duvall to have a great year. Despite signing late in the off-season, he found a platoon role on what should have been a high-powered offensive team, and got off to a fast start, with a 116 wRC+ in his first 45 PAs.
And then, everything came crashing down. While Duvall didn’t get injured the way many of his teammates did, he ended up being thrust into a regular role and had an abysmal time hitting same-handed pitching. He never really recovered, and while the Atlanta Braves kept him on the roster, they mostly stopped playing him altogether. He had more PAs in April, when most of the team was relatively healthy (45) than in August (24) and September (eight) combined. Maybe that was a saving grace, though, because Duvall was just so bad after that good start that 2024 ended up being by far his worst season, saddling him with -1.0 fWAR across 330 PAs.
How Acquired
The Braves signed Adam Duvall very late in the offseason, giving him a one-year, $3 million deal on March 14, 2024. The move caused a few kerfuffles: Jarred Kelenic was expected to be the starting left fielder against all comers per earlier statements from the club, but got bumped down to the strong side of a platoon with the signing. Further, Duvall had some choice words for the state of MLB free agency, essentially lamenting that he was only able to get a $3 million guarantee about halfway through Spring Training despite posting 1.5 fWAR in 353 PAs the prior season.
What were the expectations?
The arc of Duvall’s career has been a weird one, given that his relative strengths have been surprisingly good outfield defense and power... but not, despite the very strong yen to assert to the contrary, a plug-and-play platoon bat. To wit: coming into the 2024 season, Duvall had a career 100 wRC+ against left-handers, and a career 97 wRC+ against right-handers. That’s not exactly a megaphone blaring “obvious platoon bat. Similarly, Duvall had been very good defensively, a whopping +35 Statcast fielding runs above average from 2016-2023 in about five full seasons’ worth of playing time, but without blazing speed, it’s another somewhat counterintuitive aspect of his baseball being.
All of this is to say that expecting something specific from Duvall, at any point, is always very tough. Coming into 2024, even his prior three seasons were all over the place. He had a good .330 xwOBA in 2021, scuffled with a sub-.300 xwOBA in 2022, and then had a bizarre .347 wOBA / .304 xwOBA in 2023. His defense slipped in 2023, but was good prior. His platoon splits were a mess, too: he crushed lefties in 2022 but struggled against them in 2023; his 2022 was dragged down by being unable to hit righties, but he actually fared decent-to-well against them (and outhit his inputs substantially) in 2021 and 2023.
Therefore, heading into his age-35 season, you could probably say that the Braves probably got a bargain by snagging Duvall for a platoon assignment for just $3 million: with 4.7 fWAR in his last three seasons (2.3 fWAR/600), he seemed like the best kind of bench option — cheap, playable as a regular in a pinch, and with enough upside both offensively and defensively to definitely justify a roster spot.
2024 Results
Overall, they were bad, but we’ll get into that more below. Duvall finished with -1.0 fWAR despite (or because) 330 PAs of playing time. He set career lows in value and batting line (58 wRC+), and had his second-worst defensive season (after 2023).
What went right?
For a brief period at the start of the year, that roster spot was indeed justified. In Duvall’s first plate appearance of the year, he pinch-hit for Jarred Kelenic against lefty Matt Strahm, and hit a two-run, game-tying double — the Braves turned the game into a laugher by demolishing the Philadephia bullpen over the next few innings. Through his first 30 PAs, he faced 23 lefties, and had an absurd .417 wOBA / .516 xwOBA. Going a little further, he faced 33 lefties in his first 45 PAs, and was still maintaining a .464 xwOBA (.374 wOBA) in the process. Duvall was in his lane and flourishing.
Had he stayed there, maybe his season goes differently. After all, he finished with a crazy-good .392 xwOBA and .366 wOBA against southpaws in 2024, across 123 PAs. Among his teammates, only Travis d’Arnaud and Jorge Soler finished with a higher xwOBA against left-handed pitching in 2024, and Duvall faced lefties more than both of them combined. A lot of that success was, well, doing Duvall things. Here’s him hitting a game-tying homer late against the Nationals, pulling a borderline outside pitch over 400 feet into left-center:
Duvall connected for eight dingers off southpaws in his 123 PAs, which is a really impressive rate considering that a lot of his playing time came during relatively cold weather and a relatively harsh run environment.
What went wrong?
Unfortunately, Duvall’s preponderance of facing lefties didn’t persist, and then he was pressed into regular duty given the injury to Ronald Acuña Jr. I’d say that those things led to his season going sideways, but that’s not correct: it just went straight down.
Recall that through the first few weeks, Duvall was facing a lefty about three-fourths of the time. Even before Acuña’s injury, that rate dropped to about half, and his line plunged, with a wRC+ in the 60s. Pressed into regular duty between late May and late July, Duvall accumulated 205 PAs and a sorry 52 wRC+. He also faced a ton (way too many) righties in that stretch — only about a fourth of his PAs as a fill-in regular came against lefties in that span; on average, right-handed batters take about a third of their PAs against lefties.
The end result was horrific. Duvall finished his time in a platoon role with an 88 wRC+ and massive platoon splits. The below-average outputs were really just xwOBA underperformance shenanigans, as he had a .336 xwOBA in that span (which includes him not being able to hit righties at all). As a regular, facing an egregious amount of righties, he plunged to a 52 wRC+, with the xwOBA underperformance persisting (but a bad, .280ish xwOBA).
And then, the Braves pretty much forgot about him. Ramon Laureano had largely emerged as an obvious alternative who wasn’t foundering against righties, and eventually even took over the starting left field role — basically forcing Kelenic to the bench and Duvall into a cheerleading/occasional pinch-runner role. From July 30-onward, Duvall got just 35 PAs, put up a 19 wRC+ (xwOBA hovering around .220), and still faced more righties than lefties.
In the end, no matter how well he handled lefties, the righties basically killed him: if you face a same-handed pitcher about two-thirds of the time, and can’t manage better than a .228 xwOBA in the process, your season is shot. Even accounting for the massive xwOBA underperformance doesn’t really help. Combine that with a second straight (slightly) below average defensive season, and you get how Duvall ended up with a career-worst -1.0 fWAR.
As a minor point of amusement: Duvall scored the walkoff run in the game in which he had his lowest WPA of the season. On July 20, he faced four righties in four PAs against the Cardinals, going 0-for-4 with three groundouts and this could’ve-been-a-walkoff-but-wasn’t flyout on a hanging 2-0 slider:
The Braves ended up winning when Duvall scored on a sac fly in the bottom of the tenth, but the inability to crush that slider was pretty emblematic of Duvall’s stinky season overall.
2025 Outlook
Duvall’s seasons, and platoon splits, have been so erratic that it’s hard to know where he’s going to go next, or what he’s going to do when he gets there. Duvall, for his career, does not crush lefties. But he did crush lefties in 2024. In fact, he’s never hit lefties better, on an inputs basis (better outputs in 2020, 2017, and 2019). But he also never hit righties worse, on either an inputs or outputs basis.
Where does that leave him, coming off a horrible season overall, a year older, and after being able to secure just $3 million coming off a much better season a year prior? It’s not clear. Maybe he gets another guarantee for about $2 million, or maybe he has to settle on some kind of conditional deal with an invitation to Spring Training. Maybe his splits normalize to the unintuitive ones he’s generally had for his career, or maybe being a guy that can only hit lefties is his new normal. My guess is that it’s going to be some other team finding out, because with Ramon Laureano in the fold and already having supplanted Duvall over the course of the season, he seems fairly redundant at the moment.
<img alt="Atlanta Braves v Cincinnati Reds" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/wqfMtSfsyBFFazthRHvXBXPTGpo=/0x188:3078x2240/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73695921/2173967214.0.jpg">
Photo by Justin Casterline/Getty Images
The veteran’s third stint with the Braves gave him an opportunity to serve as a regular, but he faceplanted into an awful season There was a point, early in 2024, when it seemed like the stars could have been aligning for Adam Duvall to have a great year. Despite signing late in the off-season, he found a platoon role on what should have been a high-powered offensive team, and got off to a fast start, with a 116 wRC+ in his first 45 PAs.
And then, everything came crashing down. While Duvall didn’t get injured the way many of his teammates did, he ended up being thrust into a regular role and had an abysmal time hitting same-handed pitching. He never really recovered, and while the Atlanta Braves kept him on the roster, they mostly stopped playing him altogether. He had more PAs in April, when most of the team was relatively healthy (45) than in August (24) and September (eight) combined. Maybe that was a saving grace, though, because Duvall was just so bad after that good start that 2024 ended up being by far his worst season, saddling him with -1.0 fWAR across 330 PAs.
How Acquired
The Braves signed Adam Duvall very late in the offseason, giving him a one-year, $3 million deal on March 14, 2024. The move caused a few kerfuffles: Jarred Kelenic was expected to be the starting left fielder against all comers per earlier statements from the club, but got bumped down to the strong side of a platoon with the signing. Further, Duvall had some choice words for the state of MLB free agency, essentially lamenting that he was only able to get a $3 million guarantee about halfway through Spring Training despite posting 1.5 fWAR in 353 PAs the prior season.
What were the expectations?
The arc of Duvall’s career has been a weird one, given that his relative strengths have been surprisingly good outfield defense and power... but not, despite the very strong yen to assert to the contrary, a plug-and-play platoon bat. To wit: coming into the 2024 season, Duvall had a career 100 wRC+ against left-handers, and a career 97 wRC+ against right-handers. That’s not exactly a megaphone blaring “obvious platoon bat. Similarly, Duvall had been very good defensively, a whopping +35 Statcast fielding runs above average from 2016-2023 in about five full seasons’ worth of playing time, but without blazing speed, it’s another somewhat counterintuitive aspect of his baseball being.
All of this is to say that expecting something specific from Duvall, at any point, is always very tough. Coming into 2024, even his prior three seasons were all over the place. He had a good .330 xwOBA in 2021, scuffled with a sub-.300 xwOBA in 2022, and then had a bizarre .347 wOBA / .304 xwOBA in 2023. His defense slipped in 2023, but was good prior. His platoon splits were a mess, too: he crushed lefties in 2022 but struggled against them in 2023; his 2022 was dragged down by being unable to hit righties, but he actually fared decent-to-well against them (and outhit his inputs substantially) in 2021 and 2023.
Therefore, heading into his age-35 season, you could probably say that the Braves probably got a bargain by snagging Duvall for a platoon assignment for just $3 million: with 4.7 fWAR in his last three seasons (2.3 fWAR/600), he seemed like the best kind of bench option — cheap, playable as a regular in a pinch, and with enough upside both offensively and defensively to definitely justify a roster spot.
2024 Results
Overall, they were bad, but we’ll get into that more below. Duvall finished with -1.0 fWAR despite (or because) 330 PAs of playing time. He set career lows in value and batting line (58 wRC+), and had his second-worst defensive season (after 2023).
What went right?
For a brief period at the start of the year, that roster spot was indeed justified. In Duvall’s first plate appearance of the year, he pinch-hit for Jarred Kelenic against lefty Matt Strahm, and hit a two-run, game-tying double — the Braves turned the game into a laugher by demolishing the Philadephia bullpen over the next few innings. Through his first 30 PAs, he faced 23 lefties, and had an absurd .417 wOBA / .516 xwOBA. Going a little further, he faced 33 lefties in his first 45 PAs, and was still maintaining a .464 xwOBA (.374 wOBA) in the process. Duvall was in his lane and flourishing.
Had he stayed there, maybe his season goes differently. After all, he finished with a crazy-good .392 xwOBA and .366 wOBA against southpaws in 2024, across 123 PAs. Among his teammates, only Travis d’Arnaud and Jorge Soler finished with a higher xwOBA against left-handed pitching in 2024, and Duvall faced lefties more than both of them combined. A lot of that success was, well, doing Duvall things. Here’s him hitting a game-tying homer late against the Nationals, pulling a borderline outside pitch over 400 feet into left-center:
Duvall connected for eight dingers off southpaws in his 123 PAs, which is a really impressive rate considering that a lot of his playing time came during relatively cold weather and a relatively harsh run environment.
What went wrong?
Unfortunately, Duvall’s preponderance of facing lefties didn’t persist, and then he was pressed into regular duty given the injury to Ronald Acuña Jr. I’d say that those things led to his season going sideways, but that’s not correct: it just went straight down.
Recall that through the first few weeks, Duvall was facing a lefty about three-fourths of the time. Even before Acuña’s injury, that rate dropped to about half, and his line plunged, with a wRC+ in the 60s. Pressed into regular duty between late May and late July, Duvall accumulated 205 PAs and a sorry 52 wRC+. He also faced a ton (way too many) righties in that stretch — only about a fourth of his PAs as a fill-in regular came against lefties in that span; on average, right-handed batters take about a third of their PAs against lefties.
The end result was horrific. Duvall finished his time in a platoon role with an 88 wRC+ and massive platoon splits. The below-average outputs were really just xwOBA underperformance shenanigans, as he had a .336 xwOBA in that span (which includes him not being able to hit righties at all). As a regular, facing an egregious amount of righties, he plunged to a 52 wRC+, with the xwOBA underperformance persisting (but a bad, .280ish xwOBA).
And then, the Braves pretty much forgot about him. Ramon Laureano had largely emerged as an obvious alternative who wasn’t foundering against righties, and eventually even took over the starting left field role — basically forcing Kelenic to the bench and Duvall into a cheerleading/occasional pinch-runner role. From July 30-onward, Duvall got just 35 PAs, put up a 19 wRC+ (xwOBA hovering around .220), and still faced more righties than lefties.
In the end, no matter how well he handled lefties, the righties basically killed him: if you face a same-handed pitcher about two-thirds of the time, and can’t manage better than a .228 xwOBA in the process, your season is shot. Even accounting for the massive xwOBA underperformance doesn’t really help. Combine that with a second straight (slightly) below average defensive season, and you get how Duvall ended up with a career-worst -1.0 fWAR.
As a minor point of amusement: Duvall scored the walkoff run in the game in which he had his lowest WPA of the season. On July 20, he faced four righties in four PAs against the Cardinals, going 0-for-4 with three groundouts and this could’ve-been-a-walkoff-but-wasn’t flyout on a hanging 2-0 slider:
The Braves ended up winning when Duvall scored on a sac fly in the bottom of the tenth, but the inability to crush that slider was pretty emblematic of Duvall’s stinky season overall.
2025 Outlook
Duvall’s seasons, and platoon splits, have been so erratic that it’s hard to know where he’s going to go next, or what he’s going to do when he gets there. Duvall, for his career, does not crush lefties. But he did crush lefties in 2024. In fact, he’s never hit lefties better, on an inputs basis (better outputs in 2020, 2017, and 2019). But he also never hit righties worse, on either an inputs or outputs basis.
Where does that leave him, coming off a horrible season overall, a year older, and after being able to secure just $3 million coming off a much better season a year prior? It’s not clear. Maybe he gets another guarantee for about $2 million, or maybe he has to settle on some kind of conditional deal with an invitation to Spring Training. Maybe his splits normalize to the unintuitive ones he’s generally had for his career, or maybe being a guy that can only hit lefties is his new normal. My guess is that it’s going to be some other team finding out, because with Ramon Laureano in the fold and already having supplanted Duvall over the course of the season, he seems fairly redundant at the moment.
Link to original article
