Braves sign OF Jordan Luplow to one-year, $1.4M deal

The Braves have made a minor (but not minor league) signing, adding OF Jordan Luplow to the roster on a one-year, $1.4 million deal.

A veteran of six major league seasons at this point, Luplow has 3.3 career fWAR in 970 career PAs, a rate that puts him right smack dab at average. He is an archetypal platoon bat, with a career 76 wRC+ against right-handed pitching and a much better 125 mark against southpaws.

However, that identity has gotten a little more complex lately. In 2021, Luplow had a .307 wOBA and .289 xwOBA against lefties, while hitting righties waaayyy better with a .377 wOBA and .349 xwOBA. In 2022, he didn’t really hit anyone, with a .269 wOBA / .308 xwOBA against righties, and a really disappointing .291 wOBA / .270 xwOBA against lefties.

As a result, Luplow comes to the Braves in kind of a weird space: he seems to be an obvious fit as a platoon option given the presence of Eddie Rosario, but hasn’t actually hit lefties well for a while, which makes his overall use case kind of unclear. The Braves can’t plug-and-play him as a platoon bat without monitoring to see whether that still makes sense.

Defensively, Luplow seems like an average-y corner outfielder, though he has played center in limited opportunities without embarrassing himself. That profile puts a lot of pressure on his bat to be more than just average-y if he wants to provide value, and it really behooves him to get back to lefty-mashing in order to make his whole array of skills, such as they are, work.

The Braves now have 38 players on their 40-man roster, and more moves of some sort are probably coming.