Freddie Freeman left Atlanta as a franchise icon, and the Braves eventually landed on Matt Olson as the answer. It was not their first answer, though. Before Olson became the face of first base in Atlanta, the Braves had another name in mind: Anthony Rizzo.

That detail adds a sharper edge to a move that now looks obvious in hindsight. Olson has posted 23.1 WAR since 2022 and has not missed a game in a half-decade, while Freeman has 21.4 WAR over the same stretch. The Braves did not begin the search with Olson, but they ended up with the player who has given them durability and production at a level that matches, and in one measure exceeds, the player they lost.

The road from Freeman to Olson began after the Dodgers signed Freeman to a six-year, $162 million deal in 2022. Freeman had just spent 12 seasons in Atlanta, where he won his first championship and his lone MVP with the Braves before leaving in free agency. Once he was gone, Atlanta needed a replacement for a player who had become one of the best Dodgers in recent memory, with four All-Star nods, two rings and a World Series MVP trophy after moving west.

The timing of that search made the process harder. The Braves had just won the World Series, while the Dodgers saw their streak of eight consecutive NL West titles snapped despite 106 regular-season wins. The league was then sent into a four-month shutdown during a CBA-related lockout, and the work stoppage ended only before a truncated spring training began. Teams were trying to move quickly, and the market for a player of Freeman’s stature did not stay open long.

Rizzo had been part of the Chicago Cubs’ fire sale at the trade deadline in 2021, which made him a plausible stopgap when Atlanta first looked for a Freeman replacement. But the Braves and Yankees both bowed out of Freeman’s market, and the Dodgers won the bidding. That left Atlanta to pivot again, this time to Olson, who was not the immediate plan but became the eventual solution.

Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic provided additional light on that process in a recent article, and the shape of the decision is clear from the numbers now. Atlanta did not merely fill a hole left by Freeman. It found a player who has been on the field every day, produced at an elite level and helped turn what could have been a painful transition into one of the steadier handoffs in recent Braves history.

That is the part that matters now. Freeman remains the standard for what Atlanta lost, but Olson has given the Braves something they could not know they were getting in the spring of 2022: a replacement who has been there every day, and then some.