As I sit down to write this, we are a week away from Opening Day, and the Braves are playing out the string on the remainder of Spring Training. Usually, the month that precedes Opening Day is used to address roster questions, and determine who heads north with the team. But, this year, the whole “competition” aspect has been incredibly muted. The Braves essentially cut their “guys in camp” quantity down to 26, the same number that will to Philadelphia ahead of next Thursday, about three-fourths of the way into the Grapefruit League schedule. At this time, it looks like Forrest Wall, Luis Guillorme, and Jackson Stephens are the beneficiaries of this relatively early-made decision. Meanwhile, also-rans include infielder David Fletcher, outfielder Eli White, relieving youngster Ray Kerr, and relief veteran Ken Giles.
Of course, it’s still possible that the Braves make a move or two and shake things up a bit. But if they do, it won’t be because of the “competition” of the last month; rather, it will be more like what happened with Adam Duvall (who has yet to get into a Spring Training game at this point), where an interesting player’s availability at an agreeable price point results in an unexpected change. Or, there could be an injury, but I don’t really even want to go there.
With that said, just because someone didn’t make the Opening Day roster doesn’t mean the book is closed on their major league season. Just looking back at the Braves’ most recent competitive stretch, here’s a list of huge contributors that did not break camp with the big league club and weren’t acquired in trades (sorry, 2022 Jesse Chavez, who was acquired in April). So, if a guy you think has some serious potential to help the team isn’t in the Opening Day roster press release, don’t fret — there’s tons of precedent, as described below. Note that the list below doesn’t include guys who started the season injured, but rather voluntary (from the team’s perspective) absences in the early part of the season.
2022 – Dylan Lee – 1.1 fWAR in 46 games
I feel like I end up writing about Dylan Lee a lot, and here I am again. Despite the weird fact (that I also mention every time) about how Lee became the first pitcher in MLB history to make his first career start in a World Series game, Lee actually didn’t make the roster out of Spring Training. He wasn’t really even deep in the competition, either, as he was cut back on March 31, and Spring Training ran through April 5 that year due to the lockout. It was likely a case of Lee being an obvious roster casualty precisely because he had option years remaining, but he didn’t really make it down to the wire competition-wise, either — he was optioned back down two days after being recalled the first time.
But, Lee ended up being dominant pretty much all year, cementing his spot on the roster shortly after being called up in late May. He finished third on the team in relief fWAR (and had a better FIP and xFIP than Collin McHugh, who was second). Fate cruelly gave him negative WPA on the season, but no matter, as we know how good he was.
The obvious Lee-esque candidate for 2024 is Ray Kerr, who also has options, and also happens to be a left-hander peeled away from another organization (though the Braves paid a chunk of cash to get Kerr, while Lee was a minor league free agent signing). Lee himself is one of the reasons Kerr isn’t on the Opening Day roster as it is, though he’s been struggling with velocity since missing much of 2023 with shoulder issues, and may be up-and-down himself this season.
2023 – Bryce Elder – 1.8 fWAR in 31 games
Elder getting optioned to Triple-A was one of the big shocks of last year’s Spring Training, as both he and Ian Anderson got shown the proverbial door in favor of Jared “Shuise Control” Shuster and Dylan “Godd” Dodd (the latter of whom didn’t make the Opening Day roster but was called up to make a few early-season starts).
However, that plan quickly and unceremoniously exploded in the Braves’ face — Shuster was dreadful in both of his first two starts before getting optioned, while Dodd had an amazing five-inning effort against the Cardinals in his MLB debut and then pretty much got blasted every other time out. So, in stepped Elder, who after just one Triple-A start in 2023, stuck in the rotation pretty much the whole season. Things started out swimmingly, as he used a relatively unconventional slider shape, spin deflection, and command good enough to wear out the corner, to put up a very good 54 ERA- / 86 FIP – / 84 xFIP- line through his first 15 starts of the year, earning him an All-Star selection, of all things.
Elder’s success then completely evaporated, as the command slipped and the slider location stopped being good enough to make his whole shtick work (and perhaps hitters caught on to the spin deflection as well, though that’s way harder to prove if it happened concurrently with the worsening slider location). He was also part of probably the most infamous part of the Braves’ 2023 season, where he was left out to face Bryce Harper in a playoff game and gave up a perhaps-all-too-predictable homer, seriously damaging the Braves’ chances of advancing to the next round. But, all that aside, he’s kind of the prototypical guy for this list: an early-season pivot that sticks around all season and becomes a key roster cog, even if his season ended up being pretty Jekyll-and-Hyde in the end.
2018 – Anibal Sanchez – 2.5 fWAR in 25 games
The case of Anibal “Butterfly Magic” Sanchez being on the list is kind of a weird one. Acquired in the middle of Spring Training, the Braves assigned him to Triple-A, but called him up for the fourth game of the season, without him appearing in a minor league game. He was immediately pressed into duty after Sean Newcomb was blown up by the Nationals and had a pretty mediocre long relief outing given a 2/3 K/BB ratio. But, he then ascended to the rotation and became part of the mystique of that unexpectedly awesome run in 2018, providing the Braves with the second-most fWAR on their pitching staff (behind Mike Foltynewicz).
The Braves ended up using 13 different starters that year, albeit only six (including Trade Deadline acquisition Kevin Gausman) made ten or more starts. Among the group of six, Sanchez finished with the second-best FIP (behind Foltynewicz) and second-best xFIP (behind Brandon McCarthy). He went on to have a similar season (with far worse peripherals) for the Nationals at 36 years old in 2019, and then quickly faded out of relevance thereafter.
The Braves don’t really have a Sanchez-esque case in their organization for this year, though you could argue that Ken Giles somewhat fits that mold, assuming he sticks in the organization.
2019 – Michael Soroka – 4.0 fWAR in 29 games
You could probably go without having Soroka on this list, because the circumstances were somewhat special. Soroka made his debut in 2018, but was shut down for the whole season with shoulder inflammation after making just five starts. The shoulder issues persisted into the offseason and he ended up getting optioned to Triple-A as essentially a time-buying measure, since he didn’t manage to make a single official Spring Training appearance that year.
But, after just two outings for Gwinnett, Soroka was recalled and thrilled the Braves with his awesome, 4.0 fWAR, 174 2⁄3-inning season. Alas, we know how the saga of Soroka in Atlanta progressed and eventually ended, and this is just a reminiscence of once-brighter days for the right-hander. May he get there again.
2018 – Ronald Acuña Jr. – 4.1 fWAR in 111 games
There are lots of reasons why guys don’t make the Opening Day roster, and yes, service time manipulation is one of them. Acuña obliterated Double-A and Triple-A as a 19-year-old in 2017, but that wasn’t enough to save a player of his extreme talent from getting sent to Gwinnett to start the 2018 season. The quotes at the time were definitely amusing, given what the Braves have done since — Alex Anthopoulos said “the more we talked about it organizationally, from a philosophical standpoint, having more development time, no one’s ever been hurt by that” — and then rushed a treasure trove of talent through the minors a few years later.
Amusingly, Acuña didn’t really do anything in his three weeks at Gwinnett to warrant a promotion, putting up just a 64 wRC+. Meanwhile, Preston Tucker was doing a mediocre-but-not-ripe-for-an-obvious-benching job in the majors, with a 94 wRC+. I remember, early on, making a silly chart about the race to not get benched when Acuña got called up tracking the offensive production of Tucker and Nick Markakis, and, well, Tucker lost that race handily. Of course, these are all things that quickly got yeeted into the dustbin of history, since Acuña began to terrorize the league as soon as he was called up. He had a 148 wRC+ through his first 49 PAs, settled into 118 through his first 200 major league PAs, and then skyrocketed back upwards to finish the season with 4.1 fWAR and a 142 wRC+ in 111 games. He finished second on the team in fWAR, and though he probably wouldn’t have passed Freddie Freeman’s 4.8 had he made the Opening Day roster (because he got injured mid-season), it would’ve been pretty close.
The 2024 Braves don’t really have any obvious service time manipulation targets (and it’s not clear they’d even bother going that route at this point, anyway), so this is really a special case that isn’t particularly relevant for the current team.
2022 – Michael Harris II – 4.8 fWAR in 114 games
Yes, someone bested Acuña’s debut season. Harris not only wasn’t even in Triple-A when he was promoted to the big leagues, he hadn’t even had 200 PAs in Double-A yet (196 prior to promotion). The story here, though, is recent enough that you already know it, in all likelihood: the Braves started the season with Adam Duvall as the starting center fielder, and while perhaps surprisingly given it was his age-33 season, he was awesome there defensively, his offense dragged. Whether it was just small sample shenanigans or Duvall feeling gassed from running around covering more ground in the outfield, the then-scuffling Braves promote Harris, and the rest was joyous history.
Harris implemented a few offensive adjustments on the fly soon after his promotion, and his unorthodox but damaging approach of mashing the set of “things he could reach” as opposed to “hittable strikes” caught pitchers off guard, again and again. Harris finished third on the team among position players in fWAR (fifth overall) and won the NL Rookie of the Yea award, despite not making his debut until May 28.
I won’t belabor the point here, but Harris is kind of the reason for this article. Here was a guy who was probably not even projected to hit the majors until 2024, until the Braves did what they’ve done repeatedly in recent history. Will we have another Harris-esque story in 2024? We very well might, and that’s all the more reason to follow along closely, as always.
