With September roster expansion upon us, the Braves have thrown everyone a bit of a curveball with their pitcher call-up:
The #Braves today selected the contract of RHP John Brebbia and recalled OF Eli White to Atlanta. To make room on the 40-man roster, Atlanta designated LHP Zach Logue for assignment.
— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) September 1, 2024
Let’s start with John Brebbia — did you even know he was in the organization? I didn’t, and his signing doesn’t appear on the Braves’ official transaction page. He was only released by the White Sox three days ago, and hadn’t gotten into a game with Gwinnett or anything in the interim.
Brebbia is a 34-year-old veteran of seven MLB seasons, having appeared for the Cardinals, Giants, and White Sox thus far. He had a dominant relief season in San Francisco in 2019, and was good as an occasional opener in 2022-2023, but had just 0.2 fWAR in 48 2⁄3 innings for the White Sox this year.
For his career, Brebbia has an interesting 94/88/103 line — he’s a fly ball pitcher that relies on weak contact in the air, and often runs a low HR/FB rate. However, the tables turned on him this year (153/103/95), and he got released without playing out the entirety of his $5.5 million deal. (Why do the White Sox largely spend money on relievers? That kind of explains why they are where they are.)
Brebbia is a strange choice and, if you squint, it kind of tells you what you probably already knew in terms of the Braves’ attitude to this season — he’s not exactly a higher-leverage option at this point, so the Braves are again opting for “an extra guy that keeps the other arms in the organization relatively well-rested” instead of upside or whatever. Daysbel Hernandez hasn’t been good in Triple-A, but the Braves have called him up multiple times already, and he seemed to be in line for this spot given his arsenal and raw stuff. The Braves don’t need another Luke Jackson/Jesse Chavez in the bullpen, as they already have two of those — and let’s be honest, that’s kind of how they use Grant Holmes as well. So now they have four right-handed long relief guys in a nine-member bullpen, which seems like overkill.
The other move is more obvious: Eli White is fast, can hit the ball hard, fields well, hit pretty well at Gwinnett (122 wRC+), and has been up and down already this season. He gives the Braves another pinch-running / defensive replacement option so they don’t always have to use guys like Adam Duvall and Jarred Kelenic in that capacity.
