(This is not a Big Board question, though it could be. I think right now, any guesses to that effect would not even be educated, and that seems like the wrong thing for the Big Board.)
Back before the 2025 season, I wrote an article that the 2025 bullpen could look a bit different than the bullpen of the three most recent Braves seasons. Basically, that article had a table that indicated:
- Braves’ bullpen preseason projected rank was top four or better from 2022-2024, top eight the two seasons before that, and then dropping to ninth ahead of 2025;
- Braves’ bullpen finished in the top ten in fWAR each year from 2020-2024;
- Braves’ bullpen finished in the top half in WPA each year from 2019-2024;
- At least two Braves relievers had 1+ fWAR in each year from 2020-2024; and, lastly and most saliently,
- The Braves had around $40 million committed to relievers in each year from 2020-2024 except 2021, which was also the case for 2025.
As noted, the 2025 case was a bit weird, because Joe Jimenez was on the books salary-wise, but likely out for the season,
which is what tamped down the team’s bullpen projection towards the back end of the top ten, much lower than the three years before.
And, well, we know what happened:
- The bullpen finished 25th in fWAR, its lowest placement under the current regime (but similar to the 23rd in 2018). It did a little better in xFIP-, but was still in the bottom ten.
- The bullpen actually finished 13th in WPA despite the bullet above.
- Only one Braves reliever had 1+ fWAR, and that was Raisel Iglesias with 1.0 fWAR.
As a follow-up to that season, the moves the Braves have taken to date have involved declining club options on two relief arms who did okay in 2025 and projected to do okay in 2026: Pierce Johnson and Tyler Kinley. There was also nothing settled with Raisel Iglesias before he hit free agency.
As a result, before any additions are made (before the Braves or anyone else), here’s where we stand:
- The 12th-best projected relief corps.
- A projected effective front troika of Aaron Bummer, Joe Jimenez, and Dylan Lee.
- A bunch of speculative pieces that may not be horrible, but aren’t expected to be useful, either, like Dylan Dodd, Daysbel Hernandez, Hayden Harris, and Jose Suarez.
- About $22 million in bullpen commitments, factoring in arbitration salary for Dylan Lee.
For the Braves to get back to “standard,” we could expect about $18 million (give or take $4 million in either direction) in additional bullpen spending. Of course, there’s no reason they need to get back to standard. There are lots of directions they could go, in light of declining the Johnson and Kinley options:
First, they could take the Johnson and Kinley savings and dump them into a premier reliever, a la Edwin Diaz. With no other additions that cost “real money,” that could entail a similar level of bullpen spending (a little more) than before and a bullpen that’s relatively top-heavy but still projected well, albeit with a ton of risk laden into their one pricy addition.
Or, they could try to fully diversify their risk, adding a bunch of relievers at $3 million or so, not worrying about the sunk costs when half of them flame out, but turning the remainder, along with some combination of Bummer, Jimenez, and Lee into an effective relief corps.
They could also go the middle path, basically just a reprise of Johnson and Kinley’s options, but with different players — essentially adding a few guys that they hope are meaningfully better than cheaper options, sliding Jimenez into the nominal closer role, and hoping they guessed right without as much risk diversification as the approach immediately above. If they do this, they’ll likely have room for about one more mid-range reliever addition, i.e., someone to replace Iglesias’ bullpen spot if not his role or salary.
Of course, there are other options beyond the constraint of keeping bullpen spending the same. Despite declining the options, they could double down on bullpen spending and go on a crazy spending spree on relievers. I think that’d be learning the wrong lesson from 2025, but it’s possible. The flip side is that the Braves are going to cut bullpen spending as much as feasible and funnel those savings to other parts of the roster. I love this in theory, but the main problem is that to do this, you need to actually have a keen sense of how to get bullpen value from league minimum-esque additions. The Braves haven’t shown any real aptitude in this regard — over the last few years, they seem to be more enamored with adding guys with terrible peripherals and expectations and trying to get them (relatively unsuccessfully) to improve. Enyel De Los Santos (who had a great HR/FB but not much else), Rafael Montero, and Hector Neris are the obvious examples from 2025; a lot of other guys from prior seasons can’t even be added to a laundry list because they were speculative adds who didn’t even make the majors.
Anyway, which direction do you think the bullpen situation will go? One of the things I outlined above, or something completely different?
