It’s been a while since we got a good ol’ fashioned bolt out of the blue straight from the Atlanta Braves, themselves, when it comes to a player acquisition. The idea of the Braves front office never leaking is more of a myth nowadays than it used to be but it’s still possible, as we saw yesterday when the signing of Evan Phillips basically came out of nowhere.
For all the focus that there’s been on Atlanta potentially adding to their rotation or possibly getting another bat into their fold, it made
sense for the Braves to also focus on fortifying their relief corps this offseason. With Raisel Iglesias currently a free agent, there’s no guarantee that he’d be returning to re-form that one-two punch with Robert Suarez that we rarely saw deployed into action during the 2026. If Iglesias does come back (and I’d have to imagine that it’d likely be on a one-year deal if he did return) then now he’s going to have yet another high-leverage arm to sit beside in that bullpen.
In fact, the Braves could be entering into elite territory when it comes to their bullpen if they can figure out a way to get Iglesias to return or if they continue to splash the cash for some other relievers on the market. For now, having Dylan Lee, Evan Phillips and Robert Suarez at the end of your bullpen is a very nice way to live baseball life — especially if guys like Dylan Dodd, Ray Kerr and probably Reynaldo López as well can help to round out the rest of the bullpen as well. I’m not going to say that the relief pitching for Atlanta is set because, really, it’s never going to be set due to the general volatility of relievers and the inevitable injuries that are bound to happen in any given baseball season but I will say that Atlanta’s going to be in a pretty nice place heading into 2027 now that they’ve got Phillips in the fold.
The main question concerning Phillips is whether or not he’d be able to return from the various ailments that caused him to mist most of 2025 and 2026. Fortunately, it appears that he’s still got it in terms of velocity — he came back in 2026 throwing 97 mph, which placed him in the 85th percentile when it came to fastball velocity and he did so while racking up an impressive 31.1 percent strikeout rate compared to a 5.7 percent walk rate.
His sweeper was at 86 mph (three miles above the average for right-handers), his cutter was at 93 mph (again, three miles above average) and his rarely-thrown sinker was at 97 mph (two miles above average). Despite the injuries (which was “headlined” by his Tommy John surgery back in 2025), Phillips’ stuff is back to where it was before he went down with the injury and from that point alone, it’s pretty exciting to think about what he can do in the back of Atlanta’s bullpen.
What makes this even more interesting is the money. By now, it’s pretty much an established pattern that if Alex Anthopoulos is going to splash some cash on a free agent, it’ll likely be on a high-leverage reliever. This front office did it with Kenley Jansen, they gave Aaron Bummer a multi-year deal, Reynaldo López was signed based on his work as a reliever and just last offseason they did the same with Robert Suarez. Now, Evan Phillips is the latest name to be added to this list.
At this point, it’s just something you can expect from the Braves. They’re going to place a premium on high-leverage relief pitching and honestly, it makes sense. The one thing that’s been a bit consistent about this team since they returned to being a perennial contender in the 2018 season is that they’ve had a bullpen that’s never been lower than middle-of-the-road. Over the past nine seasons, seven of those seasons have seen Atlanta finish at least 16th in fWAR among relief pitchers and it’s probably not a coincidence that one of those seasons where they didn’t finish that high was in 2025 when the entire pitching staff basically just had a revolving door.
So yeah, if the money is jarring to you then maybe that’ll explain why in terms of what the Braves have done in the past, it’s not really all that jarring. This is just how the Braves operate under Anthopoulos and it’ll likely continue for however this window stays open. Plus, it’s not even completely out of the realm of imagination that he would’ve signed a multi-year deal in this neighborhood of AAV. MLB Trade Rumors had him at two years and $24 million, NBC Sports had him at two years and $20 million while Yahoo! Sports also had him signing a two-year deal with an unspecified number — though I’m sure the AAV there would’ve been in the neighborhood of 10-12 million as well. The only thing that appeared to be shocking here is the fact that the Braves added on an third year but again, it also lines up with how the Braves themselves have operated in the past.
There’s certainly risk that comes with such a three-year commitment — especially considering that we’re still talking about a guy who will be entering his age-32 season after having spent the past two seasons dealing with injuries. With that being said, he clearly showed enough to where he was a pretty attractive free agent option on the market and the Braves liked him enough to hand him such a contract. If he stays healthy, then Phillips should serve as a very reliable option out of the bullpen for high-leverage innings and it’s easy to envision Phillips closing games at some point down the road.
Having such reliable options at that point of the game coming out of their bullpen is clearly priceless to Alex Anthopoulos and the Braves and now they’ve ensured themselves of once again having at a strong set-up man-and-closer combination at the end of their games.
