I could make this one a scoring one, but doing anything score-wise that pertains to relievers seems kinda gross. So, nah.
This question is, of course, prompted by whatever happened last night that led Carlos Carrasco to face six batters in high leverage. (The lone remaining batter he faced was just short of the cutoff for high leverage.) Apparently, many other arms were “unavailable,” though whether that is a result of load management or something else remains to be clarified.
Anyway, let’s talk about
usage. The Braves have played 67 games so far, which is right around 41 percent of the season.
- Dylan Lee has pitched 30 2/3 innings so far, which pro-rates to about 75 innings.
- Robert Suarez has pitched 29 2/3 innings so far, which pro-rates to about 72 innings.
- Tyler Kinley has pitched 28 1/3 innings so far, which pro-rates to about 69 innings.
No one else has really been used heavily enough to pro-rate out to over 55 innings — though Didier Fuentes is in kind of a weird boat where his innings total may or may not get close to that depending on whether he has a few longer appearances or not.
For Lee, 75 innings would be a career high; he completed 68 1/3 in 2025. Suarez’ career high is 69 2/3, also last year. Kinley pitched 72 2/3 last year, his second season cresting 70 innings.
Of course, an Injured List stint could easily knock any of these guys well off their pace.
It’s worth noting two things: first, 70 innings isn’t some kind of unthinkable Rubicon. Last year, even excluding various bulk guys and long men, there were 25-plus relievers that hit that mark. An average of about two relievers per team crossed the 65 IP threshold. Second, the Braves really don’t like using their bullpen. They’re still 21st in reliever innings this year, they were 24th despite the entire rotation getting hurt last year, and if you exclude 2020, the last time the team was even in the top half of reliever innings pitched was 2016. This also extends to individual players — here are the number of Braves relievers in the top 30 in usage going backwards:
- 2026: Lee (30th so far)
- 2025: no one (Lee 39th)
- 2024: no one (Raisel Iglesias 32nd)
- 2023: Michael Tonkin (fifth)
- 2022: Two: A.J. Minter and Collin McHugh (16th and 17th)
- 2021: no one (Will Smith 34th)
Notably, the pattern is actually very different if you do appearances rather than innings completed, where the Braves aren’t shy about inserting their relievers into the game fairly often, so there’s definitely a deliberate thing going on there to some extent.
Anyway, now you have some info, and the question it is what it is.
