It was a grand opening followed almost immediately by a grand closing when it came to Héctor Neris’ time with the Atlanta Braves. The former high leverage reliever for the Houston Astros and Philadelphia
Phillies ended up latching on with the Braves just in time for Spring Training and ended up pitching (or existing?) his way into a roster spot — somehow.
Despite joining the team with little fanfare following an underwhelming 2024 season, it was understandable to believe that Alex Anthopoulos could’ve pulled off a coup by bringing in Neris and letting Rick Kranitz and the rest of the coaching staff work their magic on him so that he could return to the form that he displayed back in 2022 and earlier. As you can tell by how early on in the offseason this review is coming, things didn’t exactly go according to plan. Let’s get into it.
How acquired
Héctor Neris elected free agency after he ended the 2024 season with the Houston Astros. It took all the way until March 3 for Neris to eventually sign a contract and the Braves were the team that decided to take a chance on him. Atlanta signed him to a minor-league deal with an invitation to Spring Training. After three appearances in big league spring training games, the Braves apparently saw enough and selected Neris’ contract after he made the roster for Opening Day. It may be worth noting that Neris didn’t exactly pitch all that great in those appearances, managing just a 1/1 K/BB ratio, but that didn’t seem to faze anyone.
What were the expectations?
Well, it would’ve been understandable if y’all had figured that Neris would just be here to be a middle reliever. After all, he was one of the last players to make the roster and the Braves had a handful of relievers who figured to be better this season than he would be in 2025 — even if he bounced back. Yes, he had a good 2023 season that saw him pitch important innings for the Astros, but even that season came as a result of some great HR/FB luck and he ended up bouncing between the Cubs and the Astros in 2024 when his peripherals caught up to him. On top of that, he was entering his age-36 season. As a result, he was projected to be basically replacement level.
Relievers are weird, so a bounceback to “good reliever” status wasn’t necessarily out of the cards, as he had spent much of his career worthy of that label. But, the Braves would’ve taken even “fine reliever” and a reliable arm out of the pen. Unfortunately, the projections were more right this time.
2025 results
Neris’ first appearance came on Opening Day during the seventh inning (!!!) with a one-run lead (!!!!!) and how well did it go? Well, it had Ivan openly asking just how long Hector Néris would stick around. Neris made his next appearance for the Braves three days later on March 30 and again, it didn’t go well at all. The very next day, the Braves renewed their vows with Jesse Chavez for the umpteenth time and DFA’d Neris after just one inning pitched and two appearances with five hits, one walk and five runs charged to him (all earned) and just one strikeout to go along with all of that. Following the DFA, Neris wouldn’t be seen again at the big league level until May 6, which is when he made his debut with the Angels. He got DFA’d again on June 28, and was officially released on July 3 before ending up with the Houston Astros again. The third time in Houston was not the charm for Neris, as he suffered the indignity of getting DFA’d for a third time in one season by three different teams. He’s still a free agent as I type this.
He actually pitched decently for the Angels, but luck was against him. He was awful in those two Braves appearances, and pretty bad with the Astros. He finished with -0.1 fWAR in 26 2/3 innings spanning 35 appearances; that latter stat really tells you that his season was a struggle. His final line was 163/128/108 (ERA-/FIP-/xFIP-) — he wasn’t good, but the baseball gods also decided to dump on him in basically every respect before the 2025 season was all said and done.
What went right?
Well, he didn’t suffer any injuries while he was here so I suppose you can say that that’s a positive. Folks, it’s pretty hard to find positives after the way his stint ended. I guess another positive is that he was able to latch on with two more organizations after how this stint in Atlanta went? I’m reaching at this point, y’all.
Look, it was so bad that of the nine batters he faced, the Braves’ win expectancy only increased in two of them. Yes, even the third out he got in his second and final Braves appearance came when the batter was thrown out on the bases after already driving in a run.
He did hit 10 years of service time in August but of course, that happened once he had rejoined the Houston Astros. That’s still genuinely awesome, though! Enjoy that pension, big dawg!
What went wrong?
You could make a very good argument that Brian Snitker made a major mistake by bringing him in to pitch the seventh inning of a one-run ballgame on Opening Day. It certainly was surprising to see Neris out there in that situation considering that, once again, he barely made the Opening Day roster to begin with. Still, he got the ball and the Braves regretted it immediately. He gave up a leadoff home run to the previously lightly-regarded Gavin Sheets and left with two men on base as he and the defense behind him failed to record a single out. Both of those runners scored while Aaron Bummer was called upon to clean up the mess, so Neris had three runs on his line before even recording an out.
We wouldn’t see him again until the series finale and again, things didn’t go well. Neris entered in the eighth inning (!!!) with the Braves down 3-0 to San Diego and the Padres treated him very rudely. Two hits, two stolen bases and one walk later, the Braves were down 5-0 and heading towards getting swept at the hands of the Padres. Oof.
2026 outlook
Again, Neris has been a free agent since electing free agency following his DFA by the Astros in mid-August. He’ll likely go deep into this offseason trying to find a deal and should he decide to keep his career going, I’d imagine that he’ll only have a minor league deal with an invite to Spring Training waiting for him from any given team as his best possible option. He’ll really have to prove it in Spring Training to make it back onto a major league roster — or maybe the Astros will get bored or something and decide to bring him back one more time, for old time’s sake. Either way, it’s pretty clear that the expectations are currently on the floor for Héctor Neris after a rocky 2025 season. His upside now is probably just “okay reliever,” since he had stretches of doing that (like with the Angels this past season), but the downside is really far down and anyone signing him is going to have to deal “what did you expect?” if it goes wrong given the way his career has unfolded in his mid-30s.
