I honestly thought Atlanta would head into the season with Ian Anderson as the fifth starter. But before Opening Day, they traded Anderson for Jose Suarez for … reasons. The Braves still somehow managed
to get the better end of the deal (derogatory).
How acquired
At the end of Spring Training, the Angels and Braves made a surprise trade (not that they traded with each other, just who was involved) sending Anderson to Anaheim with Suarez coming to Atlanta. Before that point, Suarez had spent his whole career with the Angels after signing with them as an international free agent in 2014.
What were the expectations?
He was a left-handed arm. That’s basically it.
He hadn’t had an xFIP below 4.00 over a season in a while (2022, which was the only time it happened). His ERAs over the past couple seasons were over 6.00 and over 8.00. He was a career 127/116/111 guy across 376 2/3 innings as a swingman type, with a couple of reasonable seasons (2.9 fWAR combined in 207 1/3 innings in 2021-2022) totally negated by an awful 2023 (-0.5 fWAR in 33 2/3 innings) and a better-but-still-not-useful 2024 (0.1 fWAR in 52 1/3 innings).
I guess there was some mild hope that the 27-year old could rediscover what he did in 2021 and 2022, but … sheesh. They were probably just hoping for a functioning lefty reliever. Steamer had him as a below-average long reliever type before the season; ZiPS was more positive as kind of a fourth/fifth starter-quality swingman guy. It seemed, at best, that with proper usage, maybe he could be a not-bad lefty innings-eating reliever that wouldn’t get totally destroyed any time he faced a righty, but that’s about it.
2025 results
The lefty had an ERA of 1.86. That’s good, right? Not that he really earned it, as his season ended with a 44/91/106 line. But it took a bunch of twists and turns to get there.
Suarez made three appearances (two long relief, one not so much) in the first 2-3ish weeks of the season, and they were horrible. On April 10, he threw an inning in which he faced six batters, walked three of them, including walking in the go-ahead run in extras with two outs, and didn’t strike anyone out. He was bailed out by the Braves walking it off in the bottom of the inning, but that immediately led to a period where he sat idle in the bullpen for 11 days and then got DFAed and outrighted to Triple-A. He then spent a bunch of time injured until he was recalled in mid-September, when he made a spot start in a doubleheader.
That spot start ended up being amazing — one of the better starts the Braves had all year — and he stuck on the roster to the end of the year, making three more relief appearances (two meh, one great).
In total, he threw 19 innings in the majors with a strikeout rate below 20 percent, and a walk rate over 12 percent. Ew. His groundball rate was over 50%, so there is that actually. He did also get a lot of whiffs? But somehow that didn’t help the strikeouts or walks, and honestly, that is probably inflated by his spot start where he destroyed the Nationals for seven innings.
What went right?
Well, that spot start was great. He had a 9/2 K/BB ratio and completed seven innings, riding a five-run inning behind him to an easy Braves win.
What went wrong?
That spot start aside, everything was kinda gross. He had more walks than strikeouts before catching an April DFA. You can be a decently hard-throwing lefty and get chances, but we can’t walk more than we strike out. Even after that spot start, he made three relief appearances, and had a 2/0 K/BB ratio in the relief outing that came against the Nats, and an 0/1 K/BB ratio in the other two outings.
Suarez has pretty nice pitch shape, and that helps, but his command has been abhorrent since 2023, which is the year he struggled with shoulder problems. Those two things are probably related, but he didn’t really show much of an improvement in that regard in 2025. Which, case in point: look at the target on this 3-2 pitch and consider the fact that it’s a fastball, and look how terribly Suarez missed:
2026 outlook
Well, he and the Braves will get another run through arbitration. I’m not entirely sure Atlanta is going to hold on to him, give that he projects to cost about $1.5 million for next season, but I could see them offering arbitration, letting the arbitrator figure out his salary, and then cutting him loose to recoup a big chunk of that salary after things start sorting themselves out. It’d be another thing if he still had option years, but he doesn’t, and “maybe okay swingmen with one good outing in recent memory” are pretty freely available on the waiver wire for league minimum.
Even with an improved September, it wasn’t exactly good. If anything, Atlanta should have learned from this session that they need to shoot higher. It’s fine to bring him back on a minors deal, but they need better in their bullpen or a real plan to develop Suarez further. Right now, he’s probably somewhere between a replacement-level reliever or maybe a fourth/fifth-starter/swingman type, but the Braves have enough of those on both counts.
