Say it with me, folks: The Atlanta Braves used 46 pitchers in 2025. They used 71 players overall (a MLB record for a single season) and of those 71, 28 of them weren’t around for more than five games. Connor Seabold is one of those players, as he was only here for a brief period of time and a handful of innings before vanishing back into the aether of Triple-A baseball.
Even if we were to include his exploits for the Gwinnett Stripers, that would only cover 10 games total for Seabold as a member of
the Atlanta Braves organization in 2025. Still, we’re going to talk about him because he was still ready and willing to put on that uniform and help the Braves during what was a very underwhelming season for the club. Let’s get to it.
How acquired
On August 8, the Tampa Bay Rays designated Connor Seabold for assignment after just three appearances and 6 2/3 innings pitched for them at the big league level in 2025. Seabold did rack up 10 starts at the Triple-A level for the Durham Bulls and the vast majority of his big league experience came during an underwhelming 2023 campaign with the Rockies but yeah, we’re not here to chat about all of that. Instead, we’re going to talk about what happened after Seabold was claimed off waivers by the Braves, two days after his DFA by the Rays.
What were the expectations?
As with the many, many other pitchers who showed up for a handful of games for the Atlanta Braves in 2025, the expectations were on the floor. If he was called upon and ended up being consistent, great! If not, then we’d see Alex Anthopoulos continue to search for warm bodies and active arms to fill out the edges of the pitching staff. The Braves were already 16 games under .500 by the time Seabold was relevant to their fortunes and were arguably at the nadir of the season at this point — Seabold was not here to be a savior or anything like that.
Which is good, because Seabold wasn’t really going to be anyone’s savior. In the three prior seasons where he appeared in the majors, he was below replacement each time. His pitching line in aggregate, in 108 2/3 innings before 2025? A 172 ERA-, 134 FIP-, and 131 xFIP-. A low-strikeout guy who didn’t do well enough after transitioning to relief, there was no real reason to expect Seabold to anything useful in the bigs. He hadn’t even been effective in Triple-A since 2022.
2025 Results
As you can probably guess by the fact that Seabold had more Games Played (four) than Innings Pitched (3 2/3), things didn’t go well for Seabold at all. He finally made his first appearance for the Braves at the major league level on August 19 against the White Sox. Hoo boy, the first two games of that series were a bad time to be a pitcher for either of these teams, as the three-game series between these two commenced with two slugfests. Seabold was called upon to clean up Bryce Elder’s mess in that particular contest and he got the final out to make sure that the Braves got through the fifth inning of that contest “only” down by four. They put him back out there for the fifth and he got the first two outs with harmless ground balls before proceeding to give up a double and a homer back-to-back in order to see the Braves get sent down to a 10-4 deficit — Atlanta ended up winning this wacky game, by the way.
Anyways, Seabold got optioned down to Triple-A shortly after that performance and we didn’t see him again in the majors until September, which is when he’d get a weeklong cup of coffee this time around instead of a one-game affair. The Braves actually gave him a pretty big chance in a game against the Cubs on September 9 where they were trailing 3-1 in the eighth inning with the bases loaded. It, uh, did not end well.
Now granted, he was put in a very tough situation there with the bases loaded. With that being said, you’re not going to get away with 94 right down the middle in most situations so it wasn’t like Seabold covered himself in glory with that particular pitch. He did pitch a 1-2-3 ninth but at that point, he was simply ensuring that the bullpen wouldn’t have to use another arm on the night.
Seabold was called upon for mop-up duty for his final two appearances of the season in a Braves uniform. He pitched a scoreless ninth on September 12 against the Astros in an 11-3 loss but then he failed to record an out against the Nationals on September 15 during the eighth inning of what eventually ended up being an 11-3 win for Atlanta. Seabold was sent back down to Triple-A the very next day and then he was DFAd and eventually outrighted to Gwinnett by September 25.
In total, he had -0.1 fWAR for the Braves and 0.0 fWAR on the season in 3 2/3 and 10 1/3 innings, respectively. His line with the Braves was 232/157/120, his line on the season was 103/101/132. If not for avoiding giving up a homer in his three outings with the Rays, there probably would’ve been another sub-replacement campaign on his ledger.
What went right?
Well, hey, his FanGraphs page has an fWAR total for 2025 that doesn’t start with a “-” sign. That’s something.
His appearance against the Astros was easily his best overall performance — even if it was simply him eating the ninth inning of a game that had been decided a long time ago. He walked the leadoff hitter and eventually threw a wild pitch but outside of that, Seabold didn’t give up any hits or any runs while he was on the mound and recorded a pair of strikeouts as well. That’s the bar we’re dealing with, folks. Seriously, it was the only time in his four outings with the Braves that he didn’t have a negative WPA.
Also, this is potentially too sad not to mention: the highest WPA play (for the Braves) that occurred while Seabold was pitching was an inning-ending groundout while the Braves were trailing by three.
What went wrong?
Yeah, that appearance against the Nationals was just rough. The Braves were already up 8-1 in the eighth inning and just needed him to eat an inning in order to keep the game moving. Not only did he fail to get through that inning but he failed to get an out as well. One single, one walk and one RBI single later, Seabold was done in this one and was also done with the Atlanta Braves at the big league level in 2025. Oof.
His worst outing by WPA was that game against the Cubs, though. And, he actually pitched pretty well, with a 2/0 K/BB ratio. But yeah, coming in and turning a two-run game into a five-run game will do that.
Seabold was also profoundly awful in Triple-A in 2025 — an ERA and FIP above 6.00 and an xFIP above 5.00 while working as a swingman, so he’s not really on the cusp of succeeding, at least not from a performance standpoint.
2026 outlook
Well, he’s still with the organization, so there’s that. Assuming he doesn’t get released between now and Spring Training, he’ll get a look then and have a shot to maybe sneak into the bullpen for next season.
With that being said, he’s spent far more time in the minors than he has the majors and he’ll be 30 by the time next season rolls around. I think the safe bet would be to envision him spending the majority of his time in 2026 in the minors — whether it’s in Gwinnett or the equivalent for another organization. If he’s pitching for the Braves again in 2026, then he would’ve made a substantial stride between now and next season or the Braves would be in similarly dire straits with their pitching staff to where his presence would be needed. If he does end up pitching for the Braves at the big league level again, hopefully it’s the former instead of the latter!
That said, it’s not clear how Seabold is going to develop. He throws sidearm-ish and has great fastball command, except the problem is that he throws it up and the shape of his fastball has it sink down into the bat. He has a combination of an egregiously slow eephus-type changeup and a decent cutter/slider thing, but can’t command either — both have been effective at times but they’re pretty hard to rely on when his command comes and goes like he’s a raw teenager rather than a guy that’s been around the proverbial block a few times. Oh well.
