It’s not often that relievers with really good numbers for two years fall into your lap. That was the case with Enyel De Los Santos and the Braves last winter. The 2022 and 2023 seasons with Cleveland
were the high water mark for Enyel. So, how did fall into said lap? Well, the 2024 campaign was not so much, and that’s why he was available. He served as a solid bullpen guy for nearly two months, which is pretty good business for an invite to Spring Training. The Braves eventually got tired of him, and so it ended up being a really weird season overall.
How acquired
The Braves signed De Los Santos to a minor league contract on December 15, 2024. They invited him to Spring Training in January along with 15 others. He made the final cut for Opening Day, along with future National League Rookie of the Year Drake Baldwin. Clearly, De Los Santos didn’t have nearly as good of a 2025 season as Baldwin. But he did end up logging the 13th most innings among Braves pitchers in 2025. Among the other Spring Training invitees, Wander Suero was the only other pitcher that ended up spending time in Atlanta. Sandy Leon was the only other position player.
In that sense, it’s no small feat that he made the roster. Before landing with the Braves, De Los Santos had bounced around through six teams over the course of his five MLB seasons. (Weirdly, the team that originally signed him, the Mariners, was not one of those teams, as he was traded to the Padres before making his MLB debut. He didn’t debut with the Padres then, either, but eventually pitched for them in 2024.) He spent much of his time working his way up through the Phillies organization. He spent his most meaningful Major League time with Cleveland. His best two seasons by fWAR were 2022 and 2023, putting together a combined 78 ERA-, 75 FIP-, and 93 xFIP- in 119 combined innings, earning him 1.7 fWAR. That said, his time in the majors before those two years was really bad (144/125/104), and his 2024 was a return to that poor level of performance (131/146/112). So, that’s how he fell into the Braves’ lap.
What were the expectations?
When you’re signed to a minor league deal and have an invitation to Spring Training, the expectation is likely that you’ll agree to to Triple-A or try to latch onto another team. Maybe you contribute at some point in the season, but it won’t be much. As mentioned before, De Los Santos’ 2024 season was brutal. Maybe the Braves were hoping he’d have a great Spring Training, or enough of a bad one that he’d stick around in the organization. projections had him in the 0.0-0.2 WAR range over a normal bullpen workload, which makes sense considering he was terrible in 2024 but quite useful the two seasons before that. Most of the time a guy like that wouldn’t hurt you, but wouldn’t help you either.
2025 results
De Los Santos did indeed have a great Spring Training. He struck out eight while walking only one batter in 7 2/3 innings. The four-seam fastball was rolling in there at 96.2. The slider was sliding and unhittable. He made an Opening Day Braves bullpen that wasn’t yet beset with injuries or ravaged by the HR/FB monster.
The 2025 Baseball Savant bars show a pretty average-y pitcher with a good fastball. He put together a 104/93/102 line across 66 innings in total, but his line with the Braves was 107/83/109. You can see why the Braves got rid of him down the stretch, but comically, he was riding a super-low HR/FB to reasonable value with the Braves. Not that it saved his spot.
The Braves jettisoned De Los Santos on July 30. He completed the season with the Houston Astros. He managed to pick up 0.4 fWAR during 2025, which included 0.5 with the Braves. So why would the 2025 Atlanta Braves, with the sixth worst bullpen by WAR, release a perfectly cromulent pitcher? Well…
What went right?
The first seventeen appearances went very well for De Los Santos. From Opening Day until May 11th, De Los Santos had a 78/82/76. So for the first six weeks, he looked something akin to 20 percent better at preventing runs than an average pitcher. I put together this profile on him in May. Basically his slider usage, which had already been growing over the course of his career, started to increase to the point where it had become his most used pitch.
The slider added more movement in 2025. His pitch run values backed up the effectiveness. He was starting to become one of the more interesting pieces of the bullpen. However, he never really claimed a consistent spot in the bullpen. That is, in the Braves bullpen hierarchy based on inning and the score line, he never claimed one of the 7th, 8th, or 9th inning roles with a lead. Even with the early-season implosion of Raisel Iglesias, he was treated as the outsider. In the end, that probably made sense.
Not that it was a disaster at all times, though. He was instrumental in an eventual 4-2 extra-inning win over the Phillies on April 10, throwing a scoreless inning in the eighth after entering into a tie game with a man on first and none out. He struck out Nick Castellanos, and two flyouts ended the frame.
He was also a part of this somewhat incredible play back on April 2, which would’ve been super-notable had not Raisel Iglesias completely imploded in the later innings to turn a two-run lead into a walkoff loss:
What went wrong?
Well, he came back to Earth after that hot six weeks is what. Even with a FIP of 3.30 over the rest of his bullpen tenure, he never looked overpowering again. His strikeout rate was nearly cut in half to 14.7 percent over the rest of his Braves tenure versus 28.9 percent over the first six weeks. He started to lose his control with the slider and leaned more on the fastball, which is really not a great idea for him.
In summary: 78/82/76 through May 11, and then 129/85/133 afterwards. He did not allow a homer as a Brave after April 20, but he was walking way too many and not really striking out much more than he walked.
One of his worst outings was June 15 against the Rockies at home. This was a good day to play golf, like I was, if you’re a Braves fan. One of many this season, unfortunately. De Los Santos entered the game with the Braves down a run in the seventh. Starter Grant Holmes had gotten the Braves to a 2-1 game in the seventh and left a runner on first with one out. De Los Santos was the victim of a couple of singles, but then issued a bases-loaded walk before a double broke the game open. Orlando Arcia, of all people had the first single. The Braves were then down five runs when he gave way to Jose Ruiz. Ruiz would balk a runner home but otherwise took care of business. Not a fun time.
But, an even more painful outing came on May 14, which heralded the end of his good run. De Los Santos came on with two out in the seventh and stranded the would-be tying run at second. He then came out for the eighth, walked CJ Abrams, and then threw the ball away on an attempted pickoff, putting the tying run at third with none out. Two batters later, the Braves were down (and would go on to lose by the same score), and while the ball-in-play stuff wasn’t really his fault (the tying run came on a no-man’s-land pop), it was still a disaster for the team. And, sometimes, he was on the receiving end of stuff like this, his lowest-WPA play of the year.
2026 outlook
De Los Santos had a ghastly 5.33 xFIP over his last 24 1/3 innings for the Braves. He became lost in the shuffle in late July as the Braves were trying to find fresh arms to take some bulk innings. He was let go on the same day as the Braves acquired Tyler Kinley from the Rockies. And Kinley really worked out for the Braves, albeit in the same way that De Lo Santos was — meh peripherals, no homers. So, De Los Santos got cut for Kinley, and then Kinley didn’t pitch well enough to get his club option picked up. De Los Santos was picked up by the Astros, so a spot with the Braves for 2026 seems very unlikely. He actually pitched much better for the Astros (91 xFIP-), but the HR/FB came to roost, as he had a HR/FB rate north of 17 percent with Houston while it was just above four percent while he was with the Braves.
Steamer projects De Los Santos for a marginally-above-replacement performance. That makes a lot of sense, considering he’s at 104/107/106 over his last three seasons. Maybe he manages another low HR/FB like in 2023 or 2025, or maybe it catches up to him and makes everyone miserable, like in 2024. He’s basically another 30-year-old bullpen lottery ticket for someone. That someone could be Houston, but who knows. It looks like he won’t be back. I just hope wherever he is, he reconnects with his slider before hitters do.
In the end, De Los Santos had a weird season. Because of the lack of homers surrendered, he had the fourth-most fWAR among Atlanta relievers, even though he was only with the team for four months. But, his actual pitching was more akin to Hunter Stratton slash Zach Thompson levels of “a guy to eat innings.” The Braves moving on wasn’t surprising, but De Los Santos being the one guy in the bullpen to prominently benefit from a low HR/FB (up until Tyler Kinley replaced him in multiple respects, including that one), just feels somewhat off-kilter. Oh well.
