Did Atlanta make the wrong call in sending down Bryce Elder?

The Braves needed to clear a rotation spot to make room for Spencer Strider's return last week. Why was it Elder?

The Atlanta Braves are dealing with a good problem right now - too many options.

The team’s rotation was full of players who were performing well. Atlanta’s starters collectively have a 3.74 ERA on the season, a top ten mark in the entire sport, but the recent track record is even better:

Last fifteen days:
AJ Smith-Shawver: Three starts, 0.46 ERA
Chris Sale: Two starts, 1.46 ERA
Bryce Elder: Three starts, 3.18 ERA
Grant Holmes: Three starts, 3.57 ERA
Spencer Schwellenbach: Three starts, 4.32 ERA

Add Spencer Strider to that group, who came out of Wednesday’s simulated game feeling good and is slated to start one of Atlanta’s three games in Washington next week.

But with manager Brian Snitker adamant that the team would not use a six-man rotation in the coming weeks, someone had to move out. And they chose Bryce Elder. Was it the right decision?

Let’s talk about it.

Why not a six-man rotation?

Put simply, Atlanta does not need a sixth starter for the next few weeks. Now that they are reaching the end of this brutal stretch of seventeen games in seventeen days, off days are about to become a thing again. And with the next three Mondays off, adding a sixth starter would, in essence, put the entire rotation on the Pacific Rim-style once-a-week starting schedule.

While the Braves have been building extra rest into the rotation for their starters, six days of rest is a bit much for many professional pitchers who are routine-oriented.

The biggest issue is not asking them to switch to pitching once a week but to switch back to a standard schedule once those off days become less prevalent later in June. Atlanta has three off days in the first sixteen calendar days of the month, including two in a five-day span, but then plays thirteen consecutive games, gets one off day, and then plays twelve games in thirteen days.

Additionally, using a six-man rotation leaves the bullpen shorthanded, something that can potentially backfire on a team without a lot of bullpen flexibility to cycle in arms if they need to cover a short start.

So, not using a six-man rotation is at least a defensible decision from Atlanta. But to make room for Strider, they sent down Bryce Elder. Why?

The case to send down Bryce Elder

Let’s be clear: Bryce Elder hasn’t pitched poorly enough where he needs to be sent to the minors.

Across his last five starts, Elder pitched to an ERA of 3.10 while giving the Braves four quality starts in five attempts. The Braves are 3-2 in those games, while Elder’s gotten credit for two wins and only one loss.

No, this comes down to options and flexibility, both from a roster perspective and a player perspective. Unfortunately, Elder was the odd man out here, a victim of circumstance.

From an options perspective, your optionable starters were Elder, Schwellenbach, and Smith-Shawver, so it was really Elder or nothing. The Braves aren’t going to send Schwellenbach back to the minors after the season he had last year, while Smith-Shawver has been dominant since being recalled (0.46 ERA in his last three). Obviously, the other concern with Smith-Shawver is the impact of continuously yo-yo-ing a 22-year-old top prospect who hasn’t yet been able to establish himself in the majors and what it can do to his confidence.

So really, Elder was the only logical choice if the Braves were going to send someone down to Gwinnett out of the current rotation…but they did have other options.

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The case to move someone to the pen

I’ve noticed that a lot of converted relievers seemingly cap out around 130-145 effective innings in their first season as a starter. Here’s just a small sample of those conversions from last year and their first-season workloads:

Reynaldo López: 135.2 IP
Jordan Hicks: 109.2 IP
Garrett Crochet: 146 IP
Jose Soriano: 113 IP

Grant Holmes is another reliever who is making that conversation to the rotation this year, but he has a slight advantage in that he started seven games last year, so it’s not just a single-inning-to-full-fledged-starter conversion. The closest analogue I have here is Zack Littell, who moved to the rotation over the summer of 2023 for Tampa Bay, making 14 starts, and finished with 87 innings that year and 156.1 in 2024.

Grant Holmes had 68.1 innings last year after making seven starts, so a projection of between 130 and 150 innings seems to track. He’s already at 45.2 over eight starts (and one relief appearance in the season’s first week).

If it were me, I would have kept Elder in Atlanta and moved Holmes back to the bullpen for a few weeks to try and manage his innings.

There are some downsides to this, though. The first is the loss of depth: since the Braves aren’t going to option Daysbel Hernández or Dylan Lee to Gwinnett, they would need to sacrifice someone by designating them for assignment unless some sudden “shoulder soreness” were to crop up. Likely would have been Rafael Montero, I’m assuming.

The second downside is interfering with Holmes’ pitching routines. I’m sure that training all offseason as a starter, moving to a single-inning role midseason and then back to rotation after a month or so wouldn’t necessarily be easy for him to do and could impact his performance in both roles for the rest of the season. There’s a reason that teams sometimes send guys back to the minors for a few weeks to stretch out, but that’s not a possibility with the out-of-options Holmes.

So, does Strider gets activated today?

Likely not, no.

Since manager Brian Snitker confirmed that Spencer Strider wouldn’t be starting until sometime next week in Washington, you have a spot that can be used on a reliever out of Gwinnett.

The issue there is that most of the options from the 40-man roster have pitched recently for the Stripers - Nathan Wiles was Thursday’s starter, while Davis Daniel pitched five inning on Tuesday and likely wouldn’t be able to take more than one inning until Saturday (he’s the listed Sunday starter for Gwinnett). Hurston Waldrep, who is working on cementing his new mechanics, threw six innings on Wednesday while Austin Cox struggled in relief after Waldrep.

Honestly, the best option out of the 40-man players is Dylan Dodd, who hasn’t pitched since throwing a single inning on Sunday. After giving up five runs in his season debut, Dodd allowed just five runs across fifteen innings the rest of the way, including just one in the month of May.

But there’s one more option: Craig Kimbrel.

The former Braves closer, who has been in Gwinnett since late April, is back to throwing 95 miles per hour with his heater and has been working the 9th inning for the Stripers. There also happens to be an open spot on the 40-man, so either Kimbrel or Jesse Chavez could be added without a corresponding move.

Now, does this set up a decision next week of which reliever to get rid of to activate Strider? It sure does. I’d imagine Rafael Montero is the odd man out there, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.