New Year's Resolutions for the 40-Man Roster: Pitching Edition
If Braves players are focused on the "New Year, New Me" thing for 2025, here's what each player should work to improve this calendar year
(Now that we’re past the holidays and can get back into a normal routine, the goal is three newsletters a week from now through spring training…where we’ll probably ramp up to five or so.1 Also, let me know if you want me to send the daily podcasts out as a separate newsletter or as some sort of end-of-week recap (with links) of what we talked about. Still not sure what’s the best way to share those.)
It’s all Anne Halkett’s fault.
Back in 1671, the Scottish memoirist wrote a note about what her intentions were for the coming year, calling them “resolutions”. Ever since then, we’ve all been expected to devote our energies towards being a better person every January, with shockingly few people actually able to stick with it for an entire calendar year.
Professional athletes, however, are (literally) built different.
We’ve taken the liberty of going through the entire 40-man roster and pinpointing one thing each player needs to work on. Part 1 covers the twenty-three pitchers, while Part 2 will cover the seventeen position players. As always, this is available as a podcast if you’d rather listen (or watch) than read.
Without further ado, in alphabetical order:
Ian Anderson: Make it back to the majors. He’s now almost two calendar years removed from his Tommy John surgery (4/12/2023) and got 52.1 innings in Triple-A Gwinnett last season to work out the kinks. I’ve got him penciled in as the 4th starter to start 2025, owing to his lack of minor league options and (likely) complete unfamiliarity with pitching out of the pen, but he’ll need to show legitimate improvement with his walk rate if he wants to secure a spot on the Opening Day roster.
After putting up a career walk rate of 10.4% in his first 52 MLB starts (with his career-best rate in 2021 just barely clearing double digits at 9.9%), Ian’s AAA time last season saw him sitting at 11.8%. While control is something that takes a bit longer to return from Tommy John, the team’s preference for good control from their starters (see Lucas Braun, Garrett Baumann, and Adam Maier all having walk rates under 2.7 BB/9 as evidence of this) means that he has a higher bar to clear than just “look like a major leaguer again”.
Aaron Bummer: Convince Snit to use you in high leverage. While the conventional stats for Bummer aren’t anything to write home about - a 3.58 ERA across 55.1 innings and a 4-3 record - the inputs were significantly better: a 2.23 FIP and 2.80 xERA while putting up a 100th percentile barrel rate (1.3%), a 98th percentile ground ball rate (61.3%), and a 3.83 SO/BB in 56 games.
Despite all of that, Snit called on Bummer exactly 16 times in high leverage situations
(as defined by Baseball Reference) and 40 times in low leverage.
With A.J. Minter a free agent and Joe Jiménez likely out for the entire 2025 season, it’s imperative that Bummer gets used more in those “fireman” situations - runners on base where you absolutely MUST get a ground ball to get out of the inning.
Davis Daniel: Re-establish yourself as a major league starter. We talked about this a bit last week, but Daniel does his best work when he’s getting ahead of opposing hitters and can not lean too heavily on his subpar fastball (which grades out to a lifetime 71 Stuff+ in the majors). He could also stand to use the curveball more, as well, which is a very Atlanta thing to ask of an acquired pitcher.
Dylan Dodd: Find a role, man. Last season, he worked both as a starter (in Gwinnett) and a reliever (in both Gwinnett and the majors) and the results weren’t pretty: A 5.13 ERA and .287 BAA as a starter and a 7.02 ERA and .375 BAA as a reliever. Not getting much of a velo bump from moving to the pen (from 92.1 to 93.5 on the fastball), Dodd’s only holding one last minor league option and is, at best, one season away from either making the MLB roster for good or being DFA’d off the 40-man.
Bryce Elder: Recapture 2023’s magic. Elder made the 2023 All-Star Game on the strength of a lights-out first half (7-2, 2.97 ERA) but hasn’t been able to replicate that success since. One thing I’ve noticed is the degradation of his slider - he added a bit of velo, throwing everything in the arsenal about 1-2 mph harder, but that corresponds with about three inches less drop on the slider. While the movement change in a vacuum isn’t the end of the world, what it has caused is his mistakes to now be left over the heart of the plate versus the bottom-third of the plate…and most major leaguers don’t miss many pitches over the heart of the plate. If Elder can fix that, he just might be able to get back to being a back-of-the-rotation arm that can take 175-180 innings a year, which is immensely valuable in the modern game.
Connor Gillispie: Find a vertical breaking pitch. Tell me what you notice from this pitch plot of Gillispie’s 2024:
If it’s that his entire arsenal is East-West and nothing reliably drops, that’s the point I’m trying to make. While there are some pitchers that can thrive on this - Chris Sale just won a Cy Young with a similar profile - it’s also not a sustainable model for someone to follow. Sale’s slider is one of the best in baseball and it not only does have drop, it has +4 inches more drop than the average MLB slider.2
I’m not saying that Gillispie can’t succeed, but I’m saying that more weapons are never bad, especially if they fill a hole in the current arsenal.
Domingo Gonzalez: Improve that walk rate. Gonzalez put up a 10.4% walk rate in the minors last season. While that’s not something that’s going to preclude him from earning a MLB opportunity, it’s definitely something that will delay his debut if the team’s concerned that it’s going to hold him back from being successful.
Daysbel Hernández: Improve that walk rate, too. It’s the same paragraph as Gonzalez, except Daysbel’s MLB walk rate is 13.8% for his career and he’s trying to earn higher leverage opportunities, not a debut.
Grant Holmes: Crush it as a starter. From a “that boy nice” perspective, Holmes might be my favorite pitcher on the roster because he has that dog in him. Swinging back and forth from the pen to starting last season (including taking the ball on the season’s final day and giving the team four scoreless innings with only one hit allowed the day after facing five batters in relief), Holmes did everything asked of him and more. I couldn’t be higher on practically anybody on this year’s roster than I am of Holmes, except for maybe Money Mike.
Raisel Iglesias: Continue the dominance (and maybe sign an extension?) Iglesias put up a career-best 1.95 ERA and 2.9 WAR last season, tying his career-high with 34 saves. Snit particularly leaned on him hard down the stretch, with five multi-inning appearances in the season’s final months. And boy did Iggy deliver - were it not for a five-run blowup against the Dodgers in mid-September, Iglesias would have finished the post-deadline stretch with only two earned runs allowed across 25 appearances.3
Joe Jiménez: Make it back this season. The news that Atlanta’s most heavily used reliever (a nice 69 appearances to Iggy’s 66) is going to miss most of 2025 due to knee surgery to repair cartilage damage is not great, but getting him back by the trade deadline would be like acquiring a reliever via trade.4
Pierce Johnson: Just be a bit more consistent. With Jiménez missing most of next season, Johnson’s the favorite to start off as the primary set-up man…but I don’t love it. He seems to lose control of that curveball at times, resulting in a 10.6% walk rate. But even more concerningly, he doesn’t use the other pitches enough (72% CB usage) to be confident in leaning on them when the curveball isn’t working. And that leads to blowups: 15 of his 23 earned runs allowed came in just six multi-run outings, and just being a bit more confident in the four-seamer (24% usage) and the cutter (4% usage) could allow some of those three-run outings to be two-run outings and the two-run outings to be one-run outings.
Dylan Lee: What’s it going to take to get you into high-leverage opportunities? When you sort the baseball reference pages for Braves pitching by high-leverage opportunities, Lee is either TENTH (by at-bats) or EIGHTH (by games). This is despite Austin Cain-Reach of Battery Power pointing out that despite underwhelming stuff, Lee’s literally the greatest pitcher on record at getting hitters to chase pitches out of the zone.
FanGraphs started tracking plate discipline metrics in 2002, and since then there have been 1,821 pitchers to log at least 100 innings in MLB. Among those 1,821 pitchers, Dylan Lee ranks first in O-Swing% and is tied for second in SwStr%. That’s right, Dylan Lee – the same Dylan Lee who doesn’t throw a single pitch that isn’t below-average by either velocity or movement or both – is quite literally the greatest pitcher on record at getting hitters to chase pitches out of the zone. As for the percentage of pitches thrown that result in whiffs, he’s just behind Josh Hader and sitting side-by-side with Eric Gagne and Edwin Díaz.
With Jiménez gone for most of the year and Minter currently a free agent, Lee needs to be in the backend mix and Austin makes a great point that he should probably be the 8th-inning guy for the Braves.
Reynaldo López: Take on Charlie Morton’s workload. López’s transition back to the rotation went better than anyone (except his wife) could have reasonably expected. While we’ve already discussed how he’s due to regress a bit from his 1.99 ERA due to both his FIP (2.92) and xERA (3.94), there’s one area in which he can improve: Workload. Limited to only 26 appearances (25 starts) due to two injured list stints in the back half of the year, López still managed to cover an impressive 135.2 innings in his first full year back in a rotation since 2019. With the veteran Morton a free agent (that the Braves are reportedly not interested in bringing back, as of now), López should aim for a full year of starts and set a goal of surpassing Morton’s four-year Atlanta average of 172 innings pitched. If he pitched five innings every time out and went six one in every six starts, that would be roughly 30 starts and 175 innings. Seems like a good goal, especially when you consider that his two full rotation years of 2018 & 2019 with the Chicago White Sox, he combined for 65 starts and 372.2 innings (albeit at ages 24 & 25, not next year’s 31.)
Rolddy Muñoz: Earn your call-up. Muñoz was added to the 40-man roster to protect him from the Rule 5 draft thanks to his dynamic velocity, averaging 98 mph on his fastball last season and touching 101. But similar to both Daysbel Hernández and Domingo Gonzalez last season, his walk rate of 10.14% isn’t the best and his lack of a consistent third pitch means he’s still a work in progress. If he can make even a modest reduction in his walk rate and show less vulnerability to lefties (a BAA 62 points higher and a SLG 250 points higher than to righties), he could debut as early as the second half of the season.
Angel Perdomo: Successfully return from TJ. Perdomo’s surgery was on October 6th of 2023, so he’ll be almost eighteen months removed from TJ when the season starts. He’s either going to be the third lefty in the pen on Opening Day or start on the IL and use the 30 days of rehab appearances to show that he’s ready to face MLB hitters again, but adding a third lefty to the pen would be helpful.
Anderson Pilar: Stick with Atlanta. There’s a lot of things to like about Pilar, one of Atlanta’s two MLB selections in the Rule 5 draft: He throws six pitches, featuring a cutter that can get groundballs and a slider that can get whiffs, and pounds the zone with strikes. That being said, he has a grand total of 15 innings in AAA and has faced only 196 batters in the upper minors. Is he able to handle being the final man out of the pen, or does he get returned to the Marlins?
Chris Sale: Don’t change a thing? Seriously, you just won the Cy Young - I have no notes here.
Spencer Schwellenbach: Be Max Fried’s replacement. With Fried off to New York on a massive eight-year deal, there’s a gaping void left in the Braves rotation. While Schwelly isn’t going to suddenly figure out how to pitch with his left hand, he can set a goal of replacing Fried’s production. Max made 29 starts last season, covering 174.1 innings at a 3.25 rate. Schwelly’s surprisingly close to surpassing those totals already: Counting the minors, he pitched 168.2 innings and finished his debut season with a 3.35 ERA in the show.5
If López can outperform Morton’s workload and ERA while Schwelly can meet or match Fried’s performance, that would go a long way toward answering the lingering questions that many folks have about replacing the two departed starters.
AJ Smith-Shawver: Establish yourself in the majors. Smith-Shawver is considered one of the team’s top prospects due to his youth and insane athleticism. It’s time to cash in that pedigree. The ideal scenario here is that AJSS starts in the Opening Day rotation, pushing Grant Holmes back to the 6th starter, and never relinquishes his spot (and saves his final minor league option.6)
The athleticism and fitness is there to stay at the MLB level all season, although whether or not he can take on the workload increase of starting all season is to be determined. His previous season high for workload is 2023’s 90 innings.7
Spencer Strider: Re-establish yourself as an ace. No one is doubting that a healthy Spencer Strider is one of the best pitchers in baseball. But plenty are doubting that he can do it this year. I’m personally of the opinion that he won’t come back until he can be at least 90% of classic Strider, but that’s complete speculation based solely on how competitive he is and how much he wants to dominate opposing hitters.
Hurston Waldrep: Answer the control questions about your fastball. Waldrep’s splitter is his best pitch (and one of the best singular pitches in the entire organization), but it doesn’t work in a vacuum - notoriously hard to control, it’s best as a chase pitch that drops below the zone. His slider works similarly - a chase pitch below the zone, and he threw them both for strikes less than 50% of the time last season in AAA.
The problem is, he also threw his fastball for strikes less than 50% of the time.
Establishing the fastball in the zone is a pre-requisite for the rest of the arsenal to work, as the ability to get chase on both the splitter and slider is based on hitters guarding for his fastball in the zone. If the fastball’s not working, they can disregard any other pitch out of the hand and take their walks. Bringing that FB up to at least 50% strikes is a must if he wants to make it as a starter at the next level.
Allan Winans: Figure out how to improve your stuff. This is a similar issue to Daniel - of the 37 pitchers that have thrown at least ten innings for Atlanta over the last two seasons, Winans has the 8th-worst Stuff+ on his fastball at just 69.8 As a changeup-dominant profile, he’s always going to be a but underrated by stuff models, but an 89.6 mph average fastball velo shows just how slim the margin for error is for Winans. The sequencing has been enough to be successful in Gwinnett the last two seasons, with Allan putting up AAA ERAs of 2.85 and 3.30, but it’s just not fooling big-league hitters (7.20 ERA in 40 MLB innings). Could moving to the pen provide enough of a relief bump to his stuff to allow him to survive as a long-man, or is he destined to be nothing more than a Quad-A starter?
We’re back tomorrow with the position players.
If you think that’s a lot of content, wait for the season to start and we’re doing six game recaps a week PLUS our usual content.
Gillispie, by comparison, gets 1.8 inches less drop than MLB average.
Both of those runs came against the Mets in game 161, requiring Atlanta to use Iglesias again that same day in a must-win Game 162.
Yes, I can hear Chip Caray saying it in my head, too.
After his first six outings, so starting with his July 6th start against Philly, Schwelly actually outperformed Fried’s season numbers by going 7-3 with a 2.54 ERA across 15 starts.
It’s possible to receive a fourth under certain conditions so this might not be it for the youngster.
62 in the minors, 25.1 in the majors, and 2.2 in the postseason.
NOT very nice, in this context