The Braves have added three more pitchers to their list of non-roster invitees, as relayed by Justin Toscano of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. They are left-hander Jake Diekman as well as righties Dylan Covey and Chad Kuhl. MLBTR covered the Kuhl deal last week.
Diekman, 38, has a long track record of walking a tightrope with a lot of strikeouts but also a lot of free passes. In 602 1/3 innings of relief dating back to his 2012 debut, he has allowed 3.91 earned runs per nine. His 28.7% strikeout rate in that time is a few ticks above average and his 46.9% ground ball rate around par, but his 13.4% walk rate is definitely on the high side.
He’s coming off a down year. He signed a $4MM deal with the Mets but was released in early August. He had a 5.63 in 32 innings. His 27.6% strikeout rate was near his usual range but his 16.6% walk rate was high, even for him. Among pitchers with at least 30 innings pitched last year, only youngsters Nick Nastrini and Joe Boyle had higher walk rates. He didn’t sign anywhere else for the final two months of the season.
Upgrading the bullpen has been a priority for Atlanta this offseason. They lost guys like A.J. Minter, Jesse Chavez and others to free agency at season’s end. In early November, it was reported that Joe Jiménez might miss all of 2025 while recovering from knee surgery.
Seemingly operating with a tight budget, they haven’t been too active in pursuing upgrades to the relief mix. Anderson Pilar was brought in via the Rule 5 draft and is arguably the most notable addition to this point.
They don’t specifically need a lefty, as they already have Dylan Lee, Aaron Bummer and Angel Perdomo in the mix, but Diekman doesn’t have huge splits regardless. Lefties have a .229/.344/.311 line against him in his career whereas righties have hit .210/.329/.357. He’s not coming off a great season but he adds some experienced depth for cheap, and without taking up a roster spot for now.
Covey, 33, is coming off a mostly lost season but had some intriguing results the year prior. After spending 2021 and 2022 pitching for the Rakuten Monkeys in Taiwan’s Chinese Professional Baseball League, he split 2023 between the Dodgers and Phillies. He logged 43 innings between those two clubs with a 3.77 ERA. His 15.7% strikeout rate was low but he got grounders on 54.3% of balls in play.
A shoulder strain kept him on the shelf for most of 2024. He didn’t pitch in the majors at all and was limited to 20 1/3 innings on the farm. 15 of those innings were at the Triple-A level with intriguing results in a small sample. He had a 1.20 ERA at that level, 27.6% strikeout rate, 12.1% walk rate and 71.4% ground ball rate.
The Phils had outrighted him off their roster in August and he elected free agency at season’s end. He signed a split deal with the Mets but was recently outrighted off that club’s roster and elected free agency. Like Diekman, he’ll give Atlanta some cheap rotation depth without taking up a roster spot for now.
Nice moves by AA.
Sure
Please elaborate.
Nope
More dumpster diving for AA.
Picking up the ex-Mets Diekman and sort-of ex-Mets Covey to join Chasen Shreve and Eddy Alvarez, i guess Alex Anthopolous is saying “if we can’t beat them, let’s join them.”
He must also be from the Milwaukee-DavidStearns School of Being A Cheap GM! You’re only supposed to sign Tanner Scott otherwise you’re a dumpster diving idiot!
/s
One guy says “nice moves” another says “Dumpster diving”
meanwhile anthopoulos has gone on record as saying he doesn’t handle the minor league signings…
Yeah, usual stuff from the comments section here.
@formegn hardgin It would be interesting to know if that’s a sentence fragment–and how the rest of the quote read. AA might hand off the entire business of arriving at a contract with NRIs and the like but it’s hard to believe he doesn’t have anything to do with those signings or doesn’t reserve the right or have the capacity to overrule a signing within this cohort.
It seems more likely that the Braves’ FO has an NRI or minor league FA working group, where they have a small budget and x slots in camp they’re authorized to fill, and just before they make offers they send a memo to the GM / PBOPs he initials as authorization or calls the group together and they summarize their thinking.
It would have to be something like that, given even the best GM can’t keep up with the thousands of fringe players in hundreds of leagues around the world, their availability, their current injury histories, and so on.
If either of these pitchers see time this year with the big club something has gone terribly wrong. Diekman is a freaking walk machine….Covey? Seriously??? But hey, we’re saving money!;
Minor league deals, they probably won’t break camp with them anyway.
Whoa, the Bravos got their Dylan C. as well!
The Braves are taking a look at two guys the Mets cut? Interesting…. Stearns went shopping last offseason in the $4m Reliever aisle, missed on all three of his ‘bargains’ (this year its Stanek) and Diekman, alone, at negative 0.8 bWAR almost pitched the Mets out of the wildcard race.
The Braves used 25 relievers in 2024. Ten of the 25 pitched fewer than 10 innings. but close to 50 innings in total, the equivalent of 5+ games. The Braves went 89-73. If those ten pitchers pitch a little worse the Braves go 88-74 and miss the postseason. How a team works the margins, and how well they work them is almost as interesting as the big FA signings.
Clearly some budget restraints going on in the ATL this year. I’m sure the $14m luxury tax payment due last month for ’24 hurt some feelings. What I don’t understand is why spend the little $$$ available this off season on a bat(Profar) when you have greater needs in the rotation and bullpen.
Don’t understand why covey couldn’t wait until tomorrow for a 40 man spot. Scott goes on the 60 IL and he’d have made better money. SMH.
bjhaas.. Scott’s roster space is needed for Alonso. The Mets were already at 40 after DFAing Covey and before re-signing Alonso.
Mostly depth pieces signings. Braves drafted pitching over the years. Bryce Elder is , for example is in aaa. Highly rated org pieces are pitchers. Not going to see a billion dollar bullpen soon.
Is Covey’s a split deal or is it straight minor league as i think he would have kept the higher salary if he accepted the minor league assignment with the mets.
For Braves fan’s sake, I hope they never have to watch Diekman pitch in any meaningful situations. He is almost incapable of throwing strikes. So frustrating to watch.
Other than walks and giving up HR Diekman is kinda useful
Diekman should be the new Burger King spokesperson. To emphasize their whopper Wednesday promotion, he walks the bases loaded or gives up a game winning HR every Wednesday