The Braves have signed right-hander Austin Pope to a minor league deal, according to his transactions tracker at MLB.com. The Beverly Hills Sports Council client has been assigned to Triple-A Gwinnett for now but will presumably receive an invite to big league spring training.
Pope, 27, joins a new organization for the first time in his career. The pontiff was drafted by the Diamondbacks back in 2019. He climbed the minor league ladder and got to make brief major league debut in 2025. He was added to the roster in the final week of the regular season and got to make one appearance. On September 25th, with the Snakes down 8-0 to the Dodgers, Pope tossed two scoreless innings of mop-up duty. He allowed two hits and a walk while striking out one.
The righty was outrighted off the roster at the end of the season and was able to elect free agency, which has allowed Atlanta to scoop him up. They are presumably placing stock in Pope’s minor league results. Over the past three years, he has thrown 160 1/3 innings in the minor leagues, mostly with the Triple-A Reno Aces. His 4.55 earned run average in that time isn’t especially impressive but the Aces play in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League. His 9.4% walk rate in that time was pretty close to average while his 27.6% strikeout rate was quite strong.
Pope still has a full slate of option and just a handful of service days. If he gets added to Atlanta’s roster at any point, he can give the club a depth arm with roster flexibility and years of cheap control. For now, he can provide them papal depth without taking up a spot on the 40-man.
Photo courtesy of Rob Schumacher, Imagn Images
These are the moves the fans pack the Battery for.
Take Mark too, he’s in over his head in his current job
27 year old middle relief guy with fine PCL-stars and 3 options remaining, who got squeezed off the 40-man in Arizona because a legion of injured pitchers that can’t be on the IL during the offseason had to be added back to the active roster.
Wouldn’t have minded to see him stay in Arizona.
Got the Pope and Tromp so far this off season.
Maybe Pope will bless this team.
MLBTR – for the sake of Braves fans, please stop posting these. Just bums us out that our GM has turned into a “throw it against the wall and see what sticks” guy.
Breathe dude, the winter meeting start on Sunday and we’re probably not going to go after someone who rejected a QO because of the bonus pool money for drake winning ROY. There several really good players available and AA has to stock gwinnett as well. Never hurts to sign a guy who has all of his options remaining to a minor league deal.
Right !
Matzek was one of those guys. The careers of all but like the top-15 relievers in the Majors are so volatile from year to year, that spending huge money a bullpen isn’t that much likelier to yield success as throwing it against a wall is. Jimenez will be back in 26. You’ve still got Iglesias, Dylan Lee, Bummer still in the bullpen with Daysbel Hernandez who showed some promise. Elder probably starts the season in the bullpen if he’s not traded. Holmes and Joey Wentz might too. And that’s before we make any other bullpen moves or have any minor league guys stand out in camp. That’s not a terrible start to a bullpen as is, and we won’t have Snit misusing them all this year either. We don’t need to be freaking out about every minor league contract we give out this winter.
Will Walt use them correctly? Hope so!
Couldn’t be any worse. I’m hopeful in the staff he’s brought in.
White smoke in Atlanta
From the Conclave involving the College of St. Louis Cardinals?
Residual smoke left by the firestarters in last season’s pen.
Sort of ironic that even signing Pope, Atlanta doesn’t seem to have a prayer.
Good pun, lousy diagnosis.
Well, let’s see if Strider, Riley and Albies bounce back in 2026. I think Acuna will be all cylinders go.
Olson and Baldwin will be fine too. You can say the same thing —“let’s see if ______ bounce back”—– about every team that has injury concerns. Fangraphs projects them to be an 84-88 win team right now. Plenty of time to add another starter and flesh out the pen so they can improve on the projections. Possible add at SS would push Dubon to the bench and add wins as well.
That’s fair.
I pray that they have no intention of making Dubon a regular. The Arcia debacle is the only reason I can imagine they’d try.
somebody’s gotta bounce back. felt like we were one guy short all year, a different guy all the time