The Braves announced Monday morning that they’ve selected the contract of veteran lefty Martín Pérez from Triple-A Gwinnett. Right-hander Didier Fuentes was optioned to Gwinnett to clear a spot on the active roster. Atlanta already had a 40-man vacancy, so Fuentes is the only corresponding transaction needed.
Some fans will bristle at optioning Fuentes after he shined with four innings of one-run ball in long relief yesterday, but that four-inning appearance means he’d have been unavailable for the next few days anyhow. He’ll surely be back in the fold before long, but the Braves will presumably be cautious with his workload this season. He pitched only 70 innings total between the minors and major leagues last year.
Pérez, 35 next week, signed a minor league deal over the winter and was in the mix for a rotation spot this spring — particularly after Spencer Schwellenbach, Hurston Waldrep, Joey Wentz and Spencer Strider went down with injuries. He had a nice Grapefruit League showing, working to a 2.84 ERA in 12 2/3 innings, but Atlanta reassigned him to minor league camp to begin the season. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t an especially long stint. He can now step into the same long relief/swing role that Fuentes held, providing some length behind out-of-options starters Bryce Elder and José Suarez. Alternatively, the Braves could move either Elder or Suarez to a swing role and go with Pérez in the rotation.
A flexor strain knocked Pérez out for most of the 2025 season, but he was sharp in his limited action with the White Sox. He tossed 56 innings with the South Siders, his seventh career team, and logged a 3.54 earned run average. Pérez fanned only 19.3% of his opponents against a 9.6% walk rate. He’s never missed many bats but has generally held his own through sharp command, solid ground-ball tendencies and plenty of weak contact.
Atlanta will be Pérez’s eighth career team. He’s been a steady back-of-the-rotation starter for a good while now, starting a full slate of 12 games in the shortened 2020 campaign and making between 20 and 32 starts in the other five seasons from 2019-24 (while pitching to a collective 4.27 ERA). Last year marked the first time since 2018 that Pérez required a trip to the 60-day injured list.
And it starts. The rotation carousel.
Why burn the option?
The option was already burned when he started the season on the team. They can bring him up and send him down as many as times as they want this season without using up additional options.
Uh, no? If it’s the case no 3+ year veteran would have any options left. If a player doesn’t get sent down for the whole year then the option is intact.
To prepare to start.
Probably going to have to limit his innings this year to 100-110. He only threw 70 last year and 75 the year before. Assuming he’s a starting pitcher mostly the Braves can’t use a roster spot for that all year. He’ll be on the Gwinnett shuttle this year
Doesn’t it impact service time? This crap has always been part of the game but it’s gotten worse with players sent down or DFAed after a good outing only because they need rest before taking the mound again. Hoping the new agreement changes the rules.
Fuentes only had 19 days in the majors last year. Rest assured he’ll have less than a year service time by the end of this year.
So you want to remove strategy from the equation just so people can have more service time? Weird take, in my opinion.
Things definitely went better than last time for him. I don’t see anything wrong with getting a fresh arm up Fuentes will have plenty more time in the bigs this year.
A bit of a concern that Fuentes will only have one option year left starting next year at such a young age but I’m sure the Braves are hoping he’s ready to stick next year.