Braves To Select JR Ritchie
The Braves are promoting pitching prospect JR Ritchie to start tomorrow afternoon’s game against the Nationals, reports Harrison Smajovits of Sports Illustrated. Mark Bowman of MLB.com reports that Didier Fuentes is being optioned back to Triple-A Gwinnett in the corresponding transaction. Atlanta will also promote Carlos Carrasco to work in long relief.
Fuentes was just recalled this morning. He started this evening but labored over three innings, allowing seven hits and a walk. Fuentes’ inefficiency forced the Braves to bring in Martín Pérez for long relief. The veteran southpaw tossed three innings of two-run ball, which obviously took him out of consideration to start tomorrow’s ballgame.
Atlanta needed a spot starter for the finale of their four-game set in Washington. Long relievers José Suarez and Dylan Dodd each pitched on Tuesday, and Dodd is reportedly going on the injured list. A bullpen game would have been a lot to ask. Reynaldo López only completed one inning last night, so every Braves reliever has pitched within the past two days.
Ritchie was the logical candidate to take the ball. The 2022 supplemental first-round draftee has been Gwinnett’s best pitcher in the early going. Ritchie has only given up three runs through his first 27 1/3 innings while striking out 26.2% of opposing hitters. He has tiptoed around erratic command, as he’s walked 13 batters and plunked four more.
Although the 22-year-old isn’t a finished product, he’s likely to be up and down throughout the season as a key rotation depth piece. Baseball America ranks Ritchie as the #2 prospect in the Atlanta system, crediting him with a deep arsenal and a chance to be a #4 starter. Ritchie has been in the 93-94 mph range with his four-seam fastball and sinker this season. He throws four distinct offspeed pitches — a changeup, cutter, slider and curveball.
It’s past the point at which Ritchie can reach a full year of service time in 2026. He was on the preseason Top 100 lists at each of BA, MLB Pipeline and ESPN. He therefore meets the threshold for the Prospect Promotion Incentive and could “earn” a service year if he finishes top two in Rookie of the Year balloting. The Braves would not receive an extra draft choice in that scenario because he wasn’t on the MLB roster for 172+ days.
There’s a decent chance this is a one-off appearance regardless. Ritchie will be the only healthy, optionable pitcher on their active roster aside from top setup man Dylan Lee. Atlanta has an off day on Monday. The Braves could option Ritchie after tomorrow’s appearance to get an extra bullpen arm up for their weekend series against the Phillies. Pérez would be ready to start in the middle of next week. Spencer Strider probably only needs one more rehab outing before he returns to the rotation.
Braves Recall Didier Fuentes, Designate Ian Hamilton For Assignment
The Braves announced Wednesday morning that they’ve recalled right-hander Didier Fuentes from Triple-A Gwinnett. Fellow righty Ian Hamilton was designated for assignment to open a spot on the active roster. Fuentes will start tonight’s game against the Nationals.
Hamilton’s contract was just selected to the big league roster last week. He made only one appearance with Atlanta and was tagged for three runs in an inning of work. He’ll now be traded or placed on waivers within the next five days.
With his latest appearance, the 30-year-old Hamilton has now pitched 151 1/3 major league innings between the White Sox, Twins, Yankees and Braves. He’s worked to a solid 3.75 ERA overall, although a terrific 2023 season (2.64 ERA, 58 innings) disproportionately affects that career-long mark; Hamilton had a 4.91 ERA in 14 2/3 innings prior to that season and has a 4.35 earned run average in 78 2/3 frames since.
Hamilton has fanned just over one quarter of his major league opponents (25.4%) but also carries a bloated 11.3% walk rate that’s nearly three percentage points north of the league average. He’s shown above-average grounder tendencies (45.9%) and has done a nice job of avoiding homers and hard contact in general. The right-hander sat 96 mph with his heater for the 2024-25 Yankees but averaged 94.4 mph in his lone Braves appearance. His sinker velocity dipped similarly. Hamilton’s primary breaking pitch is a slider that he’s typically thrown at a near 50% clip.
Fuentes, 10 years younger than Hamilton, won’t turn 21 until mid-June. Despite that youth, he’s auditioning for a role in the Atlanta rotation. The right-hander struggled in a four-start cup of coffee last summer but had a big spring showing and has been excellent in Gwinnett thus far. Through his first 16 2/3 frames, Fuentes sports a tidy 2.16 ERA with a 31.7% strikeout rate and a 9.5% walk rate. He made one long relief appearance with the Braves early this season before being sent down and shined there as well, holding the Royals to a run on two hits and a walk with four punchouts in four innings.
Atlanta’s pitching injuries have been chronicled at length. Spencer Schwellenbach and Hurston Waldrep had surgery to remove loose bodies from their elbows before the season started. Joey Wentz tore his ACL during spring training. Spencer Strider opened the season on the injured list due to an oblique strain and has yet to return.
The Braves have been left with a group of Chris Sale, Reynaldo López, Grant Holmes, Bryce Elder and Martín Pérez to shoulder the rotation load thus far. To call Elder (1.50 ERA in 30 innings) and Pérez (2.21 ERA, 20 1/3 innings) “pleasant surprises” thus far would be an understatement. Pérez has pitched like a fifth starter when healthy for the bulk of the past five seasons. Elder was one of the least-effective pitchers in baseball in 2024-25.
It’s not reasonable to expect either Elder or Pérez to sustain this level of production, but there’s no taking away what’s already in the books; these impeccably timed hot streaks have helped the Braves weather a storm of early injuries that threatened to dig them in a massive hole for a second straight season. Instead, Atlanta has an NL-best 2.98 ERA from the rotation and sits at 16-8 with a five-game cushion in a disappointing NL East division. With Strider on a minor league rehab assignment, Fuentes now in the majors, top prospect JR Ritchie performing well and injured arms like Schwellenbach, Waldrep and AJ Smith-Shawver (Tommy John surgery last year) all progressing through their rehab windows, Atlanta could be on the cusp of escaping those early health setbacks with an improbable division lead, which would set the Braves up incredibly well for the remainder of the season.
Braves Notes: Fuentes, Kim, Roster Decisions
Braves prospect Didier Fuentes was a healthy scratch from a scheduled start yesterday and could be an option to join the big league pitching staff in the near future. As Chad Bishop of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution breaks down, Fuentes’ scratch doesn’t necessarily guarantee a recall to the majors, but the Braves are light on options to summon as they embark on a sequence of 10 games in 10 days. Each of Hayden Harris, Dylan Dodd and Rolddy Muñoz was optioned late last week, meaning they can’t be recalled for 15 days (from the date of their option) unless they’re directly replacing an injured player on the roster. Skipping Fuentes’ start yesterday also helps to manage the promising 20-year-old’s workload after he only pitched 70 total innings (majors and minors combined) in 2025.
Fuentes has been terrific so far in Gwinnett this season. He’s taken the ball three times, tossed a total of 16 2/3 innings and held opponents to four runs (2.16 ERA) on eight hits and six walks with 20 strikeouts. He’s also plunked three batters and tossed a wild pitch, so his command hasn’t exactly been pristine, but the results and bat-missing capabilities are impressive.
Throughout spring training, there were calls from Atlanta fans to plug Fuentes into the rotation — understandably so. To this point in the season, however, there are five Braves pitchers who’ve started multiple games — Chris Sale, Reynaldo López, Grant Holmes, Martín Pérez, Bryce Elder — and none has an ERA higher than 3.42 (Holmes). Despite all the injuries, Atlanta starters remarkably lead the majors with a 2.65 ERA. Metrics like FIP (4.02) and SIERA (4.05) are far more bearish, but it’d be hard for Braves brass to tell any of the current starters he’s losing his place in the rotation. Atlanta already briefly jettisoned Pérez, but he quickly re-signed on a new deal and responded by tossing six shutout innings in Philadelphia on Friday.
None of that includes righty Spencer Strider, who’s working his way back from an oblique injury and could return early next month. The Braves will need to figure out a way to plug Strider back into the rotation whenever he’s cleared to return. Elder looked to be very much on the roster bubble in spring training, but he’s allowed only two earned runs through his first 23 1/3 innings. Pérez, as previously mentioned, just fired six shutout innings on the road against a top division rival. He now has a 2.21 ERA on the year. Perhaps another injury will make the decision easier, but if everyone’s healthy, it’s fair to say that “too many effective starters” isn’t a problem many foresaw Atlanta encountering a few weeks back (though it’s a “problem” they’ll surely welcome with open arms).
On the position-player side of the roster, the Braves will have some decisions looming regarding seldom-used veterans currently holding down bench spots. Catcher Sean Murphy is on a rehab assignment. Shortstop Ha-Seong Kim is headed for a simulated game Thursday, manager Walt Weiss told the Atlanta beat (via MLB.com’s Mark Bowman). He could begin a rehab assignment next week himself.
The return of Murphy, on paper, would seem to be bad news for veteran backstop Jonah Heim, who’s 5-for-23 in limited action as the No. 2 catcher behind reigning National League Rookie of the Year Drake Baldwin. As Bowman points out, however, infielder Kyle Farmer has only received seven plate appearances all season. The organization loves his presence in the clubhouse, but he’s even more seldom-used than Heim. Keeping Heim over Farmer could allow the Braves to more comfortably use both Baldwin and Murphy in the same lineup, splitting time at catcher and DH, with Heim on hand as an emergency option.
Of course, when Kim returns — likely in mid-May — both Heim and Farmer could be squeezed out. No one on the Braves’ bench can be optioned, so two of Farmer, Heim, Jorge Mateo and Eli White are likely to find themselves displaced, barring other injuries that allow the team to kick those decisions down the road a bit.
Mateo has hit quite well, albeit in a tiny sample of 20 plate appearances. His prior track record doesn’t create much optimism about him sustaining this pace, but he’s still an elite runner with 98th-percentile sprint speed (per Statcast) and some defensive versatility. White has been the team’s worst hitter … in a similarly tiny sample of 22 plate appearances. He’s a terrific outfield defender, however, and Statcast measures his sprint speed even better than Mateo, placing him at the very top of the MLB scale with 30.4 feet per second (100th percentile).
Braves Pitching Notes: Strider, Pérez, Fuentes
Spencer Strider threw a 20-pitch bullpen session on Friday as he works back from the oblique strain that shelved him to begin the season. Braves manager Walt Weiss tells reporters (including Chad Bishop of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) that the righty will probably need a rehab start before he’s ready to return to the big league club.
There’s a decent chance Strider will need to throw a live batting practice session before he heads out on a minor league assignment. That’s usually the intervening step between a bullpen session and rehab stint. Strider seems to be progressing nicely, though, and he looks to be on track to make his season debut within the next couple weeks.
Strider worked 8 1/3 innings over three appearances during Spring Training. The final of those came on March 11 before he tweaked his left oblique. A healthy Strider would have followed Chris Sale in the season-opening rotation. Grant Holmes and Reynaldo López have stepped into the second and third spots, respectively. They’ve pitched well through the first two turns. López’s fastball velocity has ticked back up into the 94 mph range after sitting at worrisome levels in Spring Training.
The final two spots are still questionable. Bryce Elder had a nice season debut against the A’s earlier this week, working six scoreless innings with five punchouts. He’ll go against Michael Soroka tomorrow in the third game of their four-game set in Arizona. The Braves have yet to announce who’ll oppose Brandon Pfaadt in the series finale.
José Suarez took that spot the first time through the rotation. He didn’t escape the fourth inning, allowing four runs on five hits and four walks in a 5-2 loss to the A’s on Tuesday. Martín Pérez followed with 4 1/3 scoreless frames and three strikeouts in a mop-up role.
Neither pitcher has taken the ball since that appearance, and Mark Bowman of MLB.com writes that it likely sets up for the Braves to flip their roles in this turn. They could temporarily tab Pérez as the fifth starter while using Suarez in a low-leverage relief role. Dylan Lee is the only of their current 13 MLB pitchers who has minor league options. Barring intervening injuries, at least one of Pérez, Suarez or Osvaldo Bido will probably be pushed off the roster once Strider returns.
Didier Fuentes is something of a wild card in those pitching plans. The 20-year-old broke camp in long relief and reeled off four innings of one-run ball with four strikeouts in his only appearance. The Braves optioned him after that outing, a prearranged plan to allow him to build as a more traditional starter in the minors.
Fuentes made his first start of the season with Triple-A Gwinnett this evening. He struck out seven while allowing just two baserunners (one hit and walk apiece) across 3 1/3 innings. Fuentes got up to 72 pitches after a 56-pitch outing in his MLB appearance. He’s probably only one or two starts from being built up as a rotation candidate.
The Braves will need to decide how best to use Fuentes without overworking him. The Colombian-born righty tossed 70 innings last year between the minors and a four-start look in the big leagues. He has yet to reach 80 innings in a professional season.
Atlanta isn’t going to fully unleash him for 150+ innings and surely wants to see continued development in his command and secondary pitches. That said, Fuentes has an excellent fastball and has had a dominant few weeks going back to Spring Training, where he struck out 18 of the 43 batters he faced. After looking overmatched when the Braves hurried him to the majors last summer, he seems much better positioned to carve out an MLB role this year.
Braves Select Martín Pérez, Option Didier Fuentes
10:25am: Fuentes will start for Gwinnett on Friday, per MLB.com’s Mark Bowman. He’ll get a couple minor league turns to build up to around 90 pitches and then be more strongly considered for the big league rotation.
8:48am: 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.
Braves To Place Spencer Strider On Injured List
Braves righty Spencer Strider is going to start the season on the injured list due to an oblique strain, manager Walt Weiss announced to the team’s beat this morning (via Mark Bowman of MLB.com). The team hasn’t provided a formal timeline, but even Grade 1 oblique strains can sideline players for around a month.
Strider, 27, last pitched a full season in 2023. He made only two starts in 2024 before requiring UCL surgery that would sideline him into the 2025 campaign. The rehab from that surgery, combined with a hamstring strain, limited Strider to 23 starts last year. He pitched 125 1/3 innings but worked with diminished velocity and overall stuff, leading to a 4.45 ERA and rate stats that were markedly worse than their pre-injury levels.
The hope had been for a healthier Strider to bounce back closer to his brilliant 2022-23 form. Instead, he’ll be the latest addition to a list of key players who are unavailable to begin the year. It’s been a nightmare spring for Atlanta. The Braves have lost righties Spencer Schwellenbach and Hurston Waldrep for months following surgeries to remove loose bodies from their elbows. Left-hander Joey Wentz tore his ACL and is out for the season. Shortstop Ha-Seong Kim suffered a hand injury in a fall before even reporting to camp and will be out for more than a month to begin the year. Left fielder/designated hitter Jurickson Profar was suspended for the entire season following a second positive PED test.
Atlanta’s lack of pitching depth has been a story throughout camp. With Strider headed to the injured list, the Braves will open the season with Chris Sale, Reynaldo Lopez and Grant Holmes as their top three starters. Lopez pitched only once last year due to shoulder surgery. Holmes suffered a UCL tear last summer and rehabbed it without surgery.
Plans beyond that top trio are murky for the time being. Right-hander Bryce Elder and left-hander José Suarez are out of minor league options and will presumably both make the roster, though either could be bound for the bullpen. Bowman calls Suarez a “likely” starter to begin the season and adds that the club could consider selecting the contract of non-roster veteran Martín Pérez, who’d previously been informed he was not making the club. Right-hander Didier Fuentes is still ticketed for the bullpen, Weiss tells Bowman.
It’s a paper-thin rotation group at this point, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos make some form of addition to further stockpile some depth. There ought to be several veterans opting out of/being released from minor league deals in the final days of camp, and arms of varying quality will be designated for assignment due to the annual Opening Day roster crunch.
Braves To Include Didier Fuentes On Opening Day Roster
TODAY: The Braves are planning to send Fuentes down to Triple-A in a couple of weeks to stretch him back out as a starter, MLB.com’s Mark Bowman writes. It seems like Fuentes’ long relief role will last only through Atlanta’s season-opening 13-game stretch.
MARCH 21: Right-hander Didier Fuentes has won himself a spot on the Braves’ Opening Day roster, ESPN’s Jeff Passan writes. The 20-year-old Fuentes made his big league debut last season with four starts and 13 innings for Atlanta, and he’ll now return to the Show in what Passan says will be a relief role.
Fuentes’ bullpen assignment provides some more clarity to the Braves’ rotation picture. Chris Sale, Reynaldo Lopez, Spencer Strider, and Grant Holmes have the top four positions, and Bryce Elder and Jose Suarez now appear to be the last two candidates for the fifth starter role. Fuentes is headed to the bullpen, top prospect JR Ritchie was assigned to the minor league camp yesterday, and minor league signing Martin Perez will remain in the organization but isn’t being included on the Opening Day roster.
With Spencer Schwellenbach, Hurston Waldrep, and Joey Wentz all felled by injuries, rotation depth has been one of the primary storylines of Atlanta’s spring. This opened the door for multiple pitchers to try and win a job, and while Fuentes isn’t being ticketed for rotation duty, he certainly caught the Braves’ attention with an incredible Grapefruit League performance. Over three appearances and nine spotless innings, Fuentes didn’t allow even one walk or a hit, while striking out 17 batters — one HBP was the only thing keeping Fuentes from an unofficial perfect game during his spring work.
It is certainly possible Fuentes could receive a proper starting assignment, depending on how exactly the Braves choose to line up their rotation through a busy opening to the season. Atlanta doesn’t receive its first off-day until April 9, so it is very likely that both Elder and Suarez (or Fuentes) could get starts if the Braves deploy a six-man rotation in the early going. Even if Fuentes may not start, his ability to eat multiple innings out of the pen should prove useful as the Braves navigate this stretch of 13 straight games.
Fuentes has started 48 of his 52 career games in the minors, and his 2025 season saw the righty pitch at three different minor league levels as well as his four-start cup of coffee with the Braves. It may have been too much too soon for Fuentes since he was torched for an 13.85 ERA in his first exposure to MLB hitters, but the Braves had to dig into their depth chart after a swath of injuries wiped out their rotation last summer.
Fuentes has shown a knack for recording strikeouts and limiting walks in the minors, and some bad batted-ball luck might be why his 3.73 ERA over 202 2/3 minor league innings doesn’t exactly stand out. Still, there’s some obvious potential here even at Fuentes’ young age, and his huge spring numbers indicate that Fuentes might thrive as a reliever. While the Braves’ hand with Fuentes may have been forced by injuries last year, the team hasn’t been shy about quickly promoting prospects they feel can provide immediate help.
Braves To Select Didier Fuentes
The Braves are going to promote right-handed pitching prospect Didier Fuentes, reports Mark Bowman of MLB.com. The youngster will start tomorrow’s game against the Marlins. Corresponding moves will be required to add him to both the 40-man and active rosters.
It’s an extremely aggressive promotion, as Fuentes only just celebrated his 20th birthday two days ago. A fairly unheralded international signing out of Colombia, Fuentes has raised his stock as he has climbed the minor league ladder. Last year, he tossed 75 2/3 innings at the Single-A level with a 2.74 earned run average. He struck out 32.1% of batters faced while only giving out walks at a 6.9% pace.
That got him some prospect love ahead of 2025, with Baseball America giving him the #7 spot in Atlanta’s system coming into the year. They mentioned his mid-90s fastball and slider, while noting he was still working on a splitter to neutralize lefties.
Here in 2025, he has seemingly raised his stock even farther. He has gone from High-A to Double-A and Triple-A, tossing a combined 39 1/3 innings. The 4.81 ERA might not jump off the page but he has a 28.9% strikeout rate and 7.2% walk rate. He’s been hurt by a 58.4% strand rate, which is why his 2.81 FIP suggests he has deserved better this year.
Coming into the year, FanGraphs listed Fuentes as the #11 prospect in the Atlanta system but they now list him as third in the system and #82 in the entire league. Both FanGraphs and Kiley McDaniel of ESPN use Bryan Woo of the Mariners as a comp for Fuentes.
The Atlanta rotation has taken a few hits this year. AJ Smith-Shawver required Tommy John surgery and Reynaldo López has been sidelined by arthroscopic shoulder surgery. At the moment, the starting group consists of Chris Sale, Spencer Strider, Spencer Schwellenbach, Bryce Elder and Grant Holmes. It’s possible that Fuentes will just be making a spot start. The club just began a stretch of playing 13 games in a row, so he can give all the other starters an extra day of rest in the midst of that, while getting his first taste of the majors.
Photo courtesy of Brett Davis, Imagn Images