2026 Atlanta Braves Positional Preview: Relief Pitching

Jeez, how did I get the relief pitching assignment? You know about me and relievers, right?

The thing with this series is that we’ve theoretically gone through “who the Braves have at their disposal this year” and “how those guys are gonna do.” For relievers, though? That’s the place where the mid-March answers to those questions are way less reliable than for any other position.

So, let’s do something at least a bit different. Not too different, just a bit. First, a top-down view.

The Braves’ bullpen has not exactly been an organizational strength since the Alex Anthopoulos regime took over. They rank 12th in MLB in fWAR in that span, though at least they’re eighth in WPA. Part of the reason they are ranked where they are is because, under Brian Snitker, the team honestly didn’t really care about using relievers all that much: from 2018-2025, the Braves ranked 24th in bullpen innings, and 25th in bullpen batters faced.

Recent history has been a mixed bag. The bullpen was fantastic in 2024: third in fWAR despite the third-fewest innings (somehow…). But, in 2025, it was very bleh: there were five teams who had under 1.0 fWAR from their relief corps, and the Braves had the lowest fWAR among teams that weren’t one of those sad sacks. As for the future, well, the Braves are currently projected to have baseball’s tenth-best bullpen in 2026, but bullpen projections are… not exactly something you want to take to the bank. Even so, when we talk about the vague amoeba-esque shape that we think the bullpen will take for 2026, it kind of looks like this:

High leverage

The Braves have dumped over $30 million in salary into Raisel Iglesias and Robert Suarez. Iglesias will return for his fifth-ish (he was acquired midseason in 2022) season with the team after re-upping on a one-year, $16 million agreement, while Suarez signed a three-year, $45 million deal in the offseason.

Both Iglesias and Suarez are up there in age, as they’ll be in their age-36 and age-35 seasons, respectively. That hasn’t really slowed them down yet, as Iglesias hasn’t had a season below 1.0 fWAR since 2018 (including 2020!), while Suarez put up 0.9 fWAR in 2024 and a thrilling 1.9 fWAR last season after an injury-shortened down year in 2023. That said, Iglesias is clearly declining — his xFIP-s have gone 54, 76, 76, 83, 92 from 2021 through 2025, and his early-season struggles last year basically kneecapped the Braves’ season before it really got going. Suarez was incredible last year, but he had xFIP-s in the 90s the two years before.

Both guys are projected to be good, but not elite, probably because of the age thing and the performance nits picked above. Iglesias is in that 0.5 – 1.0 WAR range, with the variance as much about assumptions about leverage as anything else. Suarez is… pretty much in the same boat.

On the one hand, having two relief guys that are similarly quite good diversifies the risk and provides a handcuff if Iglesias “decides” to get murdered by HR/FB or whatever for a long stretch again. On the other hand, the Braves have committed $31 million in salary obligations for 2026 to this. Maybe it’ll be great. Maybe it’ll just be fine.

Set-up or something

The next three guys in the presumed-but-maybe-not-actual bullpen pecking order are like, “names that will almost certainly be around pitching meaningful frames barring a trade or whatever.”

Dylan Lee has also been around since 2021 (well, mostly since 2022) and has a career 67 ERA-, 86 FIP-, and 79 xFIP-. He’s also straight-up eviscerated left-handed batters (33 percent strikeout rate, 3 percent walk rate, a 2.53 xFIP). Lee was really good in 2022 and 2024, but had homer problems in 2023 and 2025. Those homer problems curiously didn’t really ding his ERA, or even his WPA, but given the Braves’ issues with HR/FB last year, it’s just one of those things that sometimes makes you wake up in a cold sweat. (Or maybe that’s just me.)

Aaron Bummer was, and might continue to be, kind of the weirdest part of this roster. He was great in 2024 (1.1 fWAR) but the Braves didn’t really care in terms of using him accordingly. 2025 was worse in basically every respect, but still fine-ish. The Braves also made him start games for some reason, and he missed the last five weeks of the season with shoulder inflammation. This isn’t the place to re-litigate whatever is going on between Bummer, the coaching staff, and the organization, but suffice to say, Bummer probably can be in the mix to effectively pitch meaningful innings to the extent any reliever in this section or the ones below can, though whether he ultimately is remains a question mark due to his prior bizarre usage. There’s been a fair bit of noise that the Braves might trade Bummer to free up some cash, but there’s been no indication the organization is interested in that — and if they are, it’s not clear what they might do to bulk up the depth chart in his theoretical absence (if such a thing is even needed).

And then we have Tyler Kinley, who kind of differs from Bummer and Lee in that his peripherals don’t actually suggest he’s going to be all that productive. The Braves acquired Kinley partway through the year in 2025, and then declined his club option even though he posted a 17/68/106 line (ERA-/FIP-/xFIP-) for them down the stretch. They later re-signed him for a lower dollar total ($4.25 million). In the end, Kinley is a bit of an enigma, even if he’ll probably be used as a right-handed set-up-ish option to complement the lefty-hurling Lee and Bummer. His peripherals, as noted, have been poor — even after he departed the dysfunctional Rockies’ organization. You could argue that as a fly ball pitcher, xFIP undersells Kinley, and you kind of have to in order to feel good about his prospective role in this bullpen.

In any case, projections generally have all three of these guys around the 0.5 WAR mark, with an ultimately meaningless but nonetheless noticeable rank order of Lee > Bummer > Kinley in expected effectiveness.

Bullpens have way more than five pitchers, right?

So, who else is going to be in the bullpen? Uhhhhh… probably a whole lot of guys over the course of the season.

Joel Payamps seems like a decent bet, because the Braves gave him $2.25 million for 2026 after picking him up late last season. He was awful in 2025, but good in 2024 and great in 2023.

Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine, because there aren’t really any clear slam-dunk options, but just a bunch of guys to either cycle through or give a trial run and dump shortly thereafter unless they thrive.

Some guys in the organization are out of options or added on non-guaranteed deals. Jose Suarez has big swingman energy, was an okay starter a few years ago, and has sometimes looked flat-out dominant while causing Bad Josh Tomlin (not to be confused with Relief God Josh Tomlin) flashbacks otherwise. Ian Hamilton was great in 2023, good in 2024, and replacement level in 2025 — but hasn’t really gotten much run in camp so far.

Your ride-the-Gwinnett shuttle types include Dylan Dodd (who was fine as a reliever last year) and Hayden Harris (who’s had great minor league numbers but didn’t impress in a tiny sample in the majors last year, and seems to be less favored by the organization than his video game minor league numbers would suggest). Other guys that you might see here and there include:

Daysbel Hernandez (coming off a shoulder injury and a woeful 2025 after a very exciting short MLB stint in 2024);
James Karinchak (impressive in camp but hasn’t been useful in the majors since 2022);
Hunter Stratton (basically depth, but had a nice 2024);
Rolddy Munoz (at least in theory, but nothing he’s done in the minors suggests there’s any reason to give him a bullpen spot);
Jhancarlos Lara (like Munoz, hasn’t done anything in the high minors but maybe he figures it out one day this year); and
Tayler Scott (run-of-the-mill replacement-level reliever).

Depth

Guys not starting could be relieving. Or perhaps guys not doing so great at starting could be pushed into relieving by promotions of other arms in their place. Unfortunately for the Braves, they kind of have a “not sure we have enough guys to start effectively” issue potentially looming given their pitchers’ tendencies to keel over at the inkling of a stiff breeze on the other side of the continent, so this is a weird category. Could Grant Holmes, Reynaldo Lopez, and/or Bryce Elder do relief stuff? Yeah, sure, probably — if they’re not starting for some reason. This also probably isn’t the year that Spencer Strider, High Leverage Reliever comes to pass, but you know people will still talk about it.

The Braves could also give essentially battlefield promotions to a bunch of prospects and pseudo-prospects — Blake Burkhalter, Cade Kuehler, Connor Thomas as pure-play relievers, or Carter Holton, Lucas Braun, Drue Hackenberg, and Brett Sears as “sorry buddy, you’re not gonna be starting anymore, but brief major league paycheck?” options. Maybe this is the year that actual meaningful prospects JR Ritchie and Didier Fuentes somehow establish themselves as elite bulk options as the Braves revolutionize how they use their pitching staff but… nah.

Jesse Chavez probably isn’t coming out of retirement, either, but you never know. (He’s coaching for the Giants anyway at this point.)

Overall

This is an expensive bullpen, and it’s not all that top heavy, nor overwhelmingly heavy at the top. While it’s true that most teams don’t have a duo like Iglesias and Suarez at the back end, all the teams with even better projected bullpens than the Braves do, generally with an even better duo (or trio). The Braves are five-ish deep in better-than-average-we-hope relievers, which is actually where their real bullpen “strength” is. But, because we’re talking about relievers, I wouldn’t really count on it. Things are gonna get weird, because that’s what relief pitching is apparently all about. Even though I hate it, and wish it were more normal. Oh well.

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