Daysbel Hernández has a live arm and has shown flashes of the type of stuff that could make any fan dream of him coming in during a big moment in a big game and pitching a shutdown inning in order to preserve the lead. However, he’s found it pretty difficult to put it all together in terms of control and command. He also hasn’t had much of an opportunity to stick around at the big league level, consistently, though this is partly the result of the “lack of control and command” thing.
2025 figured to be his chance to establish himself in Atlanta’s bullpen as a reliable reliever. Again, there were signs that he could potentially step up and become a solid part of the relief corps. Was he able to put it together? I think y’all know the answer to that but let’s just go ahead and walk through his season, shall we?
The Braves signed Daysbel Hernández from Cuba as an international free agent back in 2017. He’s been with the organization for his entire professional career.
What were the expectations?
This was hopefully going to be the year where Hernández established himself as one of the more reliable arms in Atlanta’s bullpen.
Hernandez was first called up in July 2023, and had an exciting debut where he struck out the side, but then three straight unremarkable outings and hit the shelf for pretty much the rest of the season with forearm inflammation. He was full yo-yo in 2024, getting recalled six separate times, but he pitched 18 really good innings in 16 appearances, with a 60 ERA-, 54 FIP-, and an 85 xFIP-, giving him 0.5 fWAR in that very limited exposure. There was no real command to speak of, but his slider was approaching unhittable (40-plus percent whiff rate, sub-.200 xwOBA-against), and Hernandez came into 2025 as a guy expected to be a middle relief mainstay, with projections tagging him as an average reliever from the get-go.
The hope was that with improved control and command, Hernández would grab a consistent role in the bullpen on the back of consistency in his pitching, and even push his way into the higher-leverage mix, especially given the impending departure of Raisel Iglesias.
Welp, then 2025 happened, and it’s looking like the Braves and Hernández are going to have to go back to the drawing board after the season that he just had. His strikeout rate went down precipitously, going from 35.1 percent over 18 innings in 2024 to 20.1 percent over 37 innings pitched in 2025. While Hernández’s ability to miss bats and rack up strikeouts was what was bringing him to The Show, a dip would’ve been somewhat acceptable if it coincided with a dip in walk rate as well.
That didn’t happen either, as his walk rate ticked up nearly five full percentage points from 13.5 percent in 2024 to 18.3 percent in 2025. As such, Hernández ended up finishing with a respectable ERA of 3.41 (81 ERA-) but a not-so-respectable FIP of 5.00 (123 FIP-), resulting in a pretty nasty-looking fWAR of -0.4 for the season. His xFIP was even worse at a 136 xFIP-; Hernandez only got tagged for three homers all season, a relatively rare Braves reliever that got killed by something other than the longball.
His fastball velocity is still ferocious, as he averaged nearly 98 mph on his four-seamer, good enough to place him int he 94th percentile for the second-consecutive season. As such, he actually finished the season with an intriguing xBA of .212 and a reasonable 4.16 xERA — up from a microscopic .169 and 2.49, respectively, back in 2024 but still enough to make you think that he could be really nasty to deal with if he can one day get his control and command in check.
That’s the problem, though: he’s walking batters at an alarming rate and he’s also getting hit very hard when batters do eventually make contact with what he’s putting out there. As a result, Daysbel Hernández had a season where he’s still throwing the ball very hard but seeing very few positive results coming from that elevated velocity.
In early June, Hernandez once again hit the shelf with the same forearm inflammation, and then missed about a month before going yo-yo again. But, eight days into his third stint with the team, he was shut down with shoulder inflammation.
When Daysbel Hernández was missing bats and painting the corners, he looked absolutely nasty. The best example I can think of is his appearance on July 5 during a Braves loss to the Orioles. The blame for that loss couldn’t be placed at Daysbel’s feet, as he kept the Orioles scoreless over 1 2/3 innings. He did walk one batter while he was out there but he struck out a season-high four batters during the process — including sitting down Colton Cowser to end the eighth inning with a 99-mph heater that perfectly hit the outside corner of the strike zone. Stuff like this is what makes Daysbel Hernández such a tantalizing option for the bullpen going forward.
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Other than that, you really have to hang your hat on the fact that he did not allow a single homer for his first 37 outings of the year. That kept his ERA and FIP more reasonable than they probably should have been. Because of that, he was able to survive various higher-leverage innings despite the massive walks, like on April 26, when he had a two-walk inning with a one-run lead in Arizona, but managed to preserve the lead because the ball in play against him was this:
Hernández’ final two appearances of the 2025 season for the Braves summed up everything that appears to be holding him back from being even a solidly-reliable reliever going forward, and then some. On August 18 against the White Sox, Hernández got knocked and charged with three runs (two earned) on four hits (one of which was a homer, his first one allowed of the season) and two walks for the 1 1/3 innings that he spent on the mound. Again, if he can’t get consistent whiffs or put his pitches where he wants them, he’s always going to find himself in trouble.
He got optioned to Triple-A after that outing and didn’t return until September 6, which is when he got walloped by the Mariners for two homers and three runs while getting just two outs. Then he hit the shelf with shoulder inflammation in his throwing arm. None of this is good!
Ending a bad season on a particularly low note aside, the actual issue with Hernandez was that batters eventually just figured out that they didn’t need to swing. The MLB average chase rate is a bit over one in four pitches; Hernandez’ slider had a chase rate of over 36 percent in April, and then it crashed to below league average in May, and never really rebounded to the same level. At the same time, the zone rate of his slider cratered completely after April, which only reinforced the dual, problematic ideas of: A) batters don’t need to swing at the slider because it’s not a strike, and B) if it’s a strike, it’s far more likely to be a fastball.
But, the problem for the Braves is that they either didn’t seem to realize this, or didn’t care. Through his struggles, his injury stints, his time getting shuttled between Atlanta and Gwinnett, he finished with the second highest average leverage index among the team’s relievers, behind only Iglesias. (And technically, behind Craig Kimbrel’s one inning.) Sure, some of that leverage he created himself, but if you look at when he was inserted into the game, he was still second if you exclude the singular relief appearances from Kimbrel and Hurston Waldrep. The Braves did use him in slightly lower leverage after his first IL stint, but he was still fourth on the team in average leverage and point-of-insertion leverage, ahead of Tyler Kinley and Aaron Bummer. That last outing of the season where he got thrashed by Mariners and sent to the IL afterwards? He came into that game when it was tied 2-2 in the seventh; the Braves ended up losing 10-2. Oops, all around.
And, of course, no pitcher is immune from straight-up nonsense, even if they’re gonna go 37 outings without allowing a homer, and walk a ton of batters. Here’s the lowest-WPA play for the Braves from Hernández’ time on the mound:
Daysbel Hernández already figured to be a long shot to be a significant part of Atlanta’s bullpen in 2026 after the rough season that he had in 2025. Those odds may be even longer depending on how long it takes him to recover from the shoulder ailment that caused the Braves to shut him down to end the season. I’d imagine that they probably would’ve let him try to figure things out at the tail end of a lost season for the ballclub if his injury wasn’t that bad, so I figure that whatever the injury was must’ve really been serious enough to warrant the move to the 60-Day IL, at that.
If it is a serious injury, then we could be a long way off from seeing Daysbel Hernández making a serious impact as a big league reliever. Shoulder injuries for pitchers are almost always very bad news and tricky for them to recover from. Assuming he can recover from this, he still has the type of stuff that could make him an effective reliever in the future — maybe even a high-leverage hurler if all goes well. However, those appear to be pretty long odds going forward. Hernández did express interest in pitching for Cuba in the World Baseball Classic next spring. If he’s good to go for that then maybe that could be a good sign for his odds of putting it together for the Braves. If not, then he’s got a long road to traverse both in terms of recovery and improvement in order to put it all together at some point down the line.
All in all, he looks more like a fringy roster guy slash replacement level reliever at this point, and needs to look way more like he did in 2024, probably over a sustained stretch of more than a season, to get back to “yeah this guy can be a reliable reliever for us” territory.
