The Braves made a few minor moves today, grabbing two relievers off waivers from Charm City:
Here’s something that bedevils me: for the last few years, the Braves have consistently made minor moves for relief-esque arms that have involved players with truly horrible stats. Look, the state of pitching development at this point is that teams probably don’t care about stats, even advanced ERA estimators, in a vacuum. But still, it’s been kind of crazy to me that the Braves are just consistently grabbing these guys that look way worse than your standard 26th man, and occasionally even using them in Triple-A, before cutting bait. (If you want an example, peep at Dany Jimenez, who was awful for Oakland in 2024, brought on by the Braves, and cut during Spring Training.)
Anyway, Carson Ragsdale fits this mold of “I don’t get it, except they keep doing it.” A 2020 draftee who’s bounced around a ton already (including one inning for Gwinnett in 2025), his stats have been horrendous since he’s hit Triple-A, with an xFIP approaching 6.00 at that level. He threw five big league innings for the Orioles last year, ending up with a 357 ERA-, 114 FIP-, and 125 xFIP-. Like I said, bedeviled.
Josh Walker is less confusing, because he doesn’t fit the “inexplicably claimed despite awful stats” mold. A low-round draft pick back in 2017, he’s made a few major league appearances in each of the last three seasons and has a career 160/95/108 line (ERA-/FIP-/xFIP-) over 27 1/3 career innings. He was also pretty effective in Triple-A, and is much more your bog-standard 26th man reliever guy.
On a pitch basis, you can kind of squint and see the rationale. Maybe. Ragsdale probably needs to stop throwing his sinker, and his hard curve could be interesting, except that it just doesn’t seem all that great — the Braves do love hard breaking pitches, but I’m not sure what else in the profile works. Walker seems like more of a slam dunk here because his “curveball” is actually a crazy cutter/slider/something, and he’s gotten a crazy whiff rate on it at times. Both guys can command their breaker better than their fastball.
Anyway, one day the Braves will make a reliever claim for a guy that has a good xFIP at some level, but that day isn’t today. I don’t think either of these guys are all that likely to appear for the big league Braves in 2026, but you never know.
