The Braves are back to shuffling the bullpen deck again, and this time the move came right after another rough night against the Pirates.
Atlanta sent Connor Thomas back to the minors on Wednesday and brought up right-hander Victor Mederos to take his place. It was a quick turnaround for Thomas, who had been called up Tuesday as part of a set of moves aimed at giving the bullpen some help.
He did provide innings right away, working 3.2 frames against Pittsburgh that same day, but the line wasn’t pretty: four earned runs and 60 pitches. That kind of workload made his stay feel temporary from the start.
For Atlanta, the swap is more about survival than anything flashy. Mederos gives the club a fresh arm, which matters when a pitcher has already burned through 60 pitches and won’t be available for a few days anyway. But the larger issue is impossible to ignore: the Braves keep cycling through relievers because they don’t have enough dependable options to settle into standard bullpen jobs.
That problem was on display Tuesday. The offense couldn’t take advantage of Paul Skenes even though he clearly didn’t have his best stuff, Hurston Waldrep got hit hard by Ryan O’Hearn, and the bullpen didn’t clean up the mess either. Only one of those issues got addressed by the roster move, and it wasn’t the one that’s been haunting Atlanta most lately.
Right now, the Braves are leaning on multiple long relievers because the roster doesn’t have the personnel to cover the usual roles. At the same time, starters like Reynaldo Lopez, Bryce Elder, and Waldrep haven’t been able to consistently work deep enough into games, which keeps pushing more strain onto the same group of relievers. That has forced Atlanta to keep reaching for fresh arms just to get through the schedule.
It’s a patchwork approach, and it’s starting to show its limits. With Robert Suarez out, the Braves are trying to piece together a bullpen on the fly, but the current setup isn’t holding up.
Atlanta needs more stability in the rotation and a couple of relievers it can trust in defined roles. Until that happens, the bullpen shuffle is likely to keep going.
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