Sometimes a player’s season tells two different stories depending on which uniform you’re looking at. Anthony Molina’s 2026 was one of those cases.
For the Braves, he was a short-term bullpen arm who barely stuck around before Atlanta sent him to San Francisco in the Tyler Mahle trade. For the Giants, he turned into something much more interesting almost immediately. That split is what makes Molina such a strange little footnote in Atlanta’s season: not a long stay, but not an empty one either.
Atlanta brought Molina in by claiming him off waivers in December of 2025, then outrighted him to Triple-A Gwinnett. He opened the year there before getting added to the big league roster at the start of May.
The assignment was simple. He was supposed to be a right-handed, low-leverage reliever who could cover an inning or two and not make a mess of things.
Given what he’d done over two seasons with the Rockies - a combined -0.4 fWAR in a long relief role - that was about as much as anyone could reasonably ask.
His track record in Colorado was rough in two different ways. In 2024, he had a low strikeout rate and a shaky walk rate, but he at least kept the ball in the park enough to avoid complete disaster, finishing with a 146 ERA-, 97 FIP-, and 110 xFIP-.
In 2025, the walk rate looked better on paper, but that came with a brutal tradeoff: hitters were launching homers before walks could even become the issue. The strikeouts still didn’t come, and the line got worse at 153 ERA-, 160 FIP-, and the same 110 xFIP-.
So while there was always a hope Atlanta might unlock something, the more realistic expectation was organizational depth.
The Braves only got four appearances out of him. Two came at Truist Park, and one of those was actually a start - but that start belonged to the Giants after Atlanta had already dealt him west. In other words, the Braves’ look at Molina was brief, uneven, and then suddenly over.
Still, there were a few moments worth noting. On May 1, he threw two scoreless innings against the Rockies, his former club.
Then came a pair of rough outings: two runs allowed on three hits against the Mets on June 14, and then the same damage against the Giants on June 16. That last appearance may have mattered more than it looked at the time, because San Francisco seemed to see something in him there.
Two weeks later, he was on the mound in Cobb County, but now in a Giants uniform.
For Atlanta, Molina finished with a 129 ERA-, 133 FIP-, and 97 xFIP- across those three outings. That’s not much, but it was at least a step up from the level he’d shown in Colorado. The Braves also had him lean more heavily on his curveball and changeup, and that may have helped a bit.
The real transformation happened after the trade. San Francisco tweaked his fastball and used it more often, and Molina suddenly looked like a different pitcher.
He made five starts and one long relief appearance for the Giants, and four of those outings were excellent. In 29 innings, he posted a 91 ERA-, 64 FIP-, and 87 xFIP-, with 0.9 fWAR to go with it.
He was sitting at 96 mph as a starter, missing bats with the curveball, limiting walks, and handling contact. For a guy who had looked like nothing more than depth, that was a major leap.
The Braves did get one useful moment out of him before all that. His two innings in his debut against Colorado helped keep the game manageable, holding the Rockies at 6-1 in the sixth and 6-2 in the seventh before Atlanta rallied late to win 8-6. Sometimes that’s the whole value of a reliever: buy a little time, and let the offense do the rest.
But the Atlanta stint also had its frustrations. Molina struck out just two Mets batters in his appearance on June 14, and those were the only strikeouts he recorded as a Brave.
He actually allowed more runs than strikeouts in Atlanta, which is not the kind of ratio anyone wants on the back of a baseball card. His final outing for the Braves, against the Giants, was especially odd: nine batters faced in two innings, no walks, no strikeouts, and a homer allowed to eventual teammate Willy Adames.
It’s tempting to wonder whether Atlanta missed something, or whether San Francisco simply found the right buttons to push. But with only 29 innings in the Giants’ version of Molina, that’s a conversation that needs more evidence before it gets too loud.
As for 2027, Molina now looks like he’ll be in the mix for a rotation spot when spring training arrives, if it arrives for him the way it should. A reunion with the Braves seems highly unlikely. And after what he showed in San Francisco, his early Steamer projection has already pushed him into that broad “everyone’s a fourth-starter quality swingman until proven otherwise” category.
That’s a pretty big jump from replacement-level depth. Hats off to Molina and the Giants. Now the question is whether he can keep it going.
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