There's An Incredibly Simple Explanation For Why the Braves Convert Relievers Into Starters
Prospect Jhancarlos Lara thrived in Gwinnett as a reliever, but the Braves are putting him back into the rotation. Why?
For some reason, nothing seems to irritate a subset of fans more than the idea of converting a decent to good reliever into a starter.
It’s something I’ve noticed. Whether it’s Grant Holmes and Reynaldo López (who I’d argue is actually a little better than decent, given the whole ‘career 2.99 ERA out of the bullpen’ thing, any update or news item about Atlanta attempting to stretch a guy out is usually met with some amount of ire. “They’re going to blow his arm out”1, or “he’s a perfectly good reliever, why try to make him into a starter”?
In a word: Value. We’re seeing this play out right now in Triple-A Gwinnett, where flamethrowing prospect Jhancarlos Lara moved from the Columbus rotation into a relief role and has now been shifted back to the Stripers rotation, to some complaint among the fans who avidly watch Stripers baseball.
But it’s the right move, both for the player and the organization. Let’s talk about it.
What’s going on with Jhancarlos Lara?
A 2021 international free agent out of the Dominican Republic, signing at a relatively ancient nineteen years old, he’s quickly advanced to the highest level of the minors despite rather pedestrian results at times. Holding a career 4.48 ERA in his four-season career, he did the upper minors speedrun this season, with Atlanta undeterred by an ERA of 10.69 in his four starts for Double-A Columbus.
Moving to Gwinnett in mid-May, Lara threw 26.1 innings and allowed 14 earned runs across 21 relief outings, good for a 4.78 ERA. Despite the run total, it was a surprisingly dominant stint out of the pen - holding opposing hitters to a .125/.287/.182 line, he struck out 44 while walking 20.
It was an impressive power profile, too. Lara throws three different fastballs, sporting an upper-90s four-seamer (avg 99.1 mph & 34.5% whiff rate) and sinker (98.6 mph) combined with an upper-80s cutter (56.1% whiff rate on 23.7% usage) and a mid-80s slider (25% whiff rate). He gave up a grand total of one barrel in 407 pitches thrown and both the fastball and cutter are holding opponents to batting averages of .130 or less.
All that’s in the past tense, though, because Atlanta moved him into the Gwinnett rotation in early August. In his first five starts, he’s 0-2 with a 6.27 ERA. Almost everything’s taken a slight step back, too - he’s struck out 26 in his 18.2 innings, good for a 34.7% strikeout rate but a full 10% below his otherworldly 44.7% rate as a reliever for the Stripers. His 19.2% walk rate is also a slight increase on his 18.5% walk rate as a reliever (which is nearly disqualifying by itself).
The velo actually didn’t regress as much as you’d expect, with the four-seamer going from 99.1 to 98.6 mph and the sinker from 98.6 to 97.9. The cutter and slider has corresponding drops of about one mile per hour or so, which isn’t that significant.
This is something Atlanta’s talked about in the past. By having guys work as relievers, and the context here was about Grant Holmes, Atlanta’s able to bake in a bit of a velo bump by getting guys accustomed to “airing it out” in the bullpen and then moving them back to the rotation.
Interestingly, some of the whiff rates actually improved. As a starter, Lara’s slider went from a 25% whiff rate to 59.1%, while the cutter maintained a whiff rate in the 50s. The four-seamer took the biggest hit here, dropping from a 34.5% whiff rate as a reliever to a 12.5%, but I need to dig into the locations a bit more on this one.
Despite all of those numbers being lower, though, it’s usually considered a good move to get a guy into a rotation if possible.
(For Lara specifically, this is also a chance to increase his workload late in the year and let him work on better integration of his secondaries to get batters out, as what works the first time through the order might not work the second time though. I suspect at the end of the day, he’ll ultimately wind up as a reliever because of that walk rate, which is disqualifying as a starter.)
Being a starter is more valuable
Entering Thursday’s action, the league leader in bWAR out of a bullpen is Aroldis Chapman of the Boston Red Sox at 3.3 WAR. He’s 4-2 with a career-best ERA of 1.00 (thanks to learning at the age of 37 that yes, you can aim your pitches to specific sides of the plate) and is sixth in saves with 28.
That’s 33rd in baseball among all pitchers. Some of the illustrious and dominating starters ahead of him by bWAR include José Soriano of the Los Angeles Angels (3.5 bWAR) with his 3.68 ERA and Merrill Kelly (3.6 bWAR), who was traded at the deadline to the Texas Rangers and currently has a 3.24 ERA on the season.
The next closest reliever to Chapman, new Phillies closer Jhoan Duran, is 38th in baseball with 2.8 bWAR.
The reason that good but not great starters can outpace some of the best relievers in baseball is the value of innings. Put simply, even an okay starter can outpace the best relievers because they have more opportunities to impact a game. While there are situations where a #3 starter isn’t as valuable as one of the league’s best closers, like when you’ve played an absurd fifty-two one-run games and have only won 19 of them, good for a league-worst .365 winning percentage, on average the quantity of innings is worth more than the quality of those innings.
We’ve been talking about the best of the best relievers in all of baseball here, and they’re still behind Merrill Kelly and José Soriano in value to their respective clubs (as measured by WAR).
Logically, the more marginal the reliever, the more they can benefit by successfully converting to the rotation. Take Ray Kerr, who Atlanta attempted to use as a starter last year before he went down with a torn UCL and subsequently had Tommy John surgery.2
He had a 3.68 ERA as a reliever across 14.2 innings, which is solid but not exactly irreplaceable - Dylan Dodd has a 3.24 ERA across 25 innings this season. Would subtracting Dylan Dodd from this team fundamentally change things for Atlanta? No.
What about adding a starter that could take 110 innings? The Braves only have four pitchers even over 100 innings this season, with Bryce Elder leading in the clubhouse at 131.2 and followed by Grant Holmes (115.0), Spencer Schwellenbach (110.2) and Spencer Strider (101.1).
And this doesn’t even touch on the financial factor of that. Signing a starter in free agency that can give you 110 or more innings isn’t the cheapest thing in the world to do; even marginal starters can get double-digit millions in salary to put up ERAs in the mid-4s.
Reynaldo López converted from the bullpen to the rotation last season and got paid $4M to give the Braves 135.2 innings of 1.99 ERA ball.
So, the next time you hear about Alex Anthopoulos trying to get himself a deal in the free agent market, know that it’s likely a good move for the team. And if the player shows that they can take starter innings, even just breaking 100 innings, know that they’re both more valuable to their organization via trade and on their arbitration and free agent deals.
I realize that mentioning Holmes and López, followed by mentioning the injury concern, kinda makes their point. I’d counter with the fact that most pitchers are going to get hurt at some point in time and we don’t know this wouldn’t have happened if they were throwing less innings but at a higher intensity more often in relief.
I KNOW, I’M MAKING THEIR POINT FOR THEM. Just because we've been unluckily injury-prone in recent seasons doesn’t mean I’m not right, though.
I was already thinking if Tyler Kinley was a possible starter as he has several pitches he can throw for strikes ?
He is 34 years old though. Maybe a bit old to convert to starter.
Nice profile on Lara.
I'm old enough to remember when the 1950's Yankees moved guys like Grim, Larsen, and Shantz back and forth from the pen to spot starts regularly. Maybe using relievers as 1-2 inning "openers" isn't sticking, but would swing men capable of 100-120 IP per year be a good way to keep some from hitting ridiculous salaries too soon? Or to preserve arm health?
A team like the Braves needs to cling to the pre-arb years as the highest value of all, far surpassing FA signings. Waldrep this year, or Schwellenbach last. Then it's a matter of extending the right guys. And mustn't our best data+scientists glean some metric (bodily?repertoire?usage?) to weigh injury probabilities? Isn't that really the challenging takeaway of 2025?
One mild critique, LC. You habitually cite a scan of random voices in the fanosphere. I have some history with audience research, and have learned not to listen to noise because accurate random sampling usually tells a different story. Those bold enough to opine in public fora are merely anecdotalists with sharp elbows.