The Braves Just Threw a Ryan Rolison-Sized Challenge at Jeremy Hefner
The Atlanta Braves traded for one of MLB's worst pitchers from last year. What's the plan here?
New Atlanta Braves pitching coach Jeremy Hefner is seen as one of MLB’s rising stars. In his New York Mets career, he orchestrated several significant turnarounds of struggling pitchers, including Sean Manaea, Luis Severino, Reed Garrett, and Taijuan Walker.
But the Atlanta Braves may have given him one of the toughest tests of his career: Former Colorado Rockies reliever Ryan Rolison.
Atlanta traded for the lefty last week after Colorado designated him for assignment on Tuesday to make space to protect some of their Rule 5 eligible prospects. And it could be the biggest challenge of Hefner’s career.
Let’s talk about it.
Rolison was BAD in 2025
He was a member of the Colorado Rockies, so it’s apparent he was not good, but let me tell you just how bad he was.
Of all relievers who pitched 42 or more innings last season, Rolison’s 7.02 ERA was worse than all but four other pitchers last season.1 His walk rate was 10.4%, barely being outpaced by a 13.0% strikeout rate. He faced 193 batters and allowed them to put up a .324/.391/.565 line, a .955 OPS.
Know who else finished 2025 with an OPS of .955? Exactly one player, Shohei Ohtani. Kyle Schwarber, NL runner-up for MVP after leading the Senior Circuit with 56 homers, had a slug LOWER than what Rollison allowed in 2025.
And not only did the Braves add him to the roster, they did it via trade?
But I think there’s a plan here.
There’s clay for Hefner to work with
Rolison’s 28, but just finished his rookie season in MLB. Injuries derailed the normal progression of his minor league career, including an emergency appendectomy, a broken hand from shagging fly balls, and two shoulder surgeries in two years.
They’ve also changed who he is as a pitcher.
As Colorado’s #2 prospect in 2020, Rolison was characterized as a fastball/curveball starter that sported a manipulable slider and an effective changeup with good fade. MLB Pipeline remarked that he was an “advanced lefty” that “rarely” hurt himself with walks and could miss a “fair amount” of bats, especially with the curveball.
He’s…not that now. Last season, Rolison still threw those four pitches in roughly that order, but with massively different results. The control isn’t as reliable now, with a 10.4% walk rate that was 2% higher than MLB average last season, while even his best whiff pitch (the curveball) barely broke 20% swing-and-miss. The fastball was poor from an induced vertical break perspective at just 12 inches overall (13.8 inches away from Coors Field).
Oh, and all three of his primary offerings allowed over a .300 batting average and a slug of .450 or better last year. Not great.
But despite the struggles on the mound, there are some positives in the arsenal. He’s working from a good velocity base on the slider of roughly 86 mph; if you have the fastball and/or breaking ball to play off of, it’s hard to have a bad gyro slider of 85 mph or harder. The changeup, while not having a great velocity separation from the fastball (8-10 mph is the recommended spread; he’s sitting about six mph), looks as if it could tunnel well off the fastball with some tweaks.
Let’s break down what to do here.
Lindsay’s Lab
#1: Stop throwing a four-seam fastball
Listen, even away from Coors Field, this thing isn’t that good - it’s almost dead straight, sitting at just 0.9 inches of armside run, but also without the IVB that helps it avoid bats.
Ryan Rolison needs to be throwing a cutter.
Coming from the guy with “cutter propagandist” in his social media bio, that’s shocking, I know, but hear me out.
This is Rolison’s Statcast card:
The only pitch with above-average movement here is the slider, coming in at 3.4 inches more drop than the standard slider, and at >85 mph, to boot. See how most of the yellow dots are below the gray horizontal line that represents zero IVB? We’re going to lean into that.
By swapping the four-seamer for a cutter, we’re going to establish it as the primary fastball, run sliders off of that, and then drop a curveball below (and behind) some bats as both an offspeed and a strong vertical pitch. It’s a mostly vertical arsenal, so this should help Rolison be a bit more matchup-proof than if he were to do something like add a sweeper.
#2: Let’s learn a two-seamer
As a lefty, Rolison needs something that moves away from a righty. For most southpaws, that’s a changeup.
But his existing cambio is both too firm and doesn’t move nearly as much as a standard changeup. So let’s scrap it and use that velo base to throw a two-seamer instead.
Truthfully, I’m not sold on two-seamer versus sinker here; the sinker typically has less vertical break than the two-seamer, but I just want him to throw whichever one matches the cutter’s movement. (A good two-seamer’s sitting around ten inches of vertical break, while the sinker’s often between five and nine inches.)
The goal here is for something that’ll move away from a righty and blend with the cutter out of the hand.
#3: Tighten up the slider
The MLB Pipeline writeup mentioned this and it’s still true - he tends to manipulate the shape of the slider, making it tighter or looser at will.
Let’s back off of that a bit. Ideally, with our new cutter/slider/curveball arsenal, we’ll scheme up missing bats vertically. What I’m looking for is all three pitches looking the same out of the hand. With a cutter and a slider being distant cousins, they’ll automatically blend well if the slider is that standard tight, gyro shape. The goal here is for all three pitches to tunnel out of the hand, making it even harder for a hitter to sit on one specific pitch, especially when your sequences vary but your usage (by percentage) is pretty even across all three options.
And if you’re looking for a model of what to do here, Corbin Burnes is a good example of what we’re going for: He’s primarily a cutter guy, throwing a curveball, sinker, and slider off of that. The main difference he has going is the exceptional vertical movement he gets on the cutter (+3-5 inches versus average), establishing it as a whiff-inducing pitch, and playing the breaking balls off of that. The concept’s the same, though, and we’re going to lean into it.
For a league minimum salary in 2026, these changes could return significant surplus value if they stick.
Fun fact, three of those four were his teammates, if you want an illustration of how bad the Colorado Rockies were in 2025.