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Photo by Kevin D. Liles/Atlanta Braves/Getty Images
The Texan reliever heads to free agency after an injury-plagued and homer-filled season. There were three Atlanta Braves who entered the 2024 campaign having made their big-league debut with the club in 2017: second baseman Ozzie Albies, starting pitcher Max Fried, and reliever A.J. Minter.
For both the left-handed pitchers, 2024 marked what could be their last year with the organization — at least for now — as they entered the season as pending free agents. While Fried’s departure and eventual megadeal with the Yankees naturally grabbed more headlines, Minter’s exit will also leave a meaningful void in Atlanta’s pitching staff. If this is the end for the Minter and the Braves, it’s a shame that his tenure ended on such an injury- and homer-plagued low note.
How acquired
Atlanta drafted Minter in the second round of the 2015 draft out of Texas A&M. It took Minter only two years to make his debut with the Braves, as he showed up in a big league uniform on August 23, 2017.
What were the expectations?
Minter came into 2024 as the primary high-leverage lefty reliever in the Braves bullpen. It was the role he had excelled in for most of his career, outside of his outlier 2019 season. For a guy who isn’t exactly a soft tosser, he’s also been incredibly durable, making 60-plus appearances and amassing over 50 frames in each of his full seasons except, again, 2019.
While Minter’s 2023 didn’t replicate his 2022 high-water mark where he posted 2.0 fWAR, it was still more than solid: 1.4 fWAR and a tidy 82/21 K/BB ratio.
Overall, Minter came into 2024 with a 78/65/82 career line (ERA-/FIP-/xFIP-) with 7.1 fWAR accrued over 314 1⁄3 innings. Despite debuting late in 2017, only 10 relievers had more fWAR than him since the start of that season coming into 2024. From 2021-2023, he ranked seventh among relief brethren in fWAR. Basically, the expectation was that he’d be one of the best relievers in baseball, because it’s what he’d been, fairly consistently, not just recently, but as far back as 2018 as well. ZiPS had him projected at just below 1 WAR, but if you figured he was going to get into the mid-1s based on his 2021-2023 performance, that would be fair as well.
2024 results
There is good news and there is bad news about Minter’s 2024 season. The problem is that the good news was a mix of stuff that was unearned and stuff that was tarnished by all the homers he gave up. In the end, Minter finished with -0.1 fWAR, his second poor relief season of his career, and a really weird 63/112/93 line. Basically, he gave up a ton of homers thanks to an elevated HR/FB, but somehow managed to avoid runs coming home to roost despite all those homers. His strikeout rate slid relative to 2022-2023, but he’s provided tons of value with a lower strikeout rate before (e.g., 2021), so it was really the homers that did him in.
The real story, though, was that his season ended due to a hip injury that required surgery, leaving him with just 39 appearances and 34 1⁄3 innings on the campaign. Minter missed June with the same ailment, and while he returned to pitch in July and early August at a fine enough clip that didn’t feature homers seemingly every two minutes, the hip eventually drew the curtain on his season.
What went right?
Minter’s season was so weird, and cut short before things could shake out — so it’s hard to unequivocally point to any one thing as going right. He had a huge ERA-FIP (and ERA-xFIP) gap, but this was undercut by him finishing with a negative WPA — that sparkly ERA didn’t really even matter to the team all that much. On the flip side, his xFIP was fine and not really all that different from 2018, 2020, and 2021 — just not at the highs of his super-good 2022-2023 performance. His xwOBA-against was right in line with 2023, and most of his underlying metrics were better than okay, though he probably could’ve cut down on the walks more. His cutter command, and cutter effectiveness, made some gains, and he posted his best cutter xwOBA-against since 2021, which was another year where the cutter was a lot more pinpoint than he showed in 2022-2023.
Especially early on, Minter gave the Braves some vintage Minter outings, too. On April 24, he set up a Braves walkoff win by throwing a scoreless top of the tenth — two groundouts, including a fielder’s choice at home, and then pitching around some stuff to set up a lefty-lefty matchup where he struck out Jazz Chisholm Jr. to escape the inning.
Then, a few days later, he did pretty much the same thing again... but this time in much weirder fashion. Facing the Guardians this time, Minter recorded the second out of the tenth inning via a pickoff, and then the inning ended with Travis d’Arnaud throwing out Jose Ramirez on a steal attempt where the latter didn’t even attempt to slide for some reason:
And, sometimes, batters just plain bailed him out — thanks, Ian Happ!
What went wrong?
His hip went wrong; it nearly couldn’t have happened at a worse time for the Texan. Coming off of several strong seasons and looking to test free agency for the first time, Minter now has to hit the market fresh off a negative fWAR season that he didn’t really get a chance to set right down the stretch. For the Braves, who were battling injuries all over the field, Minter was one of the easier players to replace given the success Dylan Lee had during the season, but that doesn’t minimize the impact of not having Minter as a late-inning option.
Minter’s HR/FB rate being over double his career rate, in a season where the ball mostly refused to leave the yard, also stings. He was frustrated by it, too, at one point commenting to the media:
Yeah, I mean, if you take away all the home runs I’ve given up, I’m the best pitcher in baseball. That’s what’s been killing me this year is just getting the ball to stay in the yard. I don’t know how to fix that, I don’t know if it’s just gonna all even out, but yeah, I mean, I just wish I could tell you.”
Why did Minter say this particular thing? Because it came during a stretch where homers off of him led to two of the team’s more brutal losses in about two weeks. On April 29, Minter came in to close out a 1-0 game, gave up a first-pitch seeing-eye single, and then a no-doubt walkoff homer to Mitch Garver.
On May 12, it was pretty much the same story, with Minter coming into a 3-2 game in the ninth, and the Mets going bunt single, sacrifice bunt, Brandon Nimmo walkoff homer despite a lefty-lefty matchup.
That latter homer is what prompted Minter’s frustrated outburst, and yeah, it makes sense. It’s funny that in a season where his cutter command improved, he had those two miserable outings that ended on very poorly-placed cutters.
2025 Outlook
At this point, it is unknown whether Minter and the Braves will reunite for 2025. On the one hand, the Braves have a track record of bringing back, or bringing in, pitchers recovering from injuries on multi-year rehab-type deals: see Tyler Matzek, Angel Perdomo, and Kirby Yates for examples.
However, if clubs feel confident in Minter’s availability for at least half of the 2025 season — and long term — after his recovery is complete, he could be one of the most sought-after relievers on the market, because, well, he’s been pretty much nails, aside from 2019 and the crazy HR/FB stuff from 2024.
Steamer has Minter as more of a generic reliever at this point, pricing in some injury risk and downgrading his innings total; ZiPS has him much closer to really good reliever territory and has barely downgraded him for 2025 relative to what it was projecting as a point estimate for 2024.
If 2024 was the end of the line for Minter and the Braves, it will have seen Minter pitch in the tenth-most games in franchise history with 384 appearances. He is fourth among pitchers who were primarily relievers, behind only Gene Garber, Rick Camp and Mark Wohlers.
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Photo by Kevin D. Liles/Atlanta Braves/Getty Images
The Texan reliever heads to free agency after an injury-plagued and homer-filled season. There were three Atlanta Braves who entered the 2024 campaign having made their big-league debut with the club in 2017: second baseman Ozzie Albies, starting pitcher Max Fried, and reliever A.J. Minter.
For both the left-handed pitchers, 2024 marked what could be their last year with the organization — at least for now — as they entered the season as pending free agents. While Fried’s departure and eventual megadeal with the Yankees naturally grabbed more headlines, Minter’s exit will also leave a meaningful void in Atlanta’s pitching staff. If this is the end for the Minter and the Braves, it’s a shame that his tenure ended on such an injury- and homer-plagued low note.
How acquired
Atlanta drafted Minter in the second round of the 2015 draft out of Texas A&M. It took Minter only two years to make his debut with the Braves, as he showed up in a big league uniform on August 23, 2017.
What were the expectations?
Minter came into 2024 as the primary high-leverage lefty reliever in the Braves bullpen. It was the role he had excelled in for most of his career, outside of his outlier 2019 season. For a guy who isn’t exactly a soft tosser, he’s also been incredibly durable, making 60-plus appearances and amassing over 50 frames in each of his full seasons except, again, 2019.
While Minter’s 2023 didn’t replicate his 2022 high-water mark where he posted 2.0 fWAR, it was still more than solid: 1.4 fWAR and a tidy 82/21 K/BB ratio.
Overall, Minter came into 2024 with a 78/65/82 career line (ERA-/FIP-/xFIP-) with 7.1 fWAR accrued over 314 1⁄3 innings. Despite debuting late in 2017, only 10 relievers had more fWAR than him since the start of that season coming into 2024. From 2021-2023, he ranked seventh among relief brethren in fWAR. Basically, the expectation was that he’d be one of the best relievers in baseball, because it’s what he’d been, fairly consistently, not just recently, but as far back as 2018 as well. ZiPS had him projected at just below 1 WAR, but if you figured he was going to get into the mid-1s based on his 2021-2023 performance, that would be fair as well.
2024 results
There is good news and there is bad news about Minter’s 2024 season. The problem is that the good news was a mix of stuff that was unearned and stuff that was tarnished by all the homers he gave up. In the end, Minter finished with -0.1 fWAR, his second poor relief season of his career, and a really weird 63/112/93 line. Basically, he gave up a ton of homers thanks to an elevated HR/FB, but somehow managed to avoid runs coming home to roost despite all those homers. His strikeout rate slid relative to 2022-2023, but he’s provided tons of value with a lower strikeout rate before (e.g., 2021), so it was really the homers that did him in.
The real story, though, was that his season ended due to a hip injury that required surgery, leaving him with just 39 appearances and 34 1⁄3 innings on the campaign. Minter missed June with the same ailment, and while he returned to pitch in July and early August at a fine enough clip that didn’t feature homers seemingly every two minutes, the hip eventually drew the curtain on his season.
What went right?
Minter’s season was so weird, and cut short before things could shake out — so it’s hard to unequivocally point to any one thing as going right. He had a huge ERA-FIP (and ERA-xFIP) gap, but this was undercut by him finishing with a negative WPA — that sparkly ERA didn’t really even matter to the team all that much. On the flip side, his xFIP was fine and not really all that different from 2018, 2020, and 2021 — just not at the highs of his super-good 2022-2023 performance. His xwOBA-against was right in line with 2023, and most of his underlying metrics were better than okay, though he probably could’ve cut down on the walks more. His cutter command, and cutter effectiveness, made some gains, and he posted his best cutter xwOBA-against since 2021, which was another year where the cutter was a lot more pinpoint than he showed in 2022-2023.
Especially early on, Minter gave the Braves some vintage Minter outings, too. On April 24, he set up a Braves walkoff win by throwing a scoreless top of the tenth — two groundouts, including a fielder’s choice at home, and then pitching around some stuff to set up a lefty-lefty matchup where he struck out Jazz Chisholm Jr. to escape the inning.
Then, a few days later, he did pretty much the same thing again... but this time in much weirder fashion. Facing the Guardians this time, Minter recorded the second out of the tenth inning via a pickoff, and then the inning ended with Travis d’Arnaud throwing out Jose Ramirez on a steal attempt where the latter didn’t even attempt to slide for some reason:
And, sometimes, batters just plain bailed him out — thanks, Ian Happ!
What went wrong?
His hip went wrong; it nearly couldn’t have happened at a worse time for the Texan. Coming off of several strong seasons and looking to test free agency for the first time, Minter now has to hit the market fresh off a negative fWAR season that he didn’t really get a chance to set right down the stretch. For the Braves, who were battling injuries all over the field, Minter was one of the easier players to replace given the success Dylan Lee had during the season, but that doesn’t minimize the impact of not having Minter as a late-inning option.
Minter’s HR/FB rate being over double his career rate, in a season where the ball mostly refused to leave the yard, also stings. He was frustrated by it, too, at one point commenting to the media:
Yeah, I mean, if you take away all the home runs I’ve given up, I’m the best pitcher in baseball. That’s what’s been killing me this year is just getting the ball to stay in the yard. I don’t know how to fix that, I don’t know if it’s just gonna all even out, but yeah, I mean, I just wish I could tell you.”
Why did Minter say this particular thing? Because it came during a stretch where homers off of him led to two of the team’s more brutal losses in about two weeks. On April 29, Minter came in to close out a 1-0 game, gave up a first-pitch seeing-eye single, and then a no-doubt walkoff homer to Mitch Garver.
On May 12, it was pretty much the same story, with Minter coming into a 3-2 game in the ninth, and the Mets going bunt single, sacrifice bunt, Brandon Nimmo walkoff homer despite a lefty-lefty matchup.
That latter homer is what prompted Minter’s frustrated outburst, and yeah, it makes sense. It’s funny that in a season where his cutter command improved, he had those two miserable outings that ended on very poorly-placed cutters.
2025 Outlook
At this point, it is unknown whether Minter and the Braves will reunite for 2025. On the one hand, the Braves have a track record of bringing back, or bringing in, pitchers recovering from injuries on multi-year rehab-type deals: see Tyler Matzek, Angel Perdomo, and Kirby Yates for examples.
However, if clubs feel confident in Minter’s availability for at least half of the 2025 season — and long term — after his recovery is complete, he could be one of the most sought-after relievers on the market, because, well, he’s been pretty much nails, aside from 2019 and the crazy HR/FB stuff from 2024.
Steamer has Minter as more of a generic reliever at this point, pricing in some injury risk and downgrading his innings total; ZiPS has him much closer to really good reliever territory and has barely downgraded him for 2025 relative to what it was projecting as a point estimate for 2024.
If 2024 was the end of the line for Minter and the Braves, it will have seen Minter pitch in the tenth-most games in franchise history with 384 appearances. He is fourth among pitchers who were primarily relievers, behind only Gene Garber, Rick Camp and Mark Wohlers.
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