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Photo by Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images
After a hiccup in 2023, the Atlanta lefty reliever rebounded with another really good year. I’ve always enjoyed the Mount Rushmore questions that pop up across MLB fandom. If someone asks me, “Who is on your Mount Rushmore of all-time Braves,” I can expect a spirited debate on which three players most deserve to have their heads carved alongside Hank Aaron’s should South Dakota decide to change the subject of their commemorative landmark from “American Legends” to “the Atlanta Braves franchise.”
Before you jump to conclusions: no, even as the premier Dylan Lee fan, I would obviously not put him in my Mount Rushmore of all-time Braves. Maybe my Mount Rushmore of Braves players rated by level of affection I have for them divided by star power, but not of all-time Braves.
However, I’ve thought of another landmark-related question in which Dylan Lee could conceivably be a correct answer: “What are the seven wonders of the baseball world?” There are lots of fun options out there. Shohei Ohtani’s two-way prowess. The freakish movement on Devin Williams’s airbender. Giancarlo Stanton’s raw power. The time capsules known as Wrigley Field and Fenway Park. But, if you were asking me personally, I couldn’t help but include Dylan Lee’s inexplicable ability to make good hitters look absolutely terrible.
How acquired
Drafted by Miami in the tenth round of the 2016 MLB Draft, Lee pitched in parts of four minor league seasons for their minor league teams and was released towards the end of Spring Training 2021; the Braves scooped him up a few weeks later. He pitched for Gwinnett for nearly that entire season, had the crazy first-career-start-is-in-a-World-Series-game thing, and then spent most of 2022-2024 in the major league bullpen, with some stints in Gwinnett because he, unlike most of his reliever teammates, still had option years remaining.
What were the expectations?
Lee was incredible in 2022 in his first full year as a major league reliever: 1.1 fWAR, and a crazy-good 52 ERA-/69 FIP-/78 xFIP- line. 2023, though, ended up being a lost season for him, for a host of reasons. The most obvious one was that he missed much of the year with shoulder inflammation, which arguably made him less effective even when he was healthy. But, he was also used strangely, given “pitch until you can’t” long relief stints despite his elite-level relief work in 2022, which also may have contributed to the shoulder inflammation. As a result, he followed up that fantastic full season with 0.0 fWAR and a weak 95/104/93 line across just 23 1⁄3 innings.
Expectations for Lee, then, kind of hinged on whether his shoulder would continue to bark. He clearly had the ability to provide stupendous relief, but he also had the “ability” to get misused and falter if he wasn’t feel all that great, neither of which are really his fault. These sorts of things are not really the types of problems projection systems attempt to solve, but ZiPS still thought highly of him, giving him a point estimate of 0.7 WAR in 48 innings — pretty reminiscent of his 2022 and only somewhat tamped down by his lost season in 2023.
2024 Results
The great news? Basically, 2022 Lee returned, in full and in earnest, putting his shoulder woes behind him. He notched 0.8 fWAR across 59 2⁄3 innings, with a 51/76/78 line almost identical to his 52/69/78 line from 2022. Basically, a few more homers with the same fly ball rate were the difference; his SIERA and xERA were also freakishly close to one another. Honestly, his 2022 and 2024 were so similar that it seems more like a glitch in the matrix than a single human reliever doing almost exactly the same thing in two different years.
One weird thing about his season: Lee had misleading reverse splits in 2024. Left-handed hitters produced a relatively robust .754 OPS off him, and he held righties to a .597 OPS. However, he had an outrageous 39.7 percent K%-BB% against lefties, compared to a 17.3 percent mark against righties. How did that happen, exactly? Two main reasons: a massive discrepancy in BABIP (.250 BABIP vs. RHH, .409 vs. LHH) and a big discrepancy in the percentage of fly balls that went out of the ballpark (8.4 percent HR/FB vs. RHH, 15.8 percent vs. LHH). Maybe you shouldn’t just chalk that up to total randomness and call it a day, but you also could, and you should expect the batted ball outcomes by handedness to even up a bit next season. For his career on the whole, Lee has been solid vs. righties and exceptional vs. lefties – I’d expect that to be the case going forward.
What went right?
Let’s get back to that making-good-hitters-look terrible thing, in a roundabout way.
There were 169 qualified relievers in 2024. Lee ranked 122nd in Stuff+. His average fastball velocity ranked 138th. By horizontal movement, his slider moved 4.6 inches less than the average slider at a similar velocity. By vertical movement, his slider moved 2.7 inches less than the league average slider at a similar velocity. His changeup has similarly poor movement compared to the rest of the league, with 4.6 inches less horizontally and 1.7 inches less vertically than the average changeup at a similar velocity.
Dylan Lee’s stuff, on the surface and even a bit under the surface, is underwhelming. Just don’t tell that to MLB hitters.
Lee’s proclivity for generating horrible plate discipline from hitters is nearly unrivaled. There were only two qualified RP in 2024 to rank in the top five in O-Swing%, CSW%, and SwStr%. One was Minnesota’s Griffin Jax, who had a 2.03 ERA and 1.94 FIP for the Twins while posting the 2nd highest fWAR in MLB among relievers. The other was Dylan Lee.
All of this from a guy who was released by the Marlins a few seasons back.
2024 isn’t an outlier for Lee, either. FanGraphs started tracking plate discipline metrics in 2002, and since then there have been 1,821 pitchers to log at least 100 innings in MLB. Among those 1,821 pitchers, Dylan Lee ranks first in O-Swing% and is tied for second in SwStr%. That’s right, Dylan Lee – the same Dylan Lee who doesn’t throw a single pitch that isn’t below-average by either velocity or movement or both – is quite literally the greatest pitcher on record at getting hitters to chase pitches out of the zone. As for the percentage of pitches thrown that result in whiffs, he’s just behind Josh Hader and sitting side-by-side with Eric Gagne and Edwin Díaz.
In terms of the results that come after the plate discipline metrics, Lee’s 2024 was still special. He had a 31.7% K, 7.1% BB, 2.11 ERA, 2.62 xERA, and 3.00 FIP in a career-high 59 2⁄3 IP. He had just nine holds and two blown saves, which reflects on the fact that Brian Snitker still hasn’t fully taken to trusting him in big spots – Lee ranked seventh on the Braves in batters faced in high-leverage on the Braves, and had the third most batters faced in low-leverage. He was often used for multiple innings, going further than one inning on 14 occasions and reaching at least two innings pitched in nine outings. Nonetheless, he finished with a 11/5 shutdown/meltdown ratio, so yay for that.
Precisely because Lee wasn’t used in meaningful leverage all that much, his highest WPA game of the year actually came not only in a loss, but in a game where he entered while trailing. Back on April 21, Lee entered after Darius Vines surrendered a leadoff double to start the sixth. He ended that inning by getting two outs and having the runner thrown out trying to steal third, and then worked another inning that featured a second caught stealing and more outs, despite two singles and a walk in the process. And, that was it, really, for some reason — despite having a-basically elite reliever in their bullpen, the Braves didn’t really act as such. Here’s his highest single WPA play of the season, which too was ultimately meaningless because he ended up giving up two runs in that frame:
What went wrong?
Fundamentally, nothing, but we do need to talk about leverage a bit. Lee’s ERA- on the season was second only to that of Raisel Iglesias. His FIP- wasn’t particularly special due to those extra homers, but his xFIP- was second only to a fellow neglected lefty, Aaron Bummer. However, six relievers, including Daysbel Hernandez, entered the game in higher average leverage than Lee. His gmLI, which reflects the average leverage he entered into when making an appearance, was below 1.00, i.e., his average usage was in lower-than-average leverage.
Lee’s worst WPA game came early in the season. The Braves had just let Charlie Morton blow a four-run lead across three innings in which the Marlins scored; they finally summoned Lee to face lefty-hitting Nick Gordon, and then this happened. Oops.
(Of course, the Braves came back to win this game in miraculous fashion.)
2025 Outlook
While Lee’s 2024 was superb, there is every reason to believe that he is capable of improving on his peripherals and maybe even doing the reverse thing, i.e., posting peripherals in 2025 that more closely align with his ERA from 2024. The only “qualified” relievers in 2024 to post at least a 37% O-Swing, 32% CSW, and 17% SwStr were Lee, Jax, Hader, and Mason Miller. Check out how they each fared in K-BB%:
(If you are on a mobile device, this table is best viewed in landscape mode.)
Lee’s K-BB% was significantly lower than his peers with similar inputs. It might be that he wasn’t as strong at putting away hitters once he reached two strikes, but it’s been proven that Put Away Rate (PAR) isn’t sticky year to year, so Lee could absolutely experience some positive regression on that front.
It’s ambitious, but my bold prediction is that we’ll see an even better version of Dylan Lee in 2025. Not by ERA, necessarily, but by K-BB% (and subsequently FIP and potentially xERA). However, even if he doesn’t improve, Lee should absolutely be trusted as one of the top options to set up closer Raisel Iglesias. Whether he will be, though remains to be seen.
All that aside, ZiPS projects him to have another excellent, 0.8 WAR relief season; Steamer, on the other hand, sees him more as a generic reliever (which maybe agrees with how the Braves have treated him as well).
<img alt="Wild Card Series - Atlanta Braves v San Diego Padres - Game 2" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/LiE9QyRDG4iOfzImaVtYURy42iI=/0x0:5646x3764/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73790400/2176281891.0.jpg">
Photo by Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images
After a hiccup in 2023, the Atlanta lefty reliever rebounded with another really good year. I’ve always enjoyed the Mount Rushmore questions that pop up across MLB fandom. If someone asks me, “Who is on your Mount Rushmore of all-time Braves,” I can expect a spirited debate on which three players most deserve to have their heads carved alongside Hank Aaron’s should South Dakota decide to change the subject of their commemorative landmark from “American Legends” to “the Atlanta Braves franchise.”
Before you jump to conclusions: no, even as the premier Dylan Lee fan, I would obviously not put him in my Mount Rushmore of all-time Braves. Maybe my Mount Rushmore of Braves players rated by level of affection I have for them divided by star power, but not of all-time Braves.
However, I’ve thought of another landmark-related question in which Dylan Lee could conceivably be a correct answer: “What are the seven wonders of the baseball world?” There are lots of fun options out there. Shohei Ohtani’s two-way prowess. The freakish movement on Devin Williams’s airbender. Giancarlo Stanton’s raw power. The time capsules known as Wrigley Field and Fenway Park. But, if you were asking me personally, I couldn’t help but include Dylan Lee’s inexplicable ability to make good hitters look absolutely terrible.
How acquired
Drafted by Miami in the tenth round of the 2016 MLB Draft, Lee pitched in parts of four minor league seasons for their minor league teams and was released towards the end of Spring Training 2021; the Braves scooped him up a few weeks later. He pitched for Gwinnett for nearly that entire season, had the crazy first-career-start-is-in-a-World-Series-game thing, and then spent most of 2022-2024 in the major league bullpen, with some stints in Gwinnett because he, unlike most of his reliever teammates, still had option years remaining.
What were the expectations?
Lee was incredible in 2022 in his first full year as a major league reliever: 1.1 fWAR, and a crazy-good 52 ERA-/69 FIP-/78 xFIP- line. 2023, though, ended up being a lost season for him, for a host of reasons. The most obvious one was that he missed much of the year with shoulder inflammation, which arguably made him less effective even when he was healthy. But, he was also used strangely, given “pitch until you can’t” long relief stints despite his elite-level relief work in 2022, which also may have contributed to the shoulder inflammation. As a result, he followed up that fantastic full season with 0.0 fWAR and a weak 95/104/93 line across just 23 1⁄3 innings.
Expectations for Lee, then, kind of hinged on whether his shoulder would continue to bark. He clearly had the ability to provide stupendous relief, but he also had the “ability” to get misused and falter if he wasn’t feel all that great, neither of which are really his fault. These sorts of things are not really the types of problems projection systems attempt to solve, but ZiPS still thought highly of him, giving him a point estimate of 0.7 WAR in 48 innings — pretty reminiscent of his 2022 and only somewhat tamped down by his lost season in 2023.
2024 Results
The great news? Basically, 2022 Lee returned, in full and in earnest, putting his shoulder woes behind him. He notched 0.8 fWAR across 59 2⁄3 innings, with a 51/76/78 line almost identical to his 52/69/78 line from 2022. Basically, a few more homers with the same fly ball rate were the difference; his SIERA and xERA were also freakishly close to one another. Honestly, his 2022 and 2024 were so similar that it seems more like a glitch in the matrix than a single human reliever doing almost exactly the same thing in two different years.
One weird thing about his season: Lee had misleading reverse splits in 2024. Left-handed hitters produced a relatively robust .754 OPS off him, and he held righties to a .597 OPS. However, he had an outrageous 39.7 percent K%-BB% against lefties, compared to a 17.3 percent mark against righties. How did that happen, exactly? Two main reasons: a massive discrepancy in BABIP (.250 BABIP vs. RHH, .409 vs. LHH) and a big discrepancy in the percentage of fly balls that went out of the ballpark (8.4 percent HR/FB vs. RHH, 15.8 percent vs. LHH). Maybe you shouldn’t just chalk that up to total randomness and call it a day, but you also could, and you should expect the batted ball outcomes by handedness to even up a bit next season. For his career on the whole, Lee has been solid vs. righties and exceptional vs. lefties – I’d expect that to be the case going forward.
What went right?
Let’s get back to that making-good-hitters-look terrible thing, in a roundabout way.
There were 169 qualified relievers in 2024. Lee ranked 122nd in Stuff+. His average fastball velocity ranked 138th. By horizontal movement, his slider moved 4.6 inches less than the average slider at a similar velocity. By vertical movement, his slider moved 2.7 inches less than the league average slider at a similar velocity. His changeup has similarly poor movement compared to the rest of the league, with 4.6 inches less horizontally and 1.7 inches less vertically than the average changeup at a similar velocity.
Dylan Lee’s stuff, on the surface and even a bit under the surface, is underwhelming. Just don’t tell that to MLB hitters.
Lee’s proclivity for generating horrible plate discipline from hitters is nearly unrivaled. There were only two qualified RP in 2024 to rank in the top five in O-Swing%, CSW%, and SwStr%. One was Minnesota’s Griffin Jax, who had a 2.03 ERA and 1.94 FIP for the Twins while posting the 2nd highest fWAR in MLB among relievers. The other was Dylan Lee.
All of this from a guy who was released by the Marlins a few seasons back.
2024 isn’t an outlier for Lee, either. FanGraphs started tracking plate discipline metrics in 2002, and since then there have been 1,821 pitchers to log at least 100 innings in MLB. Among those 1,821 pitchers, Dylan Lee ranks first in O-Swing% and is tied for second in SwStr%. That’s right, Dylan Lee – the same Dylan Lee who doesn’t throw a single pitch that isn’t below-average by either velocity or movement or both – is quite literally the greatest pitcher on record at getting hitters to chase pitches out of the zone. As for the percentage of pitches thrown that result in whiffs, he’s just behind Josh Hader and sitting side-by-side with Eric Gagne and Edwin Díaz.
In terms of the results that come after the plate discipline metrics, Lee’s 2024 was still special. He had a 31.7% K, 7.1% BB, 2.11 ERA, 2.62 xERA, and 3.00 FIP in a career-high 59 2⁄3 IP. He had just nine holds and two blown saves, which reflects on the fact that Brian Snitker still hasn’t fully taken to trusting him in big spots – Lee ranked seventh on the Braves in batters faced in high-leverage on the Braves, and had the third most batters faced in low-leverage. He was often used for multiple innings, going further than one inning on 14 occasions and reaching at least two innings pitched in nine outings. Nonetheless, he finished with a 11/5 shutdown/meltdown ratio, so yay for that.
Precisely because Lee wasn’t used in meaningful leverage all that much, his highest WPA game of the year actually came not only in a loss, but in a game where he entered while trailing. Back on April 21, Lee entered after Darius Vines surrendered a leadoff double to start the sixth. He ended that inning by getting two outs and having the runner thrown out trying to steal third, and then worked another inning that featured a second caught stealing and more outs, despite two singles and a walk in the process. And, that was it, really, for some reason — despite having a-basically elite reliever in their bullpen, the Braves didn’t really act as such. Here’s his highest single WPA play of the season, which too was ultimately meaningless because he ended up giving up two runs in that frame:
What went wrong?
Fundamentally, nothing, but we do need to talk about leverage a bit. Lee’s ERA- on the season was second only to that of Raisel Iglesias. His FIP- wasn’t particularly special due to those extra homers, but his xFIP- was second only to a fellow neglected lefty, Aaron Bummer. However, six relievers, including Daysbel Hernandez, entered the game in higher average leverage than Lee. His gmLI, which reflects the average leverage he entered into when making an appearance, was below 1.00, i.e., his average usage was in lower-than-average leverage.
Lee’s worst WPA game came early in the season. The Braves had just let Charlie Morton blow a four-run lead across three innings in which the Marlins scored; they finally summoned Lee to face lefty-hitting Nick Gordon, and then this happened. Oops.
(Of course, the Braves came back to win this game in miraculous fashion.)
2025 Outlook
While Lee’s 2024 was superb, there is every reason to believe that he is capable of improving on his peripherals and maybe even doing the reverse thing, i.e., posting peripherals in 2025 that more closely align with his ERA from 2024. The only “qualified” relievers in 2024 to post at least a 37% O-Swing, 32% CSW, and 17% SwStr were Lee, Jax, Hader, and Mason Miller. Check out how they each fared in K-BB%:
(If you are on a mobile device, this table is best viewed in landscape mode.)
Lee’s K-BB% was significantly lower than his peers with similar inputs. It might be that he wasn’t as strong at putting away hitters once he reached two strikes, but it’s been proven that Put Away Rate (PAR) isn’t sticky year to year, so Lee could absolutely experience some positive regression on that front.
It’s ambitious, but my bold prediction is that we’ll see an even better version of Dylan Lee in 2025. Not by ERA, necessarily, but by K-BB% (and subsequently FIP and potentially xERA). However, even if he doesn’t improve, Lee should absolutely be trusted as one of the top options to set up closer Raisel Iglesias. Whether he will be, though remains to be seen.
All that aside, ZiPS projects him to have another excellent, 0.8 WAR relief season; Steamer, on the other hand, sees him more as a generic reliever (which maybe agrees with how the Braves have treated him as well).
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