Well, turns out the Carlos Carrasco experiment lasted all of three starts:
Carrasco was brought in to eat innings given the unholy terror that descended on Atlanta’s pitching staff over the summer. He successfully ate six innings in his first start against the Reds, though he pitched poorly in a game that turned out to be a 12-11 slugfest that went to extra innings. He then ate 5 2/3 innings against the Brewers Marlins, but pitched even more horribly in the process. Last night, he didn’t even manage to eat innings, getting creamed out of the game by the Mets after just two frames, so the Braves ended up having little use for him after all.
Carrasco finishes his tenure in Atlanta with -0.1 fWAR (same as he posted with the Yankees in six starts and two relief appearances earlier), a 235 ERA-, 153 FIP-, and 142 xFIP- across 13 2/3 innings. That the Braves won two all of those games is why we love baseball, or something.
The Braves acquired Hunter Stratton from the Pirates in July, and this will be his third stint with the team in the past six weeks. Stratton had a nice 2024 (85/81/98, 0.7 fWAR in 37 2/3 innings driven by a low HR/FB), but has completely fallen apart in 2025: 260/183/203, including 0/119/176 in his three innings as a Brave. It’s kind of weird to replace Carrasco with someone with even worse numbers, somehow, but there we are. Stratton had reasonable fastball command last year, which helped his slider play up; this year his fastball command has been a disaster in a small sample, so again, here we are.