The Braves Need To Move On From Elder

Unless someone is simply a locker room cancer, I feel it’s very rare that one baseball player can negatively impact an entire team.

That is until I watched Bryce Elder blow the game for the Braves by the second inning of Friday nights game against the Phillies.

His statline on the night reads as follows: 2 complete innings pitched, 8 hits, 10 runs allowed, 9 of them earned, 2 strikeouts, and 3 home runs allowed.

This was a pitching performance so bad, the entire Braves’ offense really seemed to ask itself: “What’s the point?”

The Braves immediately waved the white flag and lost the game 13-0 to the division leading Phillies.

This is not the Braves of years past, where the offense could spark at any moment and a comeback might happen at any point throughout the game.

The 2025 Braves formula to win seems to be to score first and hold on for deal life the rest of the game. Elder rarely does this for the Braves.

I understand the Braves have been without several of their top starting pitchers (Sale, Strider, Lopez, Smith-Shawver) for extended periods this year.

Even with these top pitchers missing significant time, I still feel Elder has not earned playing time in the big leagues.

Putting his 2-5 record and 5.82 ERA to the side, he is a ground ball pitcher that doesn’t induce enough ground balls. His fastest pitch barely touches 95 mph, and half of his pitches were balls tonight.

By comparison, Didier Fuentes is another Braves starter that has struggled in his first few starts, but has at least shown a powerful fastball curveball combination.

Other than the first half of the 2023 season, where Bryce Elder earned an all-star spot for his first half performance, he has been an average pitcher at best.

The Braves struggles this season can’t all be put on Elder, but each game that he starts feels like you can just pencil in a loss. Is that what you want to trot out every fifth day?