Why Atlanta Braves replace injured Eddie Rosario with relief pitcher?

When the Atlanta Braves placed an outfielder on the 10-day disabled list Monday, they replaced him with a relief pitcher. What’s up with that?

As Trent wrote yesterday, the Atlanta Braves placed outfielder Eddie Rosario on the 10-day injured list due to an issue with his eye.  Today we learned that righty reliever William Woods got the call to replace Rosario.

Replacing a bat with a pitcher seems a little odd as there were already 15 pitchers on the 28-man roster, and the lineup isn’t exactly lighting up opposing pitchers. As with many roster moves we find odd, there are good reasons for the decision.

If the Braves 40-man roster included a healthy outfielder, they would likely have called him up, but it doesn’t. Ronald Acuna Jr.is scheduled to make his AAA rehab start tonight and play seven innings. He’ll get a day off, and if all goes well, play nine innings on Thursday.

I know the Twitter injury recovery specialists believe the club should immediately call him up because they saw video of him playing in a AAA game, but the Braves want to wait for the real doctors to say he’s ready.

The Braves other option

The other outfielder on the 40-man roster, Drew Waters, is on the seven-day injury list with a hamstring injury and hasn’t played this season.

The answer is almost the same for the other Twitter Critter baseball experts who want Michael Harris added now. Harris is having a scorching start to the season with the AA M-Braves, batting .317/.379/.500/.879 with a homer in 15 games.

His 15-games and 66 PA this season are his only experience above A-ball. Yes, I remember Andruw Jones made the jump in one season, but I also remember he’d played minor league 108 games combined in A+, AA, and AAA before that jump landed in Atlanta. The club doesn’t consider Harris ready and understands that moving too fast isn’t a good idea.

Why William Woods?

The new and as yet unpublished CBA, you can find the old one here, limits a team to a maximum of five option trips in one season. After the fifth option, the player must go on waivers.

So far this season, the Atlanta Braves have used an option on Touki Toussaint, Tucker Davidson, Huascar Ynoa. William Contreras. and Dylan Lee.  Had this happened last season, the club might have used Toussaint and Lee and left pitchers little or no AAA experience alone, but not this year.

Woods was a 23rd-round pick in 2018, spent 2019 and 2021 with Rome, and started 2022 with Mississippi before moving to Gwinnett last week. Woods has a combined 7-2/3 innings of experience above A-ball. I don’t expect we’ll see a lot of Woods this trip,

That’s a wrap

In Rosario’s absence, we’ll see manager Brian Snitker mix and match players to find a way to score runs. Ozuna starts this evening with Dickerson at DH. Against a LHP, Travis Demeritte and Arcia will get innings in left.

I’m sure GM Alex Anthopoulos is scanning the wire and contacting teams to see if they have someone available to fill the void, and that void will still exist after Acuna returns. However, all teams have depth issues, so I don’t expect that a trade will happen soon. If the Atlanta Braves do make an addition, we’ll let you know here at The Take.