A few weeks ago, I saw a news article about how a former Atlanta Braves pitcher, Carlos Carrasco, had signed with the LG Twins of the Korea Baseball Organization. This tingled my spider-senses because it was about baseball, it was about a guy who had been on the Braves, it was about Korea, it was about the KBO, where I had just seen a game for the first time, and it also just so happened to have featured the LG Twins; who lost to the Doosan Bears in spite of being the team with the better record when they play, but hey that’s why the play the games.
Anyway, in spite of my general ambivalence and distance from the Braves and just sports in general, I am familiar with Carlos Carrasco, because he was a guy on the team that it seemed to be notorious that he was cut from the major league roster pretty much every other week, before being re-signed by the Braves, pitch in a game or two, before being designated for assignment again, and the cycle would repeat itself, seemingly over and over again.
That’s not the kind of distinction any player should want, but for a bad sports fan like me who is more often times fascinated by the weird and interesting happenstances of sports, it’s how I remembered who he was.
It was in the 2025 season that I first noticed the pattern of Carrasco being jerked around, because it seemed to happen a lot, way more than I’d noticed it happening to any player before. I mean, Uncle Jesse Chavez got a similar treatment in prior years, especially by the Braves, but not to the frequency in which it was happening to Carrasco.
According to Gemini, Carrasco’s 2025 season actually was, the most extreme case of revolving door roster ping-ponging for any player in history, as the poor guy was released and brought back an unprecedented seven times throughout the season.
My knee-jerk reaction was that this had to have been related to the cheap-ass Braves wanting to save money and that the small gaps in between his cuts and re-signings, they’d be absolved of having to pay prorated daily wages, but I’m pretty sure that’s not how contracts work and that he was still due his contracted amount, and that his roster spot was more valuable and the chief reason for constantly shuffling him around.
But at the same time, I don’t think the cheap-ass Braves’ payroll department was complaining about the lack of logistics and per-diem envelopes they were saving by the occasional absence of his physical being, so fuck those cheap bean counters all the same.
But the thing is, and I touched on it a second ago, with Jesse Chavez getting a similar treatment before Carrasco, is that I’ve come to the scientifically proven conclusion* that the Atlanta Braves seem to require the need to have a Latino pitcher of the mediocre, swingman variety, that they will jerk around back and forth on the roster and give them absolutely no chance to breathe, settle in, or genuinely feel like a part of the team.
*As much as I don’t want to have to explain that this is tongue-in-cheek, and that I have zero readers, I’ve been dealing with a lot of astonishingly stupid people on the internet and that’s my bad for engaging communities in the first place
So, it started, or rather I actually noticed this, in 2024, with the aforementioned Jesse Chavez; the man was already beloved in Atlanta, and prior to 2024, already had four prior stints with the Braves, including being a member of the 2021 World Series squad. But after his championship contributions, the team didn’t get caught up in recency bias, let him walk, and he signed with the Cubs in 2022, where he did not start well, and in April, was traded back to the Braves, where he suddenly turned back into good Uncle Jesse, and pitched so well that the team was able to sell high on him and traded him to the Angels that August. Apparently, changing out of his Braves uni made him suck again, and not even a full month later, the Angels cut him, and take a guess who was waiting to pick him back up? The Braves. Naturally, he pitched well for Atlanta again, and there was a funny narrative that was born about how he sucked for everyone except the Braves.
Uncle Jesse would sign and stay with the Braves for the entire 2023 season, and because he was on the Braves, he pitched well, enough to where he parlayed it into signing with the White Sox for more money the following season. He bombed out in Spring Training and the Sox were forced to cut him, and naturally the Braves would pick him back up, and with someone else picking up half of his salary, would deliver again. And then he’d sign with the Texas Rangers, suck, and of course the Braves would snatch him up again.
Which brings us to the 2025 season, where at 41, the magic was wearing off, and even in the magical Braves uni that gave him so much strength in the past, Chavez had become the next victim to the undefeated Father Time, his ERA ballooned up to 9.00, and the revolving door roller coaster began. Two times he was cut and picked back up, with the second one of those he wasn’t even used, but it was at his third cut on July 17, 2025 that Chavez would declare his retirement from the game outright.
And on July 31, 2025, Carlos Carrasco was called up from the minor leagues. I don’t know if he realized it, but he was basically going to be filling the void that Jesse Chavez had left behind, and he would remain on the squad for two weeks before getting his first cut, and then be brought back to finish out the season, literally one day later.
November 6, 2025, Carrasco would be cut by the Braves which is funny because the season was already over, but this would effectively be start of the 2026 season, where he would be about to make history:
11.06.25: cut by Braves (1)
11.08.25: signed by Braves
04.30.26: cut by Braves (2)
05.01.26: signed by Braves
05.07.26: cut by Braves (3)
05.08.26: signed by Braves
05.31.26: cut by Braves (4)
06.02.26: signed by Braves
06.12.26: cut by Braves (5)
06.15.26: signed by Braves
06.26.26: cut by Braves (6)
07.05.26: signed by Braves
07.09.26: cut by Braves (7)
07.22.26: signed by LG Twins
The scary thing is that this was just half of the season. Imagine how many more times Carrasco would have ping-ponged in the months of July and August alone, before September call-ups would have probably done him in.
My knee-jerk reaction was naturally of amusement, and how Carrasco was probably thrilled to be getting a steady paycheck and probably have a consistent locker to use for the remainder of the 2026 season, even if he had to pack all his shit and go to Korea. But the results speak for themselves, in his first start, Carrasco pitched seven perfect innings against the Doosan Bears, setting himself up to look like a demigod in Korea after being a training dummy in MLB.
Which brings us to the third guy in the picture above, Elieser Hernandez. He’s no spring chicken at 31 years of age, and his MLB experience is nothing to sign about, having around 300 innings over six years of MLB experience, pitching in a variety of roles. His career ERA was 5.10 prior to coming to the Braves.
However, with the departure of Carrasco, Hernandez was called up on July 19, 2026, and he made his presence felt for Braves fans when he came out of the bullpen in a slugfest with the Baltimore Orioles on July 24, 2026, and pitched three innings of one-hit ball, getting the win.
He was promptly rewarded for his heroics by getting cut by the Braves on July 27, 2026, but he would re-sign with the team one day later. Three days after that, he’d pitch three innings in a win against the Washington Nationals, notching an old-school three inning save, and I’m sure there’s some obscure stat where Elieser Hernandez is the first guy in MLB history to have his first two appearances with a team getting a Win and a Save, with a DFA in between.
Guess what happened two days ago?
August 3, 2026: Elieser Hernandez released by the Braves.
But then guess what happened one day ago?
August 4, 2026: Elieser Hernandez signed by the Braves.
Obviously the game is different now than it was five, ten, and twenty years ago. Roster management is more important than it’s ever been, especially for poor teams and crying-poor teams who need to maximize their processes and efficiencies as optimally as possible to hope to have a prayer at competing against the Dodgers and their billion-dollar payroll of superstars that don’t have to be micromanaged.
And I’d be naïve if I didn’t assume that this is the kind of behavior that every team does to a degree, and that it’s not just the cheap-ass Braves doing it. But it funny to conclude with the narrative that the Atlanta Braves have this mandatory requirement to have a Latino pitcher to be repeatedly spinning through the ringer, cutting and re-signing over and over again, and frankly it’s probably this kind of front office bullshit that will surely be a bullet point of contention this off-season when the owners and MLB players union embark on their collision course for next season’s inevitable strike.