The Atlanta Braves did not have a great time on the hill (or otherwise) in 2025, finishing 23rd in fWAR. A lot of that was injuries, a lot of that was an inflated HR/FB rate that took the staff, such as it was, from the league’s 12th-best xFIP- to a 22nd-best FIP-, and some of it was just plugging and playing various guys once it was clear the season was a wash.

Amid all that, a temporary bright spot for Atlanta’s bullpen was the acquisition of Tyler Kinley. If it were not for him, and the turnaround of Raisel Iglesias, the Braves could have ended the season as having one of their worst bullpen outputs in recent memory. While the Braves indicated that they acquired Kinley midseason with an eye for 2026, they nonetheless turned down his option, apparently not trusting his good results down the stretch.

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How acquired

Prior to the Braves acquiring Kinley, he was struggling mightily for the Rockies in terms of run prevention: a 118 ERA-, 96 FIP-, and 113 xFIP-. Sure, he didn’t deserve his ERA, but his actual pitching wasn’t that great either. In any case, the Braves took a chance on him by sending Double-A pitcher Austin Smith to Rockies a day before the Trade Deadline. It was, at the time, a fairly low-risk move that could’ve paid dividends in terms of steadying the ship in 2025, but also for 2026 if Kinley met what the Braves were looking for.

Kinley had a $5.5 million option for his services in 2026 (with an $0.75 million buyout), so he was basically getting an extended tryout down the stretch.

What were the expectations?

The expectations were likely not high for Kinley considering what it cost to bring him in. That being said, it was clear that he would likely have positive regression to the mean. He had a terrible LOB% of 59.4 percent. Typically, the league average sits around 70.0 to 74.0 percent depending on the season. This is usually a sign that a player’s ERA will drop over time. Interestingly, his splits were arguably better at home, even though he played his home games in Colorado. The Braves likely were just looking for someone who could eat some innings in the pen, and if he ended up playing well, they could tender him a contract in 2026 if that was the route they wanted to take.

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His immediate acquisition aside, Kinley’s career wasn’t really much to write home about. He made his MLB debut with the Twins after they took him in the Rule 5 Draft from the Marlins, but then got returned after about a month of big league play. He had a miserable 2019 in the bigs and then got claimed by the Rockies on waivers, where he had a few nondescript seasons until a 2022 breakout year that was cut short by a flexor strain. After his return, he went back to being unremarkable peripherals-wise and hammered on the field. Coming into 2025, he had a career 107/102/109 line (ERA-/FIP-/xFIP-), which, amazingly, somehow got him over 250 major league innings through his age-33 season.

2025 results

With some relief pitchers you have to take their on-field results with a grain of salt if you are looking at how they will do in the future because their sample sizes are much smaller than a starting pitcher. A few bad outings can baloon their ERA even if the majority of their appearances are solid. Kinley is an example of this if we break up his season into different samples. His season ERA- was 83, but it certainly does not tell much of the story.

As noted, Kinley was struggling with the Rockies before the trade in more or less every department other than HR/FB. After the trade, he went on a pretty crazy run with a 17 ERA-, 68 FIP-, but a 106 xFIP-. He basically didn’t really change much at the peripherals level, but just had a pretty big reversal in whether runs were charged to his ledger or not. As a result, he compiled 0.6 fWAR in just 25 innings as a Brave, giving him 0.9 fWAR on the season thanks in huge part to a HR/FB rate below seven percent.

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What went right?

For all the bad in Colorado, he did show some high points. In his 49 appearances for the Rockies in 2025, he avoided sticking around for a run to be charged to him in 34 of them, including nine of ten in April.

His tenure in Atlanta was pretty much blessed, and he even managed to pretty much halve his walk rate from an unplayable 12.6 percent to a quite good 6.4 percent. He then had a really long run, from August 9 to September 21, where again, no runs were charged to him. He wasn’t racking up strikeouts, but it was okay.

Sometimes, his performances even came in big situations. He pitched the bottom of the ninth in a scoreless tie in Washington on September 16, working around a couple of singles that put the walkoff run on third with one out thanks to a couple of weak fly balls, his specialty. The Braves then scored five in the tenth to put the game to bed.

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What went wrong?

Well, there was his pre-trade nightmare in Colorado, though his FIP kept him in positive fWAR land anyway thanks to the low HR/FB. With the Braves, thanks to an even lower HR/FB and his cut-in-half walk rate, his outings didn’t really go wrong. Only once did he have negative WPA with the Braves, and that came on September 24, when James Wood touched him for a solo homer that turned a two-run deficit into a three-run deficit.

The bigger issue was that his strikeout rate didn’t budge after the trade, and he gave up a ton of fly balls. It’s hard to say whether one or both of those things were the true reason that the Braves declined his option, but in the end, they had some reason for not securing his services for a swing in payroll of about $5 million. If the Braves believed that he was really the high-60s FIP- guy he posed as in Atlanta, it would’ve been a slam dunk, but that was clearly not the case.

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2026 outlook

Tyler Kinley probably won’t have any trouble finding a club to latch on with for the 2026 season. Maybe someone gambles on his HR/FB being real, or figures they can keep his walk rate low and coax some more strikeouts of him. He’s going to be 35 in January, and projects as a generic middle reliever, so he’ll likely get a few million to ply his trade somewhere. If he were younger, you could possibly see more of an angle for a longer deal with an upside play, but that doesn’t seem all too likely given his age.

The Braves could still bring him back for less than the value of his club option, but given their propensity to spend on relievers, that may not be what they were thinking. After a nightmarish HR/FB season, they may want to steer clear of someone who allows so many fly balls that an elevated HR/FB would prove killer.