Reliever Analysis: MLB Transactions & Rankings

Translated by Carlos Marcano

The Atlanta Braves sign RHP Robert Suárez to a three-year, $45 million deal.

It’s hard not to think about money. The numbers are big, especially because fads come and go, and the latest fad is for teams to give relievers—even guys in their mid-30s—three years. A three-year contract for a reliever is, in many ways, similar to a six-year contract for any other player: you don’t give it because you have high hopes for the end of it, but because that’s what it takes to get those first two years, and you’ve decided the first two years are worth it. They’re probably worth it.

Because of all these multi-year deals, it’s also hard not to start comparing them. Specifically, it’s hard not to compare Suarez to the closer he’ll pave the way for, Iglesias, who earns a little more in annual average ($16 million) and much less in total salary (also $16 million) despite being just a year older. The other obvious point of comparison is Devin Williamswho signed a three-year, $51 million contract, but after accounting for deferred payments, it works out to be about the same payout.

Almost everyone had Williams above Suarez in their free agent rankings, including us, even though the latter led the League in games saved and had a generally better year. Except, of course, according to the DRA-.

But there’s one last reason it’s hard not to look at this contract in terms of dollar signs, and that’s because it’s hard to look at it any other way. Suárez has had an extremely successful second act in the United States after honing his craft in the NPB, to the point that it’s hard to say or feel much about him. It’s like stopping to appreciate that your dishwasher hasn’t broken, or that it’s been like five years since you last sprained your ankle.

He’s an easy pitcher to take for granted, particularly because the process is so simple: The league hits .219/.302/.327 against pitches 98 mph or faster, so he fills the zone with pitches 98 mph or faster. (This is underselling Suarez a bit; the league hit .189/.243/.293 against him.)

If all goes well, Suárez will take over from Iglesias in 2027 as the primary closer; In the meantime, he is happy to help the team in a setup role. It will also give the Braves a chance to future-proof their investment by making adjustments to their arsenal. Similar to the case of Kenley Jansenthe former Padre began to show a little more imbalance depending on the hitter’s hand (platoon split) in 2025, and the root of it was his changeup, not his fastball. He throws it a third of the time against lefties, regardless of count, and last year, they weren’t fooled by him, hitting the ball for a .457 slugging percentage and swinging much less than in previous years.

By choosing their moments with him instead of assigning him whatever the ninth inning brings, Atlanta can experiment to find out if this is just a one-season relief pitch, or an indication that a change is needed. But these are small things. The big thing is just the money, and the difficulty of adjusting to a new market standard for the position, just when we were ready, with a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) looming, to adjust in the other direction.

The Braves are now better in the short term; Whether that carries an opportunity cost later is something Atlanta Braves Holdings, Inc. will decide at a later date. I’m sure they have a suggestion box pinned to a wall somewhere if you’d like to give them your opinions.

Toronto Blue Jays sign right-handed pitcher Tyler Rogers for a three-year, $37 million contract with a conditional option for a fourth year.

Baseball is a sport of imitation, to the point that it is easy to correlate imitation with success. If something isn’t worth copying, how good could it be?

When Hoyt Wilhelm taught him to Wilbur Wood knuckleball in the early 1970s basically told him (and I paraphrase): You can’t do this halfway. If you’re going to throw this dumb pitch that absolutely shouldn’t work, you have to commit to it. Throw it 90% of the time or don’t throw it at all. Too many of these guys who turn to knuckles do so out of desperation, the last gasp before going into selling insurance. But by then it’s too late. It requires the same amount of practice, repetition and time as regular pitching, which is why no one does it. You have to close yourself off to those other people you could be.

He probably didn’t say all that, at least not in those words. There were almost certainly many more curse words.

But the fact is that we, as fans, tend to look at these extreme cases, the knuckleballers and the one-shot guys and the subs, as a kind of natural evolution, and we think that everyone has an equal opportunity to mutate into them if they get to a point where they’d like to. And they don’t, so it must not be worth it? Even for the greats, it’s a sad compromise for something that could have been even better, a negative that we never have to bother trying.

I myself am guilty. When we started organizing our Top 50 free agents, I had Rogers near the bottom of the list, below all proven closers. (I was not alone). We argued, and I moved him up, then we moved up to someone else, and I moved that guy down below Rogers, until he moved up to 40th. Then we ran out of time, and he fell just short of Seranthony Dominguez.

That was a mistake. At this point I’m wondering if I should have been closer to 30, on reflection, and even then I think I would have preferred it over some of the big bran names.

It’s been six years. Six years of throwing underarm — not just underarm, but a grand total of two underarm pitches — and always, always in the strike zone. (Not only is his 64.8% zone rate first among all pitchers with at least 70 innings last year, but the gap between him and second is as large as between second and 50th.) It’s a novelty act, a one-hit wonder band that refuses to die, refuses to lose its charm.

And not only does it not stop working, it doesn’t even take a break, thanks to the lower stress on its mechanics. He has never been on the disabled list at the big league level, and since 2020 he has pitched 37 ⅓ more innings — half a full extra season — than any other reliever in baseball. One hardly needs to describe Rogers as a pitcher; If you’ve seen it even once, you can close your eyes and visualize it, imagine the dirt particles rising as you drag your knuckles against the mound.

Of course, the fun thing about betting against someone in baseball is that you’re never wrong, in the long run. Rogers will turn 35 this week, and if his option is activated (pitching in 110 games from 2027-28 or 60 in 2028 alone, numbers he has surpassed each of the last five years) he will see free agency at the age of 39. Dan Quisenberrythe obvious parallel here, wore thin at 35, as more and more of that contact translated into hits with each passing year. We’ll never know how hard those ground balls were against “Quiz,” but we know Rogers’ numbers; His average exit velocity against is 85.8 mph, in the 99th percentile.

Rogers demands work. It requires you to turn off your brain, not all of it, but that little cynical part that whispers that nothing different can last. It has already lasted. Instead of wondering why everyone doesn’t pitch like him, you have to accept that they can’t, that everyone is trying and failing in backyard fields and municipal parks, right off camera.

And then, instead of expecting it to fail so you can feel smart, you can expect that conditional option to activate, so you can feel lucky to witness it.