In a Braves season full of disappointment, one pleasant surprise has been the resurgence of starting pitcher Bryce Elder. The Elder cycle has been repeating for some time now: the player is squeezed out of the rotation and sent to Triple-A, someone gets hurt, and they are recalled, taking their place, prompting fans to groan. Perhaps unsurprisingly, all these things have happened again in the first two-and-a-half months of the 2025 season, on two separate occasions. Fortunately for the Braves, though, Elder has upped his game this year.
Bryce Elder’s Season
Historical context is needed when evaluating Elder, 26, whose career has been pretty chaotic to this point. The Braves 2020 5th-round pick shot through the minor leagues and in 2022 turned in a strong 10-game cameo that earned him a rotation spot the following year. The start of that season couldn’t have gone better, with Elder posting a 2.45 ERA in his first 17 starts to earn a surprise All-Star appearance with less than a year of service time. Braves fans logically assumed they were looking at the second coming of Greg Maddux.
However, the wheels came off just as quickly as they had risen. In his final 14 starts of 2023, a stretch beginning with his final start before the All-Star break, Elder struggled to a 5.75 ERA with multiple blowup outings. This led to him losing his rotation spot to begin 2024. When pressed into action at several points throughout the season, the results were the worst of his career. His 6.52 ERA, 4.56 FIP, and -10 pitching run value in 10 starts are all equally hard on the eyes. It appeared the league had figured out Elder’s stuff, which is always concerning for a finesse pitcher who won’t blow anyone away.
Elder’s Success
Despite the concerning trajectory, Bryce Elder survived the offseason and began the year in Triple-A once again. And once again, he has been called upon to fill a rotation spot after injuries to Reynaldo Lopez and AJ Smith-Shawver. While some would call this an indictment of the Braves’ poor starting pitching depth, Elder has shown significant improvement in 2025. In 10 starts, the same as last year’s total, his ERA is down to 4.08 and his FIP to 4.30. Elder has gone from a negative WAR (0.7) and a well-below-average pitcher (64 ERA+) to a positive WAR (0.5) and exactly league average (100 ERA+). Those numbers aren’t world-beating by any stretch, but they represent a huge improvement and are enough to prolong Elder’s career.
After a shaky first three starts, Elder’s last seven have been excellent. Of those, five have been quality starts, and he hasn’t allowed more than three runs in any with a 2.98 ERA and a 39/11 K/BB ratio. This fine stretch culminated in the best outing of Elder’s career last Saturday against the San Francisco Giants, when he allowed just one run over eight innings with a whopping 12 strikeouts that eclipsed his career high by two. The bullpen blew the game in the ninth, but Elder’s dominance against a solid lineup cannot be overlooked.
Bryce Elder’s 12 Strikeouts.
pic.twitter.com/u83aVmYu9h
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) June 8, 2025
This adjustment could explain the newfound success.
Elder’s bounceback season seems to be hinging primarily on one major adjustment to his repertoire. Last year, Elder threw his sinker 42.6% of the time and his slider 31.5%, also mixing in a four-seam fastball and changeup each at around 13%. This year, he has upped his slider usage to 39%, making it his most thrown pitch compared to his sinker at 38.8%, while reducing the usage of his secondaries. He also changed the shape of the slider ever so slightly, adding 1.2 inches of gloveside horizontal break while removing 1.2 inches of vertical drop. This gives it a more sweeping action in the opposite direction of his sinker breaks.
The results have been drastic. The batting average against Elder’s slider has dropped from .283 a year ago to 1.84, the slugging percentage from .604 to .347, and the wOBA from .382 to .254. The slider, which graded out as a negative pitch with a -3 run value in 2024, now sits in the 96th percentile of all MLB pitchers with a run value of 7. What was once one of the worst breaking balls in the game is now a money pitch, all with marginal increases in spin rate and a fairly large decrease in whiff rate (41.5 is down to 28.7 this year). It appears Elder has figured out how to better leverage his main offerings together to induce weak contact, which has always been the main goal for the soft tossing, ground ball-heavy hurler.
Bryce Elder is here to stay.
To be clear, no one should mistake Bryce Elder as a future ace like teammate Spencer Schwellenbach. Despite the improvements from last year, Elder remains an average pitcher whose All-Star nod will most likely continue to seem like an aberration. But the Braves will take it, because that’s all the team needs right now. The organization is lacking major league-ready starting pitchers, and injuries have created a need for someone to eat innings and avoid blowups at the back of the rotation. Rather than let his career slip off the tracks, Elder has bounced back from a tough year and proven to be that guy for Atlanta. He has earned a spot in the rotation for the rest of 2025, and if the Braves are to salvage this season, they will need Elder to continue his strong pitching throughout the summer.
Main Photo Credits: Dale Zanine-Imagn Images
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