July 27: The Braves announced this morning that they’ve placed Holmes on the injured list with right elbow inflammation. Right-hander Daysbel Hernandez was recalled to take his spot on the MLB roster.
July 26: Braves manager Brian Snitker told reporters (including David O’Brien of The Athletic) that right-hander Grant Holmes is suffering from elbow tightness after exiting his start against the Rangers today after just four innings. Holmes will get his elbow looked at to determine the severity of the issue, but Snitker noted that he’s expected to go on the injured list.
That’s a major blow to an Atlanta rotation that is already struggling to piece together starts. Holmes will join Chris Sale, Reynaldo Lopez, Spencer Schwellenbach, and AJ Smith-Shawver on the injured list, giving the club a full rotation of injured hurlers. None of that quartet is expected back any time soon, meaning that Snitker will need to make do with the trio of Spencer Strider, Joey Wentz, and Bryce Elder as the only capable starters on his active roster. Long reliever Dane Dunning has at least some starting experience and could be called upon to make a spot start or serve as the bulk arm in a bullpen game.
Outside of the active roster, options are relatively slim at this point. 40-man pitchers like Didier Fuentes, Hurston Waldrep, and Davis Daniel could be called upon to make starts if needed, and if the Braves are willing to create room on the 40-man they could also turn to a non-roster veteran like Ian Anderson or Jose Suarez. Perhaps the Braves could look to add a pitcher to help eat innings down the stretch (such as recently-DFA’d right-hander Erick Fedde), as they did when they acquired Dunning in a swap with the Rangers earlier this month. Such a move is unlikely to land an arm of any real quality, however, as contenders around the league are hungry for pitching help of their own and the Braves aren’t likely to pay a significant price for talent in a season where they’re ten games out of a playoff spot and are buried in the NL East by 15 games.
It’s a bleak outlook overall, and none of those potential replacement figure to offer anything close to the production the Braves have been able to rely on from Holmes this year. A first-round pick by the Dodgers all the way back in 2014, Holmes didn’t make his MLB debut until last year when he joined Atlanta. Since then, he’s been one of the most reliable pieces of the club’s pitching staff with a 3.71 ERA and 3.91 FIP across 179 1/3 innings of work both in the rotation and out of the bullpen. That includes a 3.81 ERA and 4.35 FIP in 111 innings of work as a starter for the club this year.
The 29-year-old Holmes seems very likely to remain firmly in the team’s plans for quite some time after his work the past two years, though those plans could be thrown into question depending on the severity of Holmes’s injury. It’s not uncommon for a bout of elbow tightness to result in little more than a precautionary 15-day stint on the injured list, but given the long recovery times associated with more significant elbow injuries, any issue in that area is cause for concern. It’s impossible to know what sort of timetable for return Holmes might have until the Braves offer an update on his status in the coming days, so until then fans in Atlanta will have to simply hope for the best.