Atlanta Braves Sign Drew Smyly for 1 year and $11 Million

The Atlanta Braves continue to make some early moves in the offseason by signing left-handed pitcher Drew Smyly to a one-year, $11 million deal.

Talk about coming out of nowhere — the Atlanta Braves just made a very surprising move by signing veteran lefty Drew Smyly for one year and $11 million.

And it’s not just that they signed Smyly for $11 million, it’s that they announced him as a bullpen arm.

First of all, the Braves already have a good number of quality lefties in the bullpen with Smith, Matzek, and Minter.

But $11 million for a bullpen arm.?.?

We’ll probably have a much better breakdown on what this signing means later, but I’ll just go ahead and give you my two-cents, this makes zero sense to me.

But let’s take a deeper look at Smyly and see why the Braves might have made this move.

Smyly is 31 years old and won’t turn 32 until June. He’s pitched seven years in the big leagues and has a career ERA of 4.13 with 714 strikeouts in 710.2 innings.

His best season came in 2014 when he posted a 3.24 ERA in 153 innings with 133 strikeouts. The next season was lining up to be even better but he only managed to make 12 starts due to being hurt.

Injuries have certainly hurt what was once a promising career as he didn’t pitch at all in the big leagues from 2017-18.

And then he was still struggling to come back in 2019 with a 6.24 ERA in 114 innings with the Rangers and Phillies.

This past season, however, he re-established himself with a 3.42 ERA in 7 games (5 starts) with the Giants and a career-best K/9 of 14.4.

There was a definite uptick in velocity for Smyly this past season averaging nearly 94 MPH on the fastball, which was the highest of his career. He relied heavily on that and his 80 MPH curveball a lot during 2020, but also mixed in a cutter 18 percent of the time.

I have a really hard time believing the Braves are paying him $11 million to pitch out of the bullpen. My guess is that he’s the veteran rotation guy we knew they’d go after.

Perhaps if they aren’t able to land a Jon Lester or Adam Wainright on a smaller deal, then Smyly is the guy they stick at the back of the rotation.

This signing is just really confusing in general, but the Braves certainly hope he can replicant his 2020 performance again in 2021 over a (hopefully) full season.