The Atlanta Braves continue to narrow down the list of players in major league camp, making three more moves today.
The team optioned reliever Ray Kerr and outfielder J.P. Martínez to AAA Gwinnett this morning while reassigning veteran reliever Ken Giles to minor league camp.
The moves leave Atlanta with 42 players remaining in major league camp.
Kerr and Martínez were seen as longshots to make the roster, but Giles is the most surprising of the three moves.
Giles, 33, is attempting a comeback after four years mostly away from the majors. His last full season in an MLB bullpen was in 2019, where he put up a 1.57 ERA for the Toronto Blue Jays in 53 innings, striking out 83 and picking up 23 saves. But a series of injuries - Tommy John surgery most notably - has left him struggling to make it back to the majors.
Giles has performed well this spring, allowing his first run of the spring just Wednesday in his third appearance of Grapefruit League action. With the Braves bullpen missing a veteran former closer to take the occasional save situation, similar to the role that Kirby Yates played in 2023, there was a belief that he had a path to the majors in a full-time role. But reassigning him to minor league camp means that the team clearly thinks he has more work to do to get back to MLB form, and he'll continue to work in minor league camp.
Kerr is one of the few relievers slated for a potential MLB role that had a minor league option, so sending him to Gwinnett means that Atlanta's got a little bit less roster flexibility in their pen to open the year. Most of the projected Opening Day relievers can't be optioned to the minors, so it'll be of paramount importance to manage workloads early in the season.
Martínez was one of the potential bench candidates as a backup outfielder, but there was some belief that playing every day in Gwinnett would be more important than letting him sit on the major league bench without getting games for potentially weeks at a time. The team obviously agrees, but he can easily rejoin the major league team if an injury placement to any of the Ronald Acuña Jr/Michael Harris II/Jarred Kelenic trio prompts the addition of an everyday starter in the outfield.
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