Braves designate Rowdy Tellez for assignment

Veteran first baseman Rowdy Tellez was designated for assignment, the Braves announced. Shortstop Jim Jarvis was added back to the big-league roster.

Tellez joined the organization on a minor league deal shortly before the regular season. He joined the Braves in early June. The 31-year-old only appeared in seven games during his three weeks with the team. Tellez was used almost exclusively as a pinch hitter. He went 2-for-10 with a home run in limited work.

The fit for Tellez in Atlanta wasn’t ideal, as the club had a similar player in Dominic Smith taking the majority of the reps at DH. The veteran gave manager Walt Weiss a left-handed slugger off the bench, but that was about it. The Braves will now look for a trade partner before attempting to pass Tellez through waivers. Considering he didn’t draw much interest in the spring, there’s a decent chance Tellez goes unclaimed. He has enough service time to reject an outright assignment, so he could be a free agent within the next week.

Tellez’s 11 plate appearances this season would be his fewest in any major league campaign since making his debut with the 2018 Blue Jays. He’s totaled at least 312 plate appearances in every 162-game season since, plus 127 during the shortened 2020 slate. Tellez has increasingly slipped into a power-over-OBP bench role in recent seasons, however, with his career-best 35-homer season with the 2022 Brewers feeling like a distant memory. Overall, he’s a career .234/.299/.437 hitter — with nearly all of his production coming against righties — who’s suited up for six teams in parts of nine big league seasons.

Clubs in need of some left-handed thump off the bench or a stopgap to help fill in for an injury at first base or designated hitter could take a look, but probably not until Tellez reaches free agency first. He could wind up settling for another minor league deal, and a return to the Braves organization certainly seems plausible. Atlanta is no stranger to designating a veteran for assignment, passing him through waivers and immediately re-signing him (see: Carlos Carrasco, Jesse Chavez), and Tellez hit quite well during his 49 games/207 plate appearances with the Braves’ Triple-A club in Gwinnett: .259/.367/.483, eight homers, 14.5% walk rate, 23.7% strikeout rate.