Braves To Select Carlos Carrasco

The Braves are selecting veteran righty Carlos Carrasco onto the MLB roster, reports Mark Bowman of MLB.com. Left-hander Dylan Dodd will go on the 15-day injured list with an oblique strain. Carrasco will be available in long relief behind JR Ritchie, who is coming up to start tomorrow in his major league debut.

Atlanta already had two openings on the 40-man roster. They lost Osvaldo Bido on waivers to the White Sox over the weekend and designated Ian Hamilton for assignment this morning. Adding Ritchie and Carrasco will put their roster back at capacity.

The 39-year-old Carrasco will be in the big leagues for a 17th season. He made three starts for Atlanta last summer as part of a revolving door of depth arms while the rotation was decimated by injury. Carrasco allowed 15 runs across 13 2/3 innings and finished the season in Triple-A. The Braves brought him back on a new minor league deal at the beginning of the offseason.

Carrasco is out to a nice start with their top affiliate in Gwinnett. He carries a 1.71 earned run average through his first four appearances. Carrasco has fanned 21% of opposing hitters with a sub-6% walk rate. He’s only in the 90-91 mph range on his fastballs, leaning more heavily on his slider and changeup to compensate.

The arsenal hasn’t played at the MLB level for the past few seasons. Carrasco owns a 6.36 ERA between four teams since the start of the 2023 campaign. Atlanta needed a length option for a bullpen that has gotten a lot of work over the past couple days.

Their last two starters, Reynaldo López and Didier Fuentes, threw a combined four innings. While Ritchie is a very good prospect, he’s not a lock to work deep in the game in his first outing against a big league lineup. He’ll take on a Nationals team that has started the season hot offensively behind fantastic months from James Wood and CJ Abrams. Excluding the just optioned Fuentes, Ritchie and Carrasco have been Atlanta’s two best Triple-A starters.