Former Braves prospect Kolby Allard is finding success in Cleveland’s bullpen

That 2015 class of Braves draft picks was pretty amazing, featuring guys like Mike Soroka, Austin Riley and AJ Minter – a trio of players we’ve enjoyed watching contribute for the big league team over the years. However, Atlanta’s first pick of that draft (14^th overall), high school pitcher Kolby Allard, was one the team ended up missing on.

During two different stints with the Braves (most recently in 2023), Allard never really pitched much in the majors. A total of 20.1 innings is all he logged with the team in each of 2018 and ’23 combined, with the latter season featuring two different 60-day IL stints.

But after being shuttled back and forth between the Phillies Triple-A and big league team last season, the lefty-pitcher is now finding success as a reliever with Cleveland, currently sporting a 1.06 ERA in 17 innings so far (albeit while averaging just 3.1 strikeouts per nine). In fact, recently Allard was reportedly an option to replace an injured Ben Lively (15-day IL) in Cleveland’s starting rotation, though he hasn’t actually made a start yet. What was a minor league contract offered by the Guardians back in February (with an invite to Spring Training), Allard has certainly turned into quite an unexpected find.

And while Allard is having all of this success despite sporting perhaps one of the lowest K rates I’ve seen in quite a while, it doesn’t appear to be just a stretch of good luck, at least not according to his peripherals. In fact, the underlying numbers look strong, as Allard’s expected ERA sits at a still-neat 3.22. And though his xwOBA (.294) is more than 80 points higher than his wOBA (.213), that latter mark is among the top 4% in all of MLB, according to Baseball Savant.

Allard’s pitch-mix in 2025 really isn’t much different than what it was back during his Braves days. However, his usage has evolved over the last three seasons. Once mainly a four-seam/cutter guy (with those two pitches alone accounting for nearly 80% of his usage), now Allard throws three different offerings at least 20% of the time. And speaking of that cutter, this season it appears to be what has unlocked a lot of Allard’s success, especially against righties. So far, opposing batters are hitting just .118 against his cutter, and it’s accounted for four of his six strikeouts.

Don’t get me wrong, the Braves shouldn’t have any regrets moving on from Allard. A guy with a career 5.70 ERA in the majors whose fastball averages just 90 MPH isn’t something I’d say is missing in Atlanta right now. But it is interesting to see a former Braves first-rounder finally having some success, especially after all of the unfortunate injury woes he has went through. And at 27-years-old, Allard still has a few more seasons left in him if his gains are legitimate and he can stay healthy. It’s worth keeping an eye on him and seeing whether or not this continues.