The Jarred Kelenic experiment has come to an end

When Kelenic was acquired by the Braves, everybody saw the vision. He was a former top 10 prospect in all of baseball and the 6th overall pick in the 2018 draft by the Mets, who traded him to the Mariners in the deal that netted New York Edwin Diaz.

There’s a lot of pressure when being the centerpiece of a trade like that, and Kelenic failed to live up to the hype with the Mariners, That, combined with attitude concerns, made him available to the Braves for cheap, who took a roll of the dice on a player with seemingly immense upside.

At the time, the Braves had run extremely hot when it came to reclamation projects, a testament to former hitting coach Kevin Seitzer, who is coincidentally now in Seattle overseeing a vastly improved Mariners offense. But Kelenic’s struggles continued further in Atlanta, as he hit just .222 with a .660 OPS with the Braves.

Kelenic was demoted pretty quickly into 2025 and showed little signs of improvement with the Gwinnett Stripers, so this move comes as no surprise. The Braves were never going to tender him a contract and pay him another $2-3 million through arbitration.

Still just 26-years-old, this won’t be the end of the road for Jarred Kelenic. He should have no problem catching on with somebody and has the talent to carve out quite a lengthy major-league career if he can put all the pieces together.