Braves Make Low-Key Depth Additions With Mahle and Suter

The Atlanta Braves made a couple of minor moves over the weekend, adding pitchers Rick Mahler and Bruce Sutter, with the purpose of buttressing th…wait a second…

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The 1986 2026 Atlanta Braves made a couple of minor trades in recent days, acquiring pitchers Tyler Mahle and Brent Suter to shore up their pitching depth as we enter the season’s homestretch. Suter, who turns 37 in a few weeks, had a 4.12 ERA but a 3.65 FIP in 41 games for the Los Angeles Angels, who are apparently still a baseball team. Mahle is having his first full, healthy season in years, but has generally struggled otherwise in San Francisco, posting a 5.19 ERA and a 4.38 FIP for 0.8 WAR in 18 starts for the struggling Giants.

In return for Suter, the Braves are shipping infielder Nacho Alvarez Jr. to the Angels. After getting scattered playing time in the majors in 2024 and 2025, and putting up a disappointing .216/.296/.330 line in that span, he has spent the entire regular season with Triple-A Gwinnett, with his .664 OPS on the year providing ample explanation for why he didn’t pop up on the Braves roster at all this year. He did have at least one big highlight this season, getting Mexico onto the scoreboard first in its WBC game against Great Britain with a homer off Jack Anderson.

Heading to San Francisco for Mahle is reliever Anthony Molina, a name you might recognize from being on the fringes of Colorado’s roster the last few seasons. He’s only appeared in three games for the Braves this season, but has put up a 3.64 ERA/4.01 FIP for Gwinnett.

Neither acquisition is a particularly ambitious one, though it’s possible the Braves don’t feel particularly aggressive now that their lead in the NL East has gone back up to eight games over the last couple of weeks. Mahle is probably a better pitcher than his performance this year indicates, and all the FanGraphs-housed projection systems have him about a run per nine innings better than his 2026 numbers. So while trading for Mahle doesn’t count as a major move, he is a solid depth addition nonetheless. Especially because an eight-game lead is not an 80-game lead, and one of the scenarios in which the Phillies make a hard-charging comeback is if Atlanta’s rotation starts falling apart — which is quite possible. Neither Spencer Strider nor Hurston Waldrep seems to be a realistic option to serve as a rotation reinforcement over the final two months. Spencer Schwellenbach has missed more than a year and doesn’t have a firm timetable to return, and Reynaldo López was just scratched from his start this past Saturday due to knee inflammation and placed on the IL.

Running the numbers, the Braves are a Chris Sale injury from having the second-worst rotation among contending teams (ahead of the Padres), if you believe the ZiPS projections. Since Chris Sale injuries are known to happen, bringing in an apparently healthy Mahle to eat some innings down the stretch is a reasonable move to make. Atlanta could, and probably should, still make a larger trade to beef up the rotation or the starting lineup between now and the 6 PM ET deadline, but Mahle is a good get.

Atlanta’s bullpen is in a considerably better position than its rotation, but a little extra depth never hurts. While Suter is left-handed, he’s never really been a situational lefty — he’s had a pretty even platoon split because his changeup has typically been his most effective pitch — but that’s not why the Braves got him. Instead, he is heading to Atlanta simply to round out the bullpen, to soak up some low-leverage innings over the last two months. There’s at least a possibility that he doesn’t even make the postseason roster in October.

Alvarez was a pretty interesting prospect at one point, putting up a wRC+ of 131 in a half-season of Triple-A ball back when the team still thought of him as a possible shortstop option. He went backwards in the minors last year and missed time, and he’s been out since late May with an undisclosed injury. (I’ve sent a few queries out, but have not yet heard back as of filing). The shine is pretty clearly off him now, but he’s an interesting pickup for a team like the Angels that needs to be adding young, at least vaguely talented players whenever the opportunity arises.

Molina was a fringe pitching prospect for a while, with a 35+ FV with the Rays in 2023 and the Rockies in 2024. He was called up to the Rockies less on pure merit and more because Colorado’s thin pitching meant that basically every pitcher with an arm bone connected to their shoulder bone got some time in Denver. He’s typically demonstrated pretty solid control in the minors, but he lacks a real out pitch, and pitchers who strike out six or seven batters per nine in the minors tend not to have long, fruitful major league careers. Molina has been somewhat better this year, however, as he’s using his curveball a lot more, and his strikeout rate is up nearly 50% year-over-year. The improvement in strikeout rate is supported by the contact data. He’s probably earned another look with the Giants, and isn’t a bad return for a couple of months of Mahle.

Did the Atlanta Braves get a lot better by adding Mahle and Suter? No, they didn’t. But what they have done here is make doomsday less likely at Truist Park. And if you remember Atlanta’s August/September of 2024, you probably value that a lot.