The Atlanta Braves brought right-hander Elieser Hernández up from the minors, and after a few days he finally made his first major league appearance since 2024.
Hernández delivered three scoreless innings of relief work and picked up the win against Baltimore — then was immediately designated for assignment.
“I hate it, to be honest with you,” said Braves manager Walt Weiss. “I wish the rules were different.”
What Atlanta did has become a fairly routine occurrence across the league. When a pitcher throws several innings in relief — even a strong performance — holding onto him essentially wastes a roster spot for the next couple of days while he recovers. Teams respond by bringing in a fresher arm to take his place.
Baseball’s players’ union is pushing for rule changes to address this kind of roster turnover. The union wants pitchers who are sent down after recording at least nine outs or throwing at least 50 pitches to continue receiving major league pay and service time for the four days that follow the appearance. The union is also seeking to cut the maximum number of optional minor league assignments from five per season down to three.
Those proposed changes wouldn’t necessarily have applied to Hernández’s situation, since he was designated for assignment rather than optioned. Weiss didn’t focus on the option rules — instead, he directed his criticism at the 13-pitcher limit on rosters.
“I wish the number of pitchers weren’t restricted,” Weiss said Saturday. “I think if you were able to carry an extra pitcher here and there, you wouldn’t have to do those things — have to DFA a guy that was one of the heroes of the game last night. We want to be able to reward those guys, not DFA them.”
In other baseball news, Jacob Misiorowski of the Milwaukee Brewers had a dominant Sunday outing against Colorado, striking out the first seven batters he faced and 12 of the first 13. He now has 185 strikeouts on the season, averaging 13.88 per nine innings — putting him on the edge of the all-time single-season record of 13.82 strikeouts per nine innings, which requires a minimum of 100 innings pitched. That record belongs to Gerrit Cole of the Houston Astros, who struck out 326 batters in 212 and one-third innings back in 2019.
Dylan Cease delivered a one-hit shutout as Toronto beat Boston 6-0 on Saturday, making him the first Toronto pitcher to accomplish that feat since Brandon Morrow did it in 2010. Cease threw a no-hitter two years ago while pitching for San Diego, and earlier this month he carried a no-hit bid into the ninth inning at San Francisco before being pulled after it was broken up.
On Friday night, Houston overcame a 5-0 deficit against the Chicago White Sox by scoring eight runs in the top of the sixth inning, going on to win 9-5. Christian Walker hit a three-run double to bring the Astros within one, and then Cam Smith followed with a two-run home run to put Houston ahead for good.
In the American League East, the Tampa Bay Rays went 6-1 last week and are holding a three-game lead over the New York Yankees. Tampa Bay took three of four games at Toronto and then swept three games against Cleveland, shutting out the Guardians in the final two contests. The Rays appear very likely to reach the playoffs for the first time since 2023, and attention is now turning to whether they can make a deadline move strong enough to hold off both the Yankees and the surging Red Sox for the division title and a first-round bye.
