5 Braves on the 40-man roster who won’t survive the 2023 season
By Eric Treuden
Braves who won’t survive the 2023 season: No. 3 right-handed pitcher Kirby Yates
It’s been a few years now since we’ve seen Kirby Yates in a positive light. Before injuries struck, he left us with a 60-game, 1.19 ERA, 354 ERA+ season in 2019 with the Padres and seemed to have cemented himself into the conversation of best relief pitcher in the game.
Yates had a slow rise through the minors, not making his big league debut until 2014 at the age of 27. From there, it took five years and stops through the Rays, Yankees and Angels systems before latching on with the Padres and truly uncovering his potential.
After a 2.14 ERA-showing in 2018 and his ninth-place in the NL Cy Young voting season in 2019, he made just six appearances in 2020 and it was clear that there was something wrong. His ERA had ballooned up to 12.46 and he allowed six runs in four innings. He underwent surgery to remove bone chips in his right elbow and effectively missed the rest of that year.
A second Tommy John surgery in 2021 kept him out for the entirety of that season and the vast majority of last year as well. Yates is finally healthy but there’s no telling what he has left in the tank, if anything at all.
The now-35-year-old has not done enough to be trusted to any real extent in the upcoming campaign. He has thrown 11 innings on a big league mound since the conclusion of the 2019 season and after having two significant surgeries on his throwing arm, I would not be shocked to find out that he doesn’t have what it takes to stick around in the bigs anymore.