The Braves announced Tuesday that they’ve released left-handed reliever Aaron Bummer and placed catcher Drake Baldwin on the 10-day injured list due to an oblique strain. Atlanta also activated lefty Dylan Dodd from the 10-day IL, recalled righty Victor Mederos from Triple-A, selected the contract of catcher Chadwick Tromp and optioned right-hander JR Ritchie to Triple-A.
The Baldwin injury is a massive setback for an Atlanta club that’s also once again without veteran Sean Murphy (fractured finger). The 25-year-old Baldwin won National League Rookie of the Year honors in 2025 and has thus far played like he has his eyes set on some additional hardware; Baldwin has played at an MVP-caliber pace in 2026, sprinting out of the gate with a .303/.389/.543 batting line. After swatting 19 home runs in 446 plate appearances as a rookie, he’s already clubbed 13 in just 216 trips to the batter’s box in his sophomore season.
By measure of wRC+, Baldwin has been 60% better than average at the plate this season — the eighth-best qualified hitter in the sport. That’s a feat in and of itself, but considering the average catcher is about 12% worse than average at the plate, Baldwin’s immense production is all the more valuable. Couple that with strong blocking skills and average framing grades, and Baldwin has been one of the best all-around players in baseball. Both FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference peg him at 2.2 wins above replacement through just over one quarter of the regular season.
The Braves have yet to put a timetable on Baldwin’s potential absence. Every injury case is different, but even Grade 1 oblique strains can sideline players for upwards of one month. A more severe strain would come with a lengthier absence. Atlanta skipper Walt Weiss will surely provide more details prior to this afternoon’s contest against the Marlins, who pounced the now-optioned Ritchie and the now-released Bummer for a combined 12 earned runs — six apiece — last night.
With Baldwin and Murphy both shelved, Atlanta will go from one of the sport’s most potent catching tandems to perhaps the lightest-hitting backstop tandem in baseball. Tromp joins 37-year-old Sandy León in handling catching duties for the foreseeable future. León hasn’t topped 100 plate appearances in a big league season since 2021 and carries a .176/.245/.268 batting line over his past 930 trips to the plate in the majors. Tromp is a career .221/.230/.390 hitter in 178 major league plate appearances. They’re both solid defenders, and Tromp has some modest pop in his bat, but both can be reasonably projected for an OBP in the .250 range.
As already referenced, Bummer was tagged for six runs last night in what will go down as his final appearance with the Braves. He lasted only one inning. Were that meltdown an isolated instance, the veteran Bummer’s track record would surely have spared him. The entire 2026 season, however, has been a calamitous one for the 32-year-old southpaw.
Bummer has pitched 15 1/3 innings for the Braves this season and been shelled for a 7.63 ERA. He’s given up multiple runs in five of his 19 appearances, and most of the damage has come in the past five weeks. Dating back to April 13, Bummer has been torched for 15 runs (13 earned) on 17 hits and seven walks in 11 1/3 innings. Opponents have belted six home runs in that span, and he’s fanned only 16.9% of his opponents along the way.
Prior to 2026, Bummer gave the Braves two seasons of quality middle relief. He rarely found his way into high-leverage spots but still combined for 109 2/3 innings of 3.69 ERA ball. He set down 25.1% of his opponents on strikes and logged a tidy 7.3% walk rate over those two seasons. It wasn’t star-level performance, but Bummer was a perfectly serviceable bullpen arm.
There were some warning signs last season, however. Bummer’s strikeout rate dipped by several percentage points, while his average four-seamer and average sinker both fell by about two miles per hour. The strikeout and velo declines have worsened in 2026. Bummer sat 94.7 mph on his four-seamer and 94.3 mph on his go-to sinker as recently as 2023. He’s averaging 90.5 mph and 90.2 mph, respectively, on that pair of pitches this season.
Atlanta originally acquired Bummer from the White Sox in a volume trade sending five players back to Chicago: Michael Soroka, Jared Shuster, Nicky Lopez, Braden Shewmake and Riley Gowens. He was signed to a five-year, $16MM contract with club options for the 2025-26 seasons at the time. After a strong debut campaign in Atlanta, the Braves restructured the contract, effectively guaranteeing both option years in advance while trimming $500K from their combined value and pushing the bulk of the salary into the 2026 season. Bummer earned $3.5MM last year and is being paid $9.5MM this season.
The Braves will remain on the hook for the entirety of that contract. Bummer will be free to sign with any team, and a new club would owe him only the prorated league minimum for any time spent on the major league roster. That small sum would be subtracted from what Atlanta owes the veteran southpaw, but they’ll eat the vast majority of the contract regardless of Bummer’s next steps.
