{"id":785249,"date":"2026-07-07T17:43:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T17:43:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/785249\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T17:43:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T17:43:17","slug":"braves-select-connor-thomas-release-daysbel-hernandez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/785249\/","title":{"rendered":"Braves Select Connor Thomas, Release Daysbel Hern\u00e1ndez"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Braves announced Tuesday that they\u2019ve selected the contract of lefty Connor Thomas<\/a> from Triple-A Gwinnett. (Jesus Cano of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported<\/a> Thomas\u2019 promotion shortly before the formal announcement.) Righty Owen Murphy<\/a> was optioned to Triple-A Gwinnett to open an active roster spot. Right-hander Daysbel Hern\u00e1ndez<\/a> was released in order to open a spot on the 40-man roster. Atlanta also recalled righty James Karinchak<\/a> from Gwinnett and placed fellow right-handed reliever Tyler Kinley<\/a> on the paternity list. He can spend up to three days there.<\/p>\n

Atlanta signed the 28-year-old Thomas to a minor league deal back in November. He\u2019s a former fifth-round pick by the Cardinals who\u2019s spent his entire career prior to 2026 in the NL Central, with the St. Louis and Milwaukee organizations. The Tifton, Ga. native and former Georgia Tech standout has only pitched 5 1\/3 big league innings to this point in his career but will now get a second chance with his hometown club.<\/p>\n

Thomas has been terrific in Triple-A Gwinnett thus far. He\u2019s appeared in 15 games (13 relief appearances, two starts) and pitched 23 2\/3 innings with a 1.14 ERA. He\u2019s benefited from a fluky .213 average on balls in play and has a subpar 18.4% strikeout rate, but Thomas has shown solid command (8.3% walk rate) and an enormous 59% ground-ball rate to help offset that lack of whiffs. Metrics like FIP (3.89) and xFIP (4.27) feel his ERA should be higher, but Thomas\u2019 results, command and grounder rate still merit a look.<\/p>\n

Now that he\u2019s on the 40-man roster, Thomas can be freely optioned back and forth between Gwinnett and Atlanta. He still has a full slate of three minor league option years, so the Braves don\u2019t need to expose him to waivers if he pitches well but they want to free up a roster spot for a fresher arm at some point.<\/p>\n

The 29-year-old Hern\u00e1ndez has pitched in parts of three seasons with Atlanta. He touts a strong 3.38 ERA in 58 2\/3 big league frames, but a huge 16.7% walk rate makes it tough to envision Hern\u00e1ndez sustaining that rate over a larger sample.<\/p>\n

The 2026 season has seen Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s already prominent command troubles worsen. A shoulder injury sidelined him for the season\u2019s first couple weeks, and Hern\u00e1ndez has since posted a 5.06 ERA in Gwinnett. He\u2019s probably fortunate to have escaped with \u201conly\u201d that mark. Hern\u00e1ndez walked 19 of the 104 batters he faced (18.3%), plunked another three (2.9%) and was charged with a pair of wild pitches in 22 games. His 96.3 mph average fastball is down significantly from last year\u2019s 97.7 mph average.<\/p>\n

Hern\u00e1ndez can now pursue other opportunities around the league or (speculatively speaking) in Asia. There are plenty of red flags from this season\u2019s showing in Triple-A, but he\u2019s an optionable, hard-throwing arm with a history of missing bats. That should be enough to latch on elsewhere, so long as he\u2019s healthy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Braves announced Tuesday that they\u2019ve selected the contract of lefty Connor Thomas from Triple-A Gwinnett. (Jesus Cano…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":785250,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,171012,370934,591,85],"class_list":["post-785249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-connor-thomas","tag-daysbel-hernandez","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=785249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/785250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=785249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=785249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=785249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}