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<\/a><\/p>\nWentz started the season with the Pirates and worked as a long relief type who never got a chance to slide into the rotation. He was probably the eighth or ninth on the depth chart at starting pitcher. Above are his ZiPS projections for 2025. The league could have expected an okayish swingman that could provide some depth. But unfortunately, he was plumb out of options, so riding on the Triple-A express was not something he could provide.<\/p>\n
Coming into 2025, Wentz had a career 133\/118\/114 (ERA-\/FIP-\/xFIP-) line in the majors, good for 0.1 fWAR in 205 2\/3 innings, including 26 starts. He was essentially the spitting image of a Quad-A arm, good enough to stick on a roster but not good enough to be worth holding onto when a better option came along. He did essentially the same thing with the Pirates (97\/93\/112), and had a horrible time in six relief appearances with the Twins. The Braves just needed someone to eat innings, and he seemed primed to do that.<\/p>\n
Once the Braves got Wentz, it was pretty much a happy reunion. All in all, he managed 1.3 fWAR in 64 innings, spanning 13 starts and a relief appearance. The 1.3 fWAR blew away any value he had accumulated to that point at any stop, or in general, as he had only tallied 0.8 fWAR in his team-stints and\/or seasons where he was above replacement, in total. His aggregate line with the Braves was 116\/85\/97, as he jumped from replacement-level not-really-a-starter territory to league-average peripherals and, surprisingly given that he joined the 2025 Braves, a HR\/FB below league average.<\/p>\n
Combine that with his prior travails in 2025, and he finished the year overall with 1.1 fWAR in 98 innings and a 133\/100\/109 line.<\/p>\n
Broadly, the entire tenure with the Braves, where he actually displayed some of the promise that saw him be such a highly-ranked prospect a half-decade ago. It started as soon as the Braves claimed him: he entered a 3-3 game following an Aaron Bummer \u201cstart\u201d against the Cardinals and struck out six in three innings, with just one walk. (The Braves won the game by a run late.)<\/p>\n
At that point, with few other options, the Braves handed Wentz his first start in 22 months. He faced a pretty serious Yankees lineup. There weren\u2019t as many strikeouts (2 over 4 innings), but zero runs. I profiled him earlier<\/a> in July. Do you want to know what the big change was?<\/p>\n Yeah, don\u2019t do that, kids. Try not to consistently put a 93 MPH four-seam fastball right down the pipe to Major League hitters. This is Chris McCosky in 2023 of the The Detroit News noting Wentz\u2019s Achilles\u2019 heel.<\/p>\n They also identified why his 94-mph fastball was so hittable…. The difference-maker has been his renovated four-seamer. Not so much because it\u2019s been an overpowering pitch, but because his ability to locate it and use it at the top of the strike zone is setting up his three secondary pitches. Wentz this offseason raised the axis point on his fastball and that created four extra inches of vertical break. Which resulted not only in more ride through the strike zone, it created vertical separation between his fastball and secondary pitches. The result: He\u2019s not throwing dead-zone fastballs like he was last season. The numbers show a very different pitcher \u2014 30% hard-hit rate, .200\/.302\/.236 opponent slash line, 47% ground ball rate, 31% chase rate, 30% whiff rate.<\/p>\n Getting that extension was key for Wentz. See that really long red bar in his Statcast profile? The 93rd percentile one is the increased extension that he managed to get this year. It\u2019s really made all of the difference in the world. His first five appearances for Atlanta were the high water mark of the season, as he had a combined 73\/63\/85 line while facing the Yankees and Brewers in two of those five games. His season was a lot more of a mixed bag after that, but whatever changes he made in the early going with his new-old team paid dividends right away.<\/p>\n The Braves had him throw more four-seamers at the expense of his slider, and he started to mix in a changeup in September as well. A lot of the benefit of that change in pitch mix evaporated by the time August rolled around, but it got the jump on hitters early on. You can see why, too: Wentz gets great \u201crise\u201d on a fastball that isn\u2019t all that hard, and his other pitches don\u2019t have great shape. That fastball, along with its extension, is probably enough to help him pull out pretty decent starts here and there, though he doesn\u2019t have too much to fall back on.<\/p>\n His best outing for the Braves could have been his start against the Royals on July 30. The Braves ended up losing a 1-0 game, but Wentz went 6 2\/3 with a 7\/3 K\/BB ratio and faced just two over the minimum, with no runner getting to second base. Was there some home cooking given that Wentz is from Kansas and played high school ball in a Kansas City suburb? Who knows.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n