With Christmas in the rearview window and New Year's right around the corner, the Atlanta Braves are that much closer to pitchers and catchers reporting to spring training. In roughly a month-and-a-half, the Braves will have their pitchers debuting new pitches they learned over the offseason.
While we don't know which pitchers have spent the offseason perfecting their sweepers, changeups, or sliders, we have a few ideas for these three Braves pitchers.
3 new pitches these Atlanta Braves pitchers should pick up immediately
Daysbel Hernandez - Changeup
For part of the 2025 season, Daysbel Hernandez was one of the Braves late inning relievers. However, his inconsistency with throwing strikes led to the righty being sent to the minor leagues multiple times. Although he found himself back on the active roster in September, his season ended with a shoulder injury.
Assuming Hernandez is healthy for the 2026 season, he could use a third pitch to differentiate from his fastball and slider, and a changeup seems like an obvious choice, considering his average fastball is 97.7 MPH.
Hernandez likely wouldn't even need to pull it out much, but having a third pitch to keep hitters from sitting either slider or fastball and laying off until they get one of the two in the zone could help Hernandez get a few extra chases. The righty's only managed a 24.6% chase rate in 2025, which would've ranked in the bottom eighth percentile if he threw enough pitches to qualify by Statcast's metrics.
Grant Holmes - Sinker
Grant Holmes is another pitcher who the Braves aren't 100% sure will contribute to the 2026 team. The righty suffered a UCL injury and opted to rehab the injury without undergoing Tommy John surgery.
Before Holmes suffered his season-ending elbow injury, Holmes was an inconsistent rotation piece who also happened to be the last man standing from Opening Day. The difference between Holmes' primary pitch, his slider, and his second-most used pitch, his fastball, was stark. Batters only hit .188 with a .271 SLG, which produced a 9 Run Value, the 75th-best pitch in baseball.
Unfortunately, batters crushed his fastball while hitting .330 with a .651 SLG, resulting in a -14 RV, the seventh-worst pitch in baseball. Instead of sticking with a four-seam grip, Holmes might benefit to using a two-seam grip as his primary fastball.
Garrett Whitlock is another example of a righty who has completely abandoned the four-seam grip in exchange for a sinker, and the Red Sox's pitcher has the exact same arm angle, 39 degrees, as Holmes.
Didier Fuentes - Slider
Didier Fuentes did not have much success in his first cup of coffee in 2025. The 20-year-old was hammered in his four starts, and none of his pitches performed very well.
Fuentes could follow Holmes into swapping out a four-seamer for a sinker. Kumar Rocker, who has a similar arm angle as Fuentes, did this in 2025. That primary pitch performed better than his four-seamer had in 2024, but it wasn't the game-changer the Rangers had hoped for.
Instead, Fuentes might be best-served adding a slider to go along with his four-seamer, sweeper, curveball, and splitter. A harder slider, more adjacent to George Kirby's 87.1 MPH slider, could provide a bridge between Fuentes 96 MPH fastball, and 83.4 MPH sweeper and 79.3 MPH curveball. The young prospect's splitter averaged 88.1 MPH, but was seldom used in his first stint.
Even though his first go-around in the show looked far from impressive, Fuentes still performed well as one of the younger players in AAA, and with him already on the 40-man roster, it won't be shocking to see him make starts for the 2026 Braves.