Grant Holmes was such a fun story for the Atlanta Braves before he went down with an elbow injury in late July. Atlanta had a lot of confidence in Holmes from the beginning of spring training and that faith was met with a certain amount of understandable skepticism given his lack of a starting track record. Instead, Holmes' unconventional path proved to be very successful and he was an integral piece of the Braves' rotation. Unfortunately, fans are now just left wondering has to when they will see Holmes back on the mound at all.
Projecting Holmes' return timeline is incredibly tricky. While we have a pretty good understanding of how long it generally takes to recover from multiple types of elbow surgeries, we don't have the same understanding of how long the non-surgical route Holmes opted for will take. For many, there is reason to doubt that Holmes' plan will be successful and expect him to miss the 2026 season as well.
For those that have decided to express those doubts on social media, Holmes himself has responded to some of them with a simply emoji.
🤔
— Grant Holmes (@GHolmes_14) August 15, 2025
Grant Holmes didn't need any words to call out folks on social media that think he won't be back in 2026
In fairness to SportsTalkATL here, there is good reason to doubt that Holmes will pitch next season. We know from the reporting around Holmes' arm injury that surgery was on the table. Even if he is able to rehab his elbow successfully without any setbacks or needing surgery anyways (a tall task in itself), that is not going to be a quick process and one where the Braves are going to be exceedingly cautious with him.
However, no one is closer to the situation than Holmes himself. It would be one thing if this was an older pitcher who knew that if he had surgery, his career was likely over. Holmes is still in his 20's (barely) and it sounds like he and his doctors arrived at this plan as the best one for him and it isn't just a hail mary attempt to avoid going under the knife. As a result, when folks online have been saying that there is no way he is playing next season, he has been hitting them with the quizzical face emoji.
🤔
— Grant Holmes (@GHolmes_14) August 16, 2025
Fans need to hope that Holmes is right. Replacing him this offseason with a quality starter would be rather expensive and if he can return right as rain, Atlanta could use those resources to address other roster spots with shortstop and most of the bullpen in need of an upgrade. Unfortunately, we may not know if Holmes is right until it is too late to take advantage of opportunities to account for his absence.