The Braves announced Wednesday that they’ve designated left-hander Hayden Harris for assignment. His spot on the 40-man roster goes to righty Elieser Hernandez, whose contract has once again been selected from Triple-A Gwinnett. Atlanta optioned just-promoted righty Blake Burkhalter to Gwinnett to open a spot on the active roster. Burkhalter made his MLB debut last night and allowed a run on one hit and one walk in a single inning of work.
Harris hasn’t pitched in the majors this season. He was selected to the big league roster last year on the heels of a dominant minor league showing but only wound up pitching 2 2/3 innings with Atlanta. His 2025 work in the minors saw the formerly undrafted free agent pickup work to a comically small 0.52 ERA with a 40.3% strikeout rate, 9.7% walk rate and 38.6% ground-ball rate in 52 innings of relief between Double-A and Triple-A.
Things haven’t gone nearly as well for Harris in Gwinnett this season. The now-27-year-old southpaw has been tagged for a 5.28 ERA at the top minor league level. Through 46 innings with the Stripers, Harris has punched out a strong (but diminished) 28.8% of opponents. Last year’s 9.7% walk rate, meanwhile, has nearly doubled. Harris has issued a base on balls to an untenable 17% of his opponents (36 of 212) and has also plunked three batters.
Command was always the biggest knock on Harris as he climbed the system, but his lack of precision has risen to new and alarming levels in 2026. He was never going to repeat last year’s outrageous line — which was buoyed by a .211 average on balls in play, a 94.2% strand rate and a minuscule 3% homer-to-flyball ratio — but this level of regression in his command still registers as a surprise.
Harris could still hold appeal to other clubs on waivers, however. He has two minor league option years remaining beyond this season and a full six years of club control left. He’s not going to blow anyone away in terms of velocity, sitting 91.1 mph on his four-seamer, but he still has a roughly average swinging-strike rate and his opponents’ contact rate is well shy of average, thanks to his deceptive sidearm delivery.
Baseball America noted in their preseason scouting report on Harris that the lefty has one of the lowest release points of any pitcher in all of Minor League Baseball. As such, even with that pedestrian velocity, hitters are rarely able to square him up and have posted awful batted-ball metrics against him (86.6 mph average exit velocity, 32% hard-hit rate). Harris couples his four-seamer with a slider sitting just shy of 81 mph. He’s worked in a splitter in the past as well but has been purely a two-pitch lefty in the minors this season.
Meanwhile, the 31-year-old Hernandez will return to Atlanta for his third stint of the season. He’s taken up the Carlos Carrasco role as the team’s unofficial 41st man, coming to the majors when there’s a need for a fresh arm before riding the DFA carousel to free agency and quickly re-signing.
Hernandez has pitched six innings across two prior big league stints with Atlanta, allowing a run on six hits and four walks with six strikeouts. He’s also tossed 81 1/3 innings in Gwinnett, where he’s recorded a 4.54 ERA with a 21.8% strikeout rate and 7.7% walk rate. Perhaps September’s expanded rosters will help Hernandez stick around a bit longer than usual, but it shouldn’t register as any sort of surprise if he makes a multi-inning appearance and is once again jettisoned from the 40-man roster, only to clear waivers, elect free agency and immediately re-sign on a new minor league deal. In parts of seven major league seasons (mostly with Miami), Hernandez has totaled 309 1/3 innings with a 5.03 ERA.
