What the left-handed reliever Atlanta Braves are acquiring Ray Kerr
As usual, Atlanta accepted a bad contract in return for a manageable piece.
Another late-night deal was made by the Atlanta Braves on Friday night, when they acquired minor league outfielder Drew Campbell from the San Diego Padres in exchange for LHP Ray Kerr, DH Matt Carpenter, and cash.
(Interesting fact: When the trade was announced, almost every member of the Braves Today staff was headed to our holiday party. It was a fun challenge to find someone available to write the story quickly.)
Alex Anthopoulos clearly intended for the 29-year-old reliever Kerr—who has six years left on his contract and a minor league option—to be acquired in this deal.
What exactly are the Braves acquiring with Kerr?
Why Atlanta would pick Kerr over Matt Carpenter (especially at the expense of Carpenter’s $5.5 million 2024 salary) is not immediately clear on paper: Over the course of the previous two seasons, he has a 1-1 record and a 5.06 ERA in 29 major league appearances. In his 32 MLB innings, he recorded 38 strikeouts, 13 walks, and 6 home runs.
Kerr is a left-hander in the lower slot with remarkable velocity; in the previous season, his fastball averaged 96 mph, which was above average in MLB but still among the better numbers for left-handers.
That fastball is also special because, in contrast to most four-seam fastballs, it breaks with an average of nine inches, which is a surprising amount of horizontal movement. This is likely due to his lower arm angle than most, but even so, among MLB four-seam fastballs, this is rather unusual.
That lower arm slot also gives his curveball, which clocks in at just under 83 mph, extra velocity. It has a drop of over 42 inches due to the lower arm slot and release point, but it devotes nearly all of its spin to the vertical movement, resulting in a significant two plane break.
And the reason he does so well against left-handed hitters is that curveball. In 44 plate appearances, Kerr has only allowed two extra-base hits to lefties, giving them a.506 OPS over his career.
Last season, Kerr’s curveball gave up a.143 batting average and a.262 slugging percentage, but those were not anomalies—the expected batting average was still only.179 and the expected slugging percentage was only.248. Just over half of all at-bats resulted in a strikeout, and over half of the swings against it (53.8%) connected at all.
However, there’s still work to be done; at times, the fastball was hit, particularly when the location wasn’t precise. With right-handed hitters seeing more fastballs and fewer curveballs (and the sporadic changeup, as Kerr threw 24 of them last season), the fastball gave up a.339 batting average.
With a 2022 debut and less than a year of service time, Kerr has a low debt and will likely play for the league minimum for some time. He won’t be a free agent until 2030 and won’t be eligible for arbitration until 2027.
But here’s where the money came in—with Matt Carpenter. In the last year of a two-year contract he signed following the 2022 campaign, he is earning $5.5 million. He hardly lived up to the hype in his first season in San Diego, batting just.176 with a.319 slugging percentage. However, he absolutely raked for the Yankees as a DH in 2022, hitting.305/.412/727 in 47 games.
Carpenter doesn’t play a part in this Braves team of 2024, but neither did Marco Gonzales, Evan White, or Max Stassi, and Atlanta swiftly found suitors for each of them in the trade market.
Atlanta has committed $4 million for Carpenter in 2024 after the Padres reportedly offered $1.5 million in cash to partially offset the salary. However, the team is already looking for a buyer, and it is anticipated that Carpenter will be traded in a matter of days.
In the end, this is a classic Alex Anthopoulos trade: you take on a bad contract (that you’ll flip) to acquire an underperforming player in a less-than-ideal situation with the goal of making some tweaks to unlock years of quality (and cost-controlled) production.
The fact that “Ray Kerr” is incapable of hitting is the only disappointing aspect of this trade—because, come on, dude. The icing on the cake would have been that.
