Braves sign Tyler Thornburg, places Kirby Yates on 60-day IL

The Braves have announced that they’ve signed Tyler Thornburg to a non-guaranteed, one-year deal worth $900K. To open up a spot on the 40-man roster, they placed Kirby Yates on the 60-day IL.

Thornburg’s career has been a rollercoaster to this point, with the highs of excellent performance constantly giving way to lows brought about by injuries. In 2013, he threw 66 2/3 innings for the Brewers, logging a 2.03 ERA. However, elbow issues limited him to around 30 frames in each of the next two campaigns. 2016, he got back on track, logging 67 innings with a 2.15 ERA, excellent 34.2% strikeout rate and 9.5% walk rate.

It was after that tremendous campaign that the Brewers sent Thornburg to the Red Sox for Travis Shaw, Mauricio Dubon and Josh Pennington. Unfortunately, Thornburg required surgery to correct thoracic outlet syndrome, missing the entirety of the 2017 season. When he came back, he was much less effective, throwing 42 2/3 innings over 2018 and 2019 for the Red Sox, putting up an ERA of 6.54, strikeout rate of 22.3% and walk rate of 10.4%. In 2020, he logged seven innings for the Reds before hitting the IL, eventually undergoing Tommy John Surgery in September.

Now that about 18 months has passed since that surgery, Thornburg is presumably healthy again and ready for another kick at the can. For the Braves, this is a low-risk flier on a player who could be a bargain if he can stay healthy and resume his previous form. His $900K salary is just barely above the league minimum, which is $700K in the new CBA. Also, since the deal isn’t guaranteed, the club could even avoid that modest sum if Thornburg’s injury past catches up with him in spring.

As for Yates, the IL placement is merely a formality. The club signed him in November to a two-year deal, knowing that he would miss the first half of 2022.

For the defending World Series champion Braves, their bullpen took a hit at the end of the season, as Richard Rodriguez, Josh Tomlin, Jesse Chavez and Chris Martin hit free agency, with Chavez and Martin both signing with the Cubs in recent days. They’ve seemingly tried to compensate for those losses by taking fliers on talented hurlers who are relatively affordable because of their injury histories, such as Yates, Thornburg and Collin McHugh, whom they signed yesterday.