Slightly overweight and rocking a mullet, A.J. Minter was right at home in Atlanta. Drafted in the 2nd round of the 2015 MLB draft, Minter only played 1 year in the minors before being brought to the bigs, and what a run he had:
- 384 games
- 3.28 ERA
- 3.18 K/BB rate
His best year came in 2022 and it was an absolute monster year: 75 games, 70 IP, 2.06 ERA, 1.9 BB/9, 12.1 K/9, and 6.27 K/BB rate. He will be missed, but he chose the Mets and that destroys everything. He’s the enemy now.
AJ’s 2024
On the surface, 2024 started out like a normal, and quite good, year for Minter. However, there were underlying factors that showed a drop off in “stuff” as he was being hit harder than normal yet the BABIP monster was biting his opponents. Later on, we learned that he had been fighting a hip issue all year, which hindered his extension, decreased his fastball velo to 94.5, and affected the break on his bread and butter cutter.
Up until the injury that sidelined him from 8/11 until season’s end, if one were to just scout the stat-line, they’d see a fairly normal year for Minter, as he ended the year with a 2.62 ERA. However, the FIP was nearly 2 runs higher. Nothing seemed easy for Minter in 2024 and when the news finally broke that he was having surgery on his hip, everything made sense.
Minter has been one of my favorite Braves relievers. Outside of the weight, everything he does looks like a mirrored image of Craig Kimbrel. I’ll miss him on this team, but look forward to the Braves blasting him off the mound when he dons that stupid Mets uniform.
Minter was tagged in the minor leagues as “lefty Kimbrel,” and it’s almost amazing that he was able to survive the weight of expectations. When he first came up, he was a little shaky – his first appearance was scoreless with two punchouts, but his second started with a single and a two-run homer, and it was clear that the 23-year-old was not a finished product.
As it happened, he never did become the primary closer. Instead, he became one of the best, most consistent setup men we’ve had, despite a truly horrible third season in 2019.
In fact, in the Bobby Cox era (1990-present), Minter has the most innings thrown of any reliever with fewer than 50 saves. Numbers two and three on the list are Greg McMichael and Mike Remlinger.
Outside of his breathtaking 2022 season, Minter was not necessarily an automatic lights-out relief ace. He was more of a reliable workhorse, and his ERA+ of 131 conveys that – terrific work, but appreciably below the 143 ERA+ of McMichael and 162 ERA+ of Remlinger. (McMichael’s ERA+ was virtually identical to that of Eric O’Flaherty and Kerry Ligtenberg; Peter Moylan and Jonny Venters were a tick better than them.)
The advanced stat by which Minter looks best is WPA/LI, “Situational Wins,” by which he’s essentially the team’s third-best reliever in the Cox era, behind only Kimbrel and Smoltz and ahead of all the others.
If the epitaph on A.J. Minter’s Braves career is “nearly as good as Greg McMichael,” it would make for a beautiful legacy, even if he’s little more of a household name than his predecessor. Minter shrugged off the weight of the near-impossible expectations from following Kimbrel, and was real good for a real long time. I’m glad he got paid this offseason!
It is always sad when players that have meant so much to our fanbase eventually move on, and this year we lost three (kind of) between Fried, AJ and Matzek. We will always tie these guys to our World Series win and they will always be considered Braves, no matter where they finish up. I am also glad AJ got paid, but he is one of those guys that was just always here and now is not.
Minter was absolutely dominant at times, but he had some of the worst episodes I remember for a dominant reliever. For some reason, this April game from 2019 stays with me:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/ATL/ATL201904270.shtml
After striking out 2 of the first 3 batters, Minter goes walk, walk, double and then Winkler relieves him and gives up the 3 run homer to put it out of reach.
My recollection is that hitters figured out that his cutter was almost never a strike in 2019 and he had to develop a changeup and his new changeup was devastating. But every time he came on, he needed to get ahead to be successful. And he never used the changeup enough.
I should add, to be positive, that my fondest memories of Minter were his gutty multi-inning playoff appearances that kept us in games after the starter imploded. It is really something for a pitcher who never goes much more than an inning to just come out and throw 3 innings and shut you down. That also reminds me of how Fredi was like “lol Kimbrel can only go 1.2, never tried 2 before, what are you crazy?”
I, too, remember Minter for this. He definitely gave us some big gutsy multi-inning appearances in the postseason.
There are only two types of relievers — the ones for whom you have positive anticipations when they come in and those for whom you have negative anticipations. A few relievers make transitions from one category to another a few times in their career (Luke Jackson) and there’s always a little apprehension when whomever it is got lit up the last time out. But Minter was essentially always a “stop the bleeding guy” or a “keep it going” guy and only rarely an “Oh shit” guy. That’s positive.
Overall, he was good & he helped us win a World Series. That’s forever.
Unfortunately, I did get to see a couple of his “oh-shit” games where he gave up walk-off homers in Citi Field to lefty batters.
Hopefully, yes, he’ll give one or two back to us this year.
The worst thing is that he signed with the Mets so there is little to no chance of us trading for him back (ala Uncle Jesse, Adam Duvall, etc.) if we need to add bullpen help at the deadline.