Ian

Anderson

Anderson went unclaimed after being designated assignment hours after they claimed him off waivers from the Angels. The 26-year-old could elect free agency, but more than likely he’ll report to Gwinnett and hope to get his career back on track.

So, the Braves simply picked Anderson up from the Angels in the hopes of being the ones to slip him through waivers. He was claimed Monday but never added to the team’s active roster. He’ll have to accept the Braves’ Triple-A assignment if he clears waivers this time around.

We probably should’ve seen this one coming. Anderson heads back to Atlanta just a few weeks after being shipped to Los Angeles prior to Opening Day. The 26-year-old is a complete non-factor for fantasy purposes, but it’s fascinating to see the Braves bring him back so quickly. He’ll presumably operate in long relief moving forward.

The experiment is over. Anderson has been booted from Los Angeles’ bullpen mix after posting a calamitous 11.57 ERA, 2.58 WHIP and 8/7 K/BB ratio across 9 1/3 innings (seven appearances). His fate was probably sealed after allowing three runs in his lone inning of work during Tuesday’s blowout loss to the Pirates. At this point it seems highly unlikely Anderson will ever be fantasy-relevant again.

Pretty much everyone in the Angels pen besides Anderson was burnt out coming into this one — and even Anderson, who threw 11 pitches Tuesday, was going back-to-back days — but the team decided against calling up anyone. Anderson took over with a 5-3 lead in the seventh and blew the lead then. Even so, he was left in with the score tied to open the eighth. All three batters then reached against him, two of them while trying to sac bunt. Brock Burke, working for the third time in four days, took over and allowed the three runners to score before giving up four runs of his own. The Angels then used Reid Detmers, who has never been a reliever before and threw 40 pitches Monday, to finish the game off. It’s really pretty disgusting that the Angels didn’t protect their guys by bringing up a fresh arm, but they hoped to get away with it in advance of having Thursday off.

That seems like the right call. Washington still wouldn’t confirm whether Reid Detmers or Jack Kochanowicz would open up as the fifth starter. Washington left the door open for Anderson to start games in the future.

The move came after Anderson pitched three scoreless innings for the Braves today. That gave him a 2.25 ERA in 20 innings this spring. The problem is that he walked 20 and struck out just 10 along the way. One imagines the Angels will put him in middle relief for now, though he is stretched out sufficiently to be a candidate for the back of the rotation. Anderson is out of options, so he will be on the roster. We don’t have high expectations, but at this price, it was definitely worth a try for the Angels.

It’s for Ian Anderson. Suarez blew his chance of making the Angels with a 6.55 ERA in spring training. The 27-year-old left-handed needed a good spring after massive struggles in the last two seasons. Suarez had a 6.02 ERA in 2024 and an 8.29 ERA in 2023 while mostly pitching out of the bullpen. He showed more promise prior to ’23 while mostly starting for the Angels, but we assume he’ll have a bullpen role in Atlanta.

The feeling was that Smith-Shawver could win a rotation spot over Ian Anderson with a strong outing today, but this wasn’t quite exceptional; he allowed four hits, walked two and struck out two. While Smith-Shawver has definitely been more impressive than Anderson this month, the Braves could factor in Anderson’s lack of options and the probability of an April return for Spencer Strider here.

It helped that Anderson was facing mostly backups initially and then backups to those backups as the outing went along. He still seems all set to open up as Atlanta’s fifth starter, but if things continue apace, he’ll get bumped once Spencer Strider comes off the IL.