Bryce Elder has overhauled his arsenal and approach after a rough stretch

What happened

Bryce Elder has remade himself. After a prolonged difficult stretch running from August 2023 through the entirety of the 2024 season, the Atlanta Braves right-hander has overhauled both his arsenal and his approach on the mound, and the results in 2025 have been encouraging, per FanGraphs.

The transformation, as FanGraphs frames it, did not happen overnight — the piece notes that Rome wasn't built in a day — but the direction of travel is clear enough to warrant attention heading into a weekend series against the New York Mets.

Why it matters

To understand why this matters, it helps to remember where Elder started. When FanGraphs featured him in July 2023, he was 8-2 with a 3.18 ERA in his first full season with Atlanta, had just been named an NL All-Star, and was doing it almost entirely by keeping the ball on the ground. His sinker-heavy approach produced a 53.6% groundball rate, which ranked fifth best among qualified pitchers at the time. He was, by any reasonable read of the numbers, a pitcher ascending toward the front of a rotation.

Then things went sideways, slowly and then all at once. From August 2023 through the end of 2024, Elder went 14 decisions on the winning side over 48 starts covering 259 innings, with a 5.53 ERA. FanGraphs describes the arc plainly: he went from that ascending trajectory to the profile of a back-end arm. That is a significant distance to travel in the wrong direction, and it is the kind of stretch that tends to force a pitcher into an honest conversation with himself about what is and is not working.

Elder, per the FanGraphs report, had that conversation. The result is a pitcher who no longer resembles the one who struggled to record outs through that difficult run. The piece credits adversity as the catalyst for change — a familiar enough story in baseball, where the sport has a way of demanding reinvention from anyone who wants to stick around.

The numbers

The clearest numerical anchors here are the ones the FanGraphs piece supplies from Elder's history. The 3.18 ERA and 8-2 record from his 2023 peak. The 53.6% groundball rate that put him fifth among qualified pitchers. The 5.53 ERA across 48 starts and 259 innings from August 2023 through 2024. The 14 decisions on the winning side during that difficult stretch. Those numbers tell the story of a pitcher who had something real, lost the thread, and is now working to find it again through a different set of tools.

The FanGraphs report notes that his current-season results are pleasing — the exact phrasing is cut off in the available source text — but the directional signal is positive enough that the outlet devoted a full analytical piece to the overhaul.

Where the club stands

The Braves enter this weekend at 94-68 (.580), sitting first in the NL East and leading the division. They are coming off a loss, carrying a one-game losing streak into a three-game road series at Citi Field against the New York Mets.

The rotation alignment for that series has Spencer Strider going Friday against Nolan McLean, Martín Pérez taking the ball Saturday opposite Sean Manaea, and Elder himself scheduled to start Sunday against Freddy Peralta. That means the pitcher at the center of this story is not a background figure this weekend — he is the Sunday starter in a division-relevant series, which gives the FanGraphs piece a certain amount of immediate operational weight.

Is Elder starting Sunday against the Mets?

Per the schedule, Elder is the probable pitcher for Sunday, June 14 at Citi Field, where he is set to face Freddy Peralta. That makes this weekend something of a live audition for the overhauled version of Elder that FanGraphs describes. A 94-68 club leading the NL East does not have a lot of margin for a back-end performance in a divisional road series, which is precisely why the question of whether the new approach holds up under pressure is worth watching.

The Mets series also arrives with the Braves trying to shake a one-game skid — a minor thing in isolation, but the kind of moment where a starter who has rebuilt his identity gets to demonstrate that the rebuild is real.

What we don't know yet

The FanGraphs source text is partially truncated, which means the full picture of Elder's 2025 results — specific ERA, strikeout rate, groundball rate, or any other current-season figures — is not available from the material at hand. The report characterizes the results as improved and the transformation as genuine, but the granular numbers behind that assessment are not in the available source.

It is also worth noting that FanGraphs is an analytical outlet, not the Atlanta Braves front office. The characterization of Elder's improvement is the outlet's read of the data, not a club announcement. Whether the Braves view him as a reclaimed rotation piece or still as a back-end arm is not stated in the material.

The nature of the arsenal changes themselves — which pitches he added, which he reduced, what the new approach looks like in terms of sequencing or usage rates — is described in the FanGraphs piece but not fully captured in the available source text. The headline and framing make clear that the sinker-heavy identity has been at least partially set aside, but the specifics of what replaced it are not available here.

What to watch

Sunday at Citi Field is the obvious near-term data point. Elder against Peralta, in a road divisional game, with a 94-68 Braves club trying to protect first place in the NL East — that is a reasonable stress test for a pitcher who has reportedly rebuilt his approach from the ground up.

Beyond Sunday, the broader question is whether the 2025 version of Elder can sustain results over a full season in a way that the version who posted a 5.53 ERA over 48 starts could not. The FanGraphs piece frames the transformation as real and ongoing, but 259 innings of that ERA is a substantial body of evidence to overcome. The encouraging early returns, per the report, suggest the work is paying off. Whether it holds is the question the rest of the season will answer.

For a Braves rotation that has Spencer Strider and Martín Pérez ahead of Elder in the weekend's alignment, a reliable option who can eat innings and keep the ball in the park would be a meaningful asset down the stretch. Elder's history — the 53.6% groundball rate, the All-Star nod, the 3.18 ERA in his first full season — is proof that the underlying ability was there once. The FanGraphs report suggests it may be finding its way back.