"For his career, Elder has 3.7 fWAR in 434 2/3 innings, with a 108 ERA-, 107 FIP-, and 100 xFIP-. He's pitched like an average starter, but he's been exceedingly homer-prone in each of the last two years, which has knocked down his value even as he's minimized his walk rate. There's probably a study out there in the aether somewhere that uses Elder as a case study for how FIP and xFIP can be misleading"
"Elder had a few nice starts against weak competition at the tail end of 2022, and his 2023 is now-well-documented as a legitimately great run of 15 outings before he lost what made him so successful and more or less collapsed. 2024 was a smaller sample HR/FB nightmare, and 2025 was just a larger sample HR/FB nightmare. Again, maybe that HR/FB nightmare is because by virtue of how his pitching has evolved, his choices are either bad peripherals or lots of homers without much in between,"
Bryce Elder led the Braves in innings in 2025 but presents an uncertain roster outlook due to extreme home-run susceptibility. His career line sits at 3.7 fWAR in 434 2/3 innings with a 108 ERA-, 107 FIP-, and 100 xFIP-. He has pitched like an average starter while minimizing walk rate. The last two seasons featured unusually high HR/FB rates that depressed his value. A strong 15-start run in 2023 collapsed late, and both 2024 and 2025 resembled HR/FB nightmares at different sample sizes. The pitching profile now forces a tradeoff between deceptive peripherals and frequent long balls.
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