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Luis Avilan: Back to Good with the 2015 Braves?

By John Buhler

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LHP Luis Avilan has had an up and down four-year career with the Atlanta Braves.  His first two seasons were marvelous in the Atlanta bullpen.  The southpaw from Venezuela had a 2.00 and 1.52 ERA in 2012 and 2013, respectively.  But as a 24-year old last season, Avilan could not get lefties out and his ERA ballooned to 4.57.  His ERA thus far in 2015 indicates that he is pitching better (2.70), but is Avilan back to good with the 2015 Atlanta Braves?

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    • Through May, Luis Avilan was the only pitcher on the active roster to not surrender a home run all season.  He is one of two Braves relievers to have an above average ERA+ (100 is baseline) with the other being Jim Johnson (Avilan 145, Johnson 128).  His WHIP of 1.150 is respectable in 20 innings of work.  Overall, Avilan has been arguably the Braves’ best reliever in 2015.

    However, his 2015 is not as impressive as his first two big league campaigns.  In retrospect, Avilan’s first two seasons with the Braves were sensational out of the bullpen.  It’s hard to best his 2013 numbers (1.52 ERA, 0.954 WHIP, and 247 ERA+).  But if you just watch Avilan pitch this season, you can see that he has made adjustments from last year.

    When Fredi Gonzalez calls his number out of the ‘pen, Luis normally has to go to work with someone else’s runners on base.  For a guy that couldn’t retire lefties and hung breaking balls out over the plate last year, Avilan is keeping the ball down in the zone and inducing many key ground ball outs in the late innings of close ball games.  Opponents are hitting .186 against Luis Avilan with runners on base and an even lower .176 with runners in scoring position.  Gonzalez has put his faith in Avilan in clutch situations and he is delivering.

    Luis Avilan has been a silver lining to our dark cloud of a bullpen.  Though he may not ever pitch as well as he did in 2012-13, Avilan looks to have righted the ship in 2015.  He’s pitching with maturity and confidence this season and I believe that he is going to make the outs when he comes in to pitch.  I wish I could say the same thing about most of the Braves’ relievers.

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