The Braves announced Thursday that they’ve selected the contract of veteran first baseman Matt Adams and outrighted fellow veteran Yonder Alonso from the 40-man roster. Alonso has the service the perfect time to reject that outright project, though it’s not yet clear he’ll achieve this task. Atlanta also included southpaw Tyler Matzek on its Opening Day roster, which means his deal has been chosen to the 40-man roster as well.
Atlanta only added Alonso to the 40-man roster this past weekend, though they hadn’t yet exercised a deal to bring Adams in to the organization at that point. With Adams now on board, the club evidently views him as an improved option to back again up Freddie Freeman. Freeman has previously missed time scheduled to Covid-19 but was cleared to come back and included on the Braves’ Starting Day roster. The 31-year-old Adams strike .226/.276/.465 with 20 homers in 333 plate appearances for the division-rival Nationals this past year, but also had a productive run with the Braves in 2017.
Matzek, 29, represents a reasonably impressive comeback story. The southpaw was the No. 11 overall find by the Rockies back in 2009 as well as for a couple of years was regarded as one of the game’s premier pitching potential clients. Injuries and poor performances induced him to fade from the radar, and he was out of baseball completely in 2017 before latching on with the Texas AirHogs of the independent American Assocation in 2018-19. He parlayed that into a peek with the Braves and struggled in 15 minor league innings, but his summer exhibiting helped him to land an area by using an MLB roster for the very first time since 2015.