One day, in the distant future, you may find yourself in a really boring work meeting that could’ve been a text message on your wrist terminal (yes, we’re moving to wearable tech, we are never getting rid of work meetings) and you’ll pull up Sporcle, even more enshittified than it is now, and try to recall the entire set of players that constituted the star-crossed-but-also-just-very-meh 2025 Atlanta Braves. You’ll remember Cal Quantrill and Alex Verdugo because they were horrible. You might remember Kevin Herget because he is not Jimmy Herget, who was with the Braves in 2024. You’ll probably type Eddie Rosario out of force of habit. But you will absolutely forget Jose Ruiz.
The Braves claimed Jose Ruiz off waivers from the Phillies in early June, right as their playoff odds were making like a lead balloon and plummeting. That made them Ruiz’ fifth MLB organization since he signed with the Padres out of Venezuela back in 2011. He’d add a sixth before the 2025 season came to a close.
What were the expectations?
Writing about Ruiz’ career is probably more fun than the actual content of this review; hope it’s more fun in the reading sense, too. Ruiz was originally signed as a catcher, but got essentially no traction as a hitter and ended up converting to a pitcher. He threw around 12 professional innings the season he converted, and his Rule 5 clock was twanging, so A.J. Preller did what he’s known to do and… added Ruiz to the 40-man roster to prevent a guy with exactly one inning pitched above Low-A from getting sniped.
In the end, this was kind of pointless. Ruiz struggled as a pitcher in High-A in 2017 (and made his major league debut anyway, good ol’ Preller never disappoints), but then got squeezed off the 40-man roster and claimed by the White Sox, where he spent a bunch of time as a yo-yo arm that one decent major league relief season (2021) and not much else positive to speak of. After a sub-replacement 2022 and a horrific start to 2023, it was Arizona’s turn to gamble on the Venezuelan, but he was terrible there too.
Minor league free agency took him to Philadelphia, where he actually pitched pretty well in 2024 (88/102/90 ERA-/FIP-/xFIP-) but got stung by ye olde HR/FB rate. The same pattern kind of repeated itself before the Phillies DFAed him in 2025 (191/128/105), but given that he wasn’t actually pitching well, I’m sure the Phillies didn’t mind the Braves claiming him.
All in all, Ruiz had -0.1 fWAR and a 102/110/107 line as a major leaguer over about 270 innings. He was another replacement-level-if-not-below, hope-you-don’t-have-to-use-him-as-your-26th-man guy.
The Braves claimed Ruiz on June 7, added him to the roster on June 8, DFAed him on June 20, outrighted him on June 22, and traded him to the Rangers for Dane Dunning less than a month after his outright. In the interim, Ruiz made two appearances with the Braves. His first came with a 3-1 deficit where he collected two strikeouts but also walked in a run. His second came in a blowout loss to the Rockies where he walked two and also balked in a run at one point.
Combine those two appearances with his time with the Phillies that got him DFAed for the first time during the course of the season, and he had an aggregate -0.2 fWAR with a 207/127/112 line. Same guy as before, worse HR/FB fortune, and a miserable time all around.
Well, in his first outing with the team, he came into a bases-loaded, none out situation and actually got out of it only allowing one run… except that run scored as a result of a walk. Here’s him striking out Jackson Chourio before that walk:
He also pitched okay at Triple-A, including with the Rangers (he didn’t make it back to the majors with them).
His fastball pitch shape also still looked good.
His outing against the Rockies featured, as mentioned earlier, him balking in a run. So, in two appearances, he walked in a run, and he balked in a run.
The stuff that went wrong were the same things that have been plaguing him for his career, though. His command is… not the greatest… and he throws a bunch of pitches but only the fastball seems to be unequivocally a reasonable pitch. He has a weird turbo-curve-cutter thing (which he struck Chourio out on above), but he can’t really command it, and he has experimented with a sinker grip even though his arm action and release tend to make the four-seamer work better. His fastball velocity is also slipping, and arguably started to do so earlier than expected. It’s kind of a weird profile that teams don’t really know what to do with.
Ruiz continued to pay his dues for the Rangers in Triple-A after the trade, and elected free agency at the end of the season. He’ll probably get a minor league deal with an invitation to Spring Training, because why not? But 2025 was the first time he spent most of his time in the minors since 2018, and he’s put up a combined -0.9 fWAR in his last four seasons. He’s probably substantially below replacement level at this point, and like most of us, he’s not getting any younger.
But hey, maybe you’ll do better on Future-Sporcle after reading this. I tried.
