We’re less than a month away from the start of another exciting Braves baseball season with pitchers and catchers set to report to Spring Training on February 15th. With that in mind, now seems as good a time as any to take stock of where the team is at before heading into their Grapefruit League season opener on February 24th. You can check out a previous installment in the series discussing the bullpen here. Let’s continue on in this series by discussing the starting rotation for the Braves, which seems like a well-built unit with some depth issues heading into the season.
The locks
Spencer Strider, Max Fried, and Charlie Morton return to fill their usual top three spots in the Braves’ starting rotation staff pecking order for the 2024 MLB season. These three guys can compete with any pitching staff in the league when healthy.
Strider is coming off of a fantastic season for the team in which he struck out the most batters in MLB (281) while placing 4th in the NL Cy Young Award balloting. Fried only pitched in 77.2 innings for the team last year as he dealt with a litany of ailments including a forearm strain, and blister issues; however, he was effective when he was on the field in pitching to a 2.55 ERA with 80 strikeouts in 14 starts. Morton excelled once again in his typical workhorse role for the Braves last year, pitching to a 3.64 ERA and 183 strikeouts in 161.2 innings (30 starts) on the season.
Joining this fearsome trio for the 2024 season is LHP Chris Sale, who was acquired via a December offseason trade that sent SS Vaughn Grissom to the Boston Red Sox. Sale then quickly pivoted after the trade and signed a two-year contract extension with the team that includes an $18M club option for 2026, ensuring that he will have a role in the middle of the Braves starting pitching rotation for the next few years. Braves GM Alex Anthopoulos set his expectations for Sale in the aftermath of the trade and contract extension in his media comments, “we feel like this is the first normal offseason [Sale] will have had in a long time, but at the same time, he’s still coming off just a hundred innings pitched last year, so we’ll be mindful of that.”
Sale agrees with Anthopoulos’ assessment of his role & health in his comment that, “this is the first time in quite a while that I’ve been able to have a normal offseason.” He’s embracing his new role as the Braves fourth starter quite well, going so far as to joke with the notion that, “I can go out and suck and no one’s going to hate me now.” Nobody’s rooting for that to happen obviously, but Sale won’t be put under the same pressures as he was during his Red Sox tenure when he was the ace of the rotation.
Other candidates
Righties Bryce Elder, AJ Smith-Shawver, and Reynaldo López will be the primary candidates in the battle for the fifth spot in the Braves starting rotation this season. Elder was a surprising All-Star last year, but he struggled mightily down the stretch. Smith-Shawver, the Braves top pitching prospect, went all the way from High-A to the major leagues last year in a whirlwind season for the 21-year old out of Texas. MLB Pipeline recently mentioned him as a Rookie of the Year candidate for 2024. López could start if needed, but my expectation is that he will stick in the bullpen.
Long shot options
Darius Vines, Allan Winans, Dylan Dodd, Ian Anderson, and Huascar Ynoa are five other guys who should see an opportunity at some point during the 2024 season. Vines and Winans are the only two who are currently healthy amongst that crew. Dodd and Ynoa could end up as either starters or relievers for the team this year. Anderson will need to bounce back from Tommy John surgery, which is tough to do.
The verdict
The full slate of rotation options seems a little thin in comparison to year’s past. Gone are the days of having guys like Michael Soroka, Jared Shuster, and Kolby Allard available as fill-in options to ensure the very survival of the Braves starting pitching staff rotation through another tumultuous 162-game MLB season in 2024. I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing, but those guys had roles for a reason.
My concern is that we have three key starters (Fried, Morton, and Sale) who could have some workload concerns in 2024, and I’m not sure that our depth is up to snuff. That said, our depth won’t matter as much if we can keep our top four guys healthy. Those top four guys are amongst the best in the game, and I feel confident in their abilities to carry the rotation through the regular season and into the postseason.
The Sports Beacon 