Atlanta's 'spot starter' pool is pretty depleted to start the season
The Atlanta Braves are already into their depth options for the rotation, but they might not be able to go much deeper
It’s hard to imagine a worse start to the season than what the Atlanta Braves have dealt with. It’s not that they’re 0-6, it’s how they’ve lost those six games.
Their pitching staff, both starters and the bullpen (outside of now-DFA’d Héctor Neris) have done enough, but the offense absolutely has not carried their weight.
The Braves are hitting a league-worst .137 and have scored just nine runs in six games, the lowest total in the league. It’s not for lack of trying, though - the Braves are 5th in barrel rate (10.7%) and are tied for the third-best walk rate in baseball (11.7%), but just can’t seem to get those hits to fall and those runners in.
And then to make things worse, there are the personnel issues.
Outfielder Jurickson Profar was suspended 80 games by MLB for violations of the league’s joint drug and treatment program. He will lose $5.8M of salary this season and is ineligible for the postseason, assuming the Braves make it. Starter Reynaldo López went on the injured list just hours after the Profar news broke with ‘shoulder inflammation’ and is now set for arthroscopic surgery to determine if there’s any additional structural damage.
And the López news is what I want to talk about today - with the righty set to miss some undetermined amount of time, it opens up a temporary job in the rotation for sinkerballer Bryce Elder. And that’s concerning from a depth perspective.
The team set a goal of entering Grapefruit League play with seven starters, and they did that. But after trading away Ian Anderson and then putting López on the IL, they’re down to just a five-man rotation from that spring group.
What happens if Atlanta needs another emergency or spot starter? Let’s talk about it.
Strider should be back soon
Atlanta’s first bit of reinforcement should be Spencer Strider - the righthander made two starts in spring and already has one rehab outing for AAA Gwinnett under his belt.
With this Friday’s start being his second rehab start, it’s looking like our initial mid-April prediction may still be valid for Strider to rejoin the Braves rotation. Unless the Braves just keep six true starters on the roster and go a relief arm short, the decision there is to either get rid of a starter on the roster or send someone to the bullpen:
Option 1: Send someone back to the minors
Candidates: AJ Smith-Shawver, Bryce Elder
Option 2: Send someone to the bullpen
Candidates: Grant Holmes, Smith-Shawver, Elder
Either way, this leaves you with one additional starter and takes the ‘count’ back to six.
Any options in Triple-A?
Yes, but not as many as you’d hope right now.
Bryce Elder, Gwinnett’s Opening Day starter, is already in the majors. The Braves have also taken Jesse Chavez (since DFA’d) and Zach Thompson out of the Stripers bullpen. Chasen Shreve also made a start for Gwinnett, going four innings, but it’s just his second start in his sixteen-year pro career1 so he is more of an emergency option for a single spot start than a potential rotation add.
Hurston Waldrep, one of the organization’s top prospects (#6 on the Braves Prospect Composite) is currently the anchor of the Gwinnett rotation and acquitted himself nicely in his first appearance of 2025. Pitching on Tuesday, he allowed just one run on three hits against Nashville, walking one and hitting one batter but striking out seven.
There were a few things that made me pause - his fastball had only a 38% zone percentage - although he finished with 14 whiffs and a 34% CSW, so that’s overall pretty encouraging. He’s probably your first call, although I still question whether or not he can get the fastball enough in the zone against pro hitters to get them to chase the splitter.
Davis Daniel and Dylan Dodd are your other tenured options here - neither has started yet this season for Gwinnett, but Daniel has made six major league starts in his career (for the Angels) and Dodd has made seven for Atlanta. Neither has been that great.
Nathan Wiles, who was just acquired in a minor cash deal with the Tampa Bay Rays, is starting on Wednesday for the Stripers.
The order I’m guessing here is Waldrep, Daniel, Dodd, and Wiles. The ‘count’ is now back to ten.
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A few options are yet to debut
There are a few starters that are both among the team’s top prospects and in the upper minors. However, none of them have made their MLB debuts, so I’m hesitant to assume they’d be one of the first calls Atlanta makes.
Drue Hackenberg (#8 on the Braves Prospect Composite) and Lucas Braun (#9) are both assigned to AA Columbus, as is converted collegiate reliever Blake Burkhalter (#14 on the Composite). Braun (12 starts) and Hackenberg (9 starts) are returning to the level, while Burkhalter is appearing there for the first time.
Hackenberg would appear to be the favorite going into the season for a move to Gwinnett first, as he actually finished last season with four starts for the Stripers (1.52 ERA, 18 Ks but 15 BBs in 23.2 innings), but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that any of the three were elevated after their first few starts.
This makes the ‘count’ 13, which equals Atlanta’s previous highest starter usage in any of the last four seasons. But there’s one additional avenue that might change the running count and pecking order…
The trade market might come into play here
At this point, despite whatever Alex Anthopoulos said when the winter began about his intentions of raising payroll, it’s clear that folks above him (meaning Chairman Terry McGuirk, essentially) had a mandate to cut spending and reset the tax.
This has not been explicitly confirmed, by the way, but we can infer it from other corporate actions of the team. On Wednesday morning, the company (not the team) announced the purchase of a large, six-building office complex adjacent to The Battery Atlanta. It increases the size of the company’s real estate holdings by nearly 30% and given both its location directly adjacent to the Battery and the fact that it’s already 80% occupied, couldn’t have come cheap.2
I also did some digging into recent SEC filings and uncovered a note in the company’s most recent 10-K filing that stressed the alternative to continuing to pay the Competitive Balance Tax:
Alternatively, management may decide to focus on longer-term success by investing more heavily in the recruiting and development of younger and less expensive talent, which may negatively affect the team’s current on-field success and in turn could have a negative impact on ticket sales and other sources of revenue.
It’s not a smoking gun, but it’s clear that cutting the tax (and lowering their revenue-sharing obligations) by restricting payroll was in the company’s plans all along, even if AA didn’t immediately know that when he talked to us immediately after the season ended.
And that’s where Jurickson Profar comes in.
With his PED suspension, he’ll forfeit $5.8M of his salary this season, meaning that there’s additional “dry powder” for an acquisition while still keeping the team under the luxury tax line for 2025. FanGraphs now projects Atlanta’s CBT salary to be at just $227.31M right now, although that’ll tick up slightly as some of the veterans in extended spring like Craig Kimbrel and James McCann make it to the majors.
But that means that an acquisition of a starter can be made, if someone is available and Atlanta meets his team’s price.
To be clear: If Atlanta doesn’t make an acquisition, we’ve identified ten potential starting options as of right now. But as we learned with López going on the IL, it only takes one injury for the team to go from a backup quality option to an emergency quality option.
We’re back with a deep dive on the offense tomorrow.
The first was for Scranton Wilkes-Barre in 2016, so it’s not even a recent thing he’s trying.
On the bright side, they specifically mentioned the ability to expand parking options for visitors to The Battery Atlanta in the press release, so we've got that going for us, which is nice?
Not to quibble but at the moment aren’t we 0-6?