State of the Braves rotation: Winter Meetings edition

With Max Fried now a member of the New York Yankees on a massive deal, what does Atlanta's pitching staff look like prior to the team's eventual foray into free agency?

Unlike the recent free agencies of Freddie Freeman and Dansby Swanson, it never really felt like Max Fried would end up in Atlanta after this offseason.

But who saw THIS coming?

On Tuesday night, ESPN’s Jeff Passan broke the news of a deal between Fried and the New York Yankees on an eight-year deal worth a record-setting $218M. The contract, which is the largest guarantee in MLB history for a left-handed pitcher, will take Fried through his age-39 season.

Now that Fried’s officially not returning (and now that we’ve heard from both Alex Anthopoulos and Brian Snitker about the rotation), let’s look at where the organization stands as we enter the post-Juan Soto active period of free agency.

Rotation locks (3)

SP1: Chris Sale
SP2: Reynaldo López
SP3: Spencer Schwellenbach

From where things stand, the only known quantities to open the 2025 season¹ are these three, who combined last season for 75 starts and 437 innings.

But even these three aren’t a sure thing all season, given the workload and injury concerns.

Chris Sale finally put up a full season after four years of a combined 151 innings, but even if he’s able to stay healthy and repeat his availability (a big if, given his absence from the NL Wild Card round due to back spasms), he’s likely to regress from his Cy Young form.

Reynaldo López used the extra rest Atlanta built into the schedule to successfully navigate his first year in a rotation since 2020, making 25 starts with a career-best 1.99 ERA. But both injury and regression for López are either possible or likely. The righthander went on the IL twice last season with forearm and shoulder inflammation, missing seventeen days in both placements. Additionally, while the ERA was stellar, both his Fielding Independent Pitching (2.92) and Expected ERA (3.94) illustrate how dramatically he outperformed his inputs.

Spencer Schwellenbach, despite his youth (24 on Opening Day) and inexperience (265.1 innings on the mound since high school), is actually the least likely to regress. Essentially going from High-A to the majors², Schwellenbach had to learn how to get major leaguers out on the fly. He excelled, finishing the season with a 3.35 ERA despite allowing a combined 20 earned runs in his first six starts.³ It’s entirely likely that not needing to learn on the job in 2025 - how to get hitters out on the third time through the order, when to give up a walk to avoid a blast, and how to sequence his new sinker - will allow him to hit the ground running, health permitting.

Back-end favorites (2)

SP4: Ian Anderson
SP5: Grant Holmes

When trying to fill the final two spots in the rotation, it’s entirely possible that other factors besides just straight spring performance make this decision for the Braves.

Namely, that both Ian Anderson and Grant Holmes are out of options.

While Holmes can be placed in starting, relief, or bridge roles and be expected to excel - manager Brian Snitker remarked on Monday that “We've used him in all the different roles last year. His stuff plays, and […] I have a lot of confidence in him” - relieving is a role unfamiliar to Anderson. In his nine-season major league career, the 26-year-old Anderson has made all 156 professional appearances as a starting pitcher.⁴

Is it impossible for Anderson to adapt to a relief role? Of course not, and it’s entirely possible that his four-seam fastball, which averaged ‘only’ 92.8 mph in AAA last year, would play up a bit when he can air it out in shorter stints. But it’s an unfamiliar role, and asking a pitcher just 68 minor-league innings removed from Tommy John surgery to learn a different skill set on the fly in the regular season doesn’t feel like something that the team is looking to do.

But as long as these two perform admirably during Grapefruit League play, they’re my bet (as of now, barring acquisitions) to fill those final two rotation spots.

Back-end candidates (2)

RHP AJ Smith-Shawver
RHP Bryce Elder

In his Monday media availability, Snit said that not only was he not worried about the organization’s ability to add more pitching between now and spring training, he was confident the team would roll into Grapefruit League with “seven guys, at least, stretched out and ready to go.”

Adding top prospect Smith-Shawver and sinkerballer Elder gives you the seven Snit was referring to. Any offseason adds from this point on - like Nathan Eovaldi⁵ or even a return of Charlie Morton - would bring the team closer to the low end of their historical usage. In each of the last four seasons, the team has used between 10 and 13 conventional starters (excluding relievers working as “openers”):

• 2021: 10 pitchers used (number of regular season starts in parentheses)

  • Charlie Morton (33), Max Fried (28), Ian Anderson (24), Drew Smyly (23), Huascar Ynoa (17), Touki Toussaint (10), Kyle Muller (8), Bryse Wilson (8), Tucker Davidson (4), Kyle Wright (2)

    • Jesse Chavez made four appearances as an opener

• 2022: 10 pitchers used

  • Charlie Morton (31), Max Fried (30), Kyle Wright (30), Ian Anderson (22), Spencer Strider (20), Jake Odorizzi (10), Bryce Elder (9), Tucker Davidson (3), Kyle Muller (3), Huascar Ynoa (2)

    • Jesse Chavez and Jackson Stephens each made one appearance as openers

• 2023: 13 pitchers used

  • Spencer Strider (32), Bryce Elder (31), Charlie Morton (30), Max Fried (14), Jared Shuster (11), Kyle Wright (7), Dylan Dodd (7), Allan Winans (6), Michael Soroka (6), AJ Smith-Shawver (5), Yonny Chirinos (5), Kolby Allard (3), Darius Vines (2)

    • Jesse Chavez, Collin McHugh, and Dylan Lee all made one appearance as openers

• 2024: 13 pitchers used

  • Charlie Morton (30), Chris Sale (29), Max Fried (29), Reynaldo López (25), Spencer Schwellenbach (21), Bryce Elder (10), Grant Holmes (7), Ray Kerr (2), Darius Vines (2), Spencer Strider (2), Allan Winans (2), Hurston Waldrep (2), AJ Smith-Shawver (1)

(While seven starters obviously isn’t enough for the entire season, I understood Snit’s comments as seven options for the five spots to open the season and then the rest, along with several prospects, would be in Gwinnett and be brought up for spot starts, doubleheaders, and to cover injuries as needed.)

In an ideal scenario, either Smith-Shawver would show the control or Elder would show the swing-and-miss that’s missing from their respective games to seize the final rotation spot, pushing Holmes back into the bullpen’s long man/swingman role.

Potential prospect adds during the season (4)

RHP Hurston Waldrep (40-man)
RHP Connor Gilespie (40-man)
RHP Drue Hackenberg
RHP Lucas Braun

Not an exhaustive list, mind you, but the four I’m watching most intently as dark horses to step up to the major league roster during the season and play a meaningful role.

As Snit said on Monday, “there will be some guys that aren’t even in our camp the first couple weeks of March that are going to end up being big contributors,” like Schwellenbach was last year and Smith-Shawver was in 2023.

I’m leaning towards Hackenberg because he feels like the platonic ideal of a sinker-slider guy. Drue’s added pitches to have a true five-pitch arsenal, and so it allows him to attack hitters in multiple different ways: He can use the sinker to get groundballs, with the two-seamer running a 53.9% ground-ball rate that was second-best for the entire organization.⁶

His four-seam fastball and curveball allow him to get swing-and-miss, while a newer cutter gives him another weapon against lefties and the changeup took leaps since being drafted and gives him another weapon in his well-rounded arsenal.

The curveball isn’t on the same level as Fried’s, but the overall approach reminds me of Fried’s in that Hackenberg can adjust what he does depends on how the opposing team struggles with the different options in his arsenal - does he want to lean into inducing weak contact with the two-seam and curveball, or does he want to go four-seam/changeup and prioritize swing-and-miss? It’s versatile.

In-season add: Spencer Strider

This is the key to the offseason in the rotation - when he’ll be back and what condition his stuff will be probably dictates how aggressive the Braves are in this free agency and trade market to add to their rotation.

If Strider’s an early-May add and is 95% of his old self, a modest back-end add like bringing back Charlie Morton or a swingman like Michael Lorenzen would absolutely be enough, in theory.

If Strider’s more of an early June debut and struggles once he’s back, then adding a higher-quality (and more expensive) starter is a priority this offseason.

Unfortunately, we won’t find out Atlanta’s confidence in Strider until they make this move. Team doctors were the ones that originally alerted the front office that Strider and Ronald Acuña Jr. likely wouldn’t be ready for Opening Day, with the team getting the news towards the end of the World Series and subsequently moving to clear payroll space after that. The rest of us don’t know when and how effective the two will return.

But either way you slice it, the Braves are coming from a place of good bones as they enter the active phase of the offseason.

1. Also, none of the three were penciled in the rotation when Atlanta was eliminated from the postseason at the end of 2023. Funny how one winter can change things, huh?

2. After starting the season in Rome, Schwellenbach made two scoreless starts in AA Mississippi - thirteen innings total - before being promoted straight to Atlanta and stuck into the rotation.

3. After going 1-4 with a 5.68 ERA in his first six starts, Schwellenbach finished with a 7-3 record and 2.54 ERA from July on, only once allowing more than three earned runs in any game.

4. Given his status as the third overall pick in 2016 and the usual usage of those type of ‘studs’ when they’re prep pitchers, it’s possible Ian’s never pitched in relief in his entire life. I’d be curious on this one.

5. After this piece was submitted for edits but before being published, Eovaldi signed a three-year deal at $25M AAV to return to the Texas Rangers.

6. Only Luis De Avila, a two-seam/changeup groundball specialist who spent the entire season in AA Mississippi, was higher at 55.3%.