On Monday, we established that the Braves have plenty of pitchers capable of starting games. What they don’t have is 900 innings’ worth of pitchers I’d actually feel comfortable planning the season around, no matter what Steamer projects. 700, sure, but not 900.
And even in that 900-inning projection, the quality’s a question. Outside of Chris Sale, no other Braves starter is projected for an ERA under 4.00 or at least two fWAR.
And just like Tim Curry’s magnum opus, Clue, there are a few different outcomes for the Braves here. In ending number one, Atlanta spends most of its pitching money on the best starter it can reasonably acquire, fills in the margins cheaply, and bets that Sale, Elder, Holmes, Strider, and the kids can cover enough of what’s left.
Getting that top-level pitcher is the most satisfying way for fans to spend a chunk of that assumed $50M budget, but it also concentrates a lot of the risk in one addition living up to their contract.
Let’s talk about it.
What is an “ace”, exactly?
There may be no more misused term in baseball than “ace”.
And depending on how you define “ace”, there’s either only one or a few different options in this year’s free agent class.
If you’re a purist, one who calls the best 10 or so pitchers in baseball “aces”, then it’s Tarik Skubal or bust. We broke this down on the podcast a week or so ago, but Skubal’s expected to set a variety of new contractual records this offseason and while Atlanta can sign him if they want to, it’s also the only meaningful addition they could make this winter unless they shed some salaries to free up additional payroll space.
But if you use the “would this team start the guy in the first two games of a playoff series” criteria1, it widens the brackets a bit. Someone you could assume for 150-180 innings, with substantially more certainty than the grouping of Bryce Elder/Grant Holmes/Spencer Strider/Reynaldo López. Ideally, they’d do it by missing bats, too, rather than just managing contact like Atlanta’s rotation did this season.
And obviously, represent enough of an upgrade over the existing room that you’d devote half - or more - of the available offseason money to him.
To make it even clearer: “Frontline starter” and “ace” aren’t necessarily the same thing.
And now, a few more names come to the forefront.
MLB.com named Freddy Peralta a #2 with ace upside, while noting that his career numbers compare favorably with Dylan Cease, who signed a seven-year, $210M deal with Toronto last offseason as the top pitching free agent on the market.
Michael King, meanwhile, gave San Diego 185 innings with a 3.21 ERA, opting out of two years and $53M to look for a long-term deal on the open market this winter.
So who actually qualifies as an ace this winter?
Peralta vs. King vs. everybody else
To me, if you’re using the “elite pitcher” label to define “ace”, then there are two options behind Skubal in Peralta and King, then a gap before you get to everyone else.
The case for Freddy Peralta is pretty obvious if you watched baseball in September and October. After being freed from New York when the Mets traded him, he fully exorcized the demons down the stretch: A 0.79 ERA across his final six starts to finish out the regular season, then four appearances with a combined two earned runs in 16.2 innings before the Brewers got to him in the World Series.
“Fastball Freddy” rediscovered his heater down the stretch with Tampa Bay, seeing his velo rebound and popping a career-best max fastball velo in September while also cleaning up his mechanics and ramping up his right-on-right changeup usage, as Tampa Bay is known to do.
When you combine that with the fact that 2026 was his fourth consecutive season qualifying for ERA leaderboards and he had a 3.65 ERA across that stretch…yeah, it makes sense he’s on here.
But on the other hand, 2026 was pretty bad “under the hood,” from a process perspective. He had the lowest strikeout rate of his career (21.4%) while seeing his whiff rate drop to a barely above-average 26.1% (57th percentile). Was that the Mets curse, or a genuine regression in his ability to miss bats?
A starter reaching the open market at the age of 30, after playing on an extremely team-friendly deal for the bulk of his career so far, could be forgiven for attempting to maximize the guarantee. Which makes you ask:
Are you paying for the pitcher he was the last few seasons, or the one he was for much of 2026?
But if it’s a tough decision with Peralta, Michael King’s not any easier to figure out.
We talked about needing workload yesterday. Michael King gave San Diego 185 innings over 32 starts at a 3.21 ERA in 2026. That’s not theoretical workload capacity that we’re projecting; he actually did that this season. He’s also worked as a reliever at times in his major league career, with just 679.2 innings on his right arm over the last eight MLB seasons.
But he did it through a 95 Stuff+ and a rather pedestrian 21% strikeout rate. Also, he turned down $53M for his age-32-and-33-seasons, making one wonder how much he’ll actually need to sign a long-term deal for his mid-30s.
But after these guys, it’s pretty slim pickings. Shota Imanaga’s put up a 3.45 ERA over the last three seasons and 492.1 innings, twice qualifying on ERA leaderboards. He’s also throwing 91 and change at the age of 33, with any drop in fastball velo likely sinking the profile unless his splitter can take on any more of the load.
Soon-to-be-37-year-old Sonny Gray’s in a similar boat, with his 2.72 ERA more than a run better than his estimators and an arsenal anchored by a 91.5 mph fastball. Kevin Gausman’s close to the same place that Gray is, turning 36 this winter and being a one-trick four-seamer-and-splitter pony.
It’s hard to see those guys automatically taking over the #2 spot in a rotation, and if we're stretching the definition of “ace” to make the plan work, then this isn't really the Ace Plan anymore, is it?
But back to Peralta and King. You can make the argument for either guy, based on what’s more important to you.
If your first thought is “I need high-quality innings I can plan around”, go with Michael King. He’s the cleaner solution; it’s the more stable floor.
But if you want ceiling, the ability to miss bats in a postseason game two versus Los Angeles or Philadelphia? Peralta’s gotta be the more attractive choice here.
Skip free agency entirely: trade for the ace
But what if the Braves ignore the market and just make a deal directly with a team that has an ace? They tried to do that at the deadline, getting far enough along with the Texas Rangers that Jacob deGrom was asked to waive his no-trade clause to facilitate the transaction.
Infamously, he didn’t, telling the team he wanted to remain in Texas. Was that because it was a midseason trade? Would he feel differently if it were over the winter?
If the Braves were able to complete the trade for deGrom, it’d serve to add someone who fits the highest definition of an ace. DeGrom is a two-time Cy Young winner, with a career 2.73 ERA and a 30.6% strikeout rate. He’s qualified on ERA leaderboards in both of the last two seasons, a welcome rebound after missing most of 2023 & 2024 for Tommy John surgery.
There are two different deGrom plans Atlanta could pursue this winter as they attempt to make a deal.
The first is to make the major financial investment and assume all the $37M deGrom is owed for 2027. That’s the purest version of the Ace Plan, and basically detonates most of our speculative $50M budget.
There is a $20M club option for 2028, and I’m assuming deGrom would require some sort of minor extension to guarantee and increase his pay for that 2028 season as a condition to waive the NTC. Is it possible they could sign an extension to lower the first-year financial commitment, similar to what the Braves did after acquiring Sale from Boston? Sale was owed $27.5M for 2024, with $10M of it being deferred, and had a $20M club option for 2025. Atlanta’s two-year, $38M extension wiped out the deferred money, set Sale’s salary at $16M for 2024, and guaranteed the 2025 season at a cost of $22M (with an added $18M option for 2026).
The second option is to attempt to offset the deGrom money with some sort of contract swap, moving anyone from Spencer Strider ($22M salary in 2027) or Reynaldo López ($8M) to more evenly balance the money. The problem is that a trade of that nature is both selling low on one of those two oft-injured starters, as well as taking away some of the internal innings and upside that Steamer was projecting into Atlanta’s 2027 totals.
With Texas losing young outfielder Evan Carter to hip surgery that will keep him out for the start of next season, moving an outfielder is an intriguing, if unlikely, option. Either Jurickson Profar ($15M) or Mike Yastrzemski ($10M) could be options there, although the Rangers have obvious reasons to decline either player’s inclusion in the trade.
It’s worth pointing out that official Friend of the Show™ Gabe Burns of the AJC reported shortly after the trade deadline that Atlanta also reached out to San Francisco about Logan Webb. He’s owed $23M in 2027 and $24M in 2028 and has thrown 980.2 innings across the last five seasons, albeit with ‘only’ a 22.2% strikeout rate from the sinkerballer.
You still need innings after the ace
Remember how we projected the shortage to be close to 200 rotation innings for next year?
Adding any one of those pitchers doesn’t take care of that entire deficit on their own, although Webb’s best seasons have seen him break the 200-inning mark. And obviously, adding just one arm doesn’t protect you if Sale or someone that was providing a large share of those innings goes down during the 2027 season.
So what does adding another source of inexpensive depth actually look like in this scenario?
It’s something like a swingman or #6 type, like what Martín Pérez was originally expected to be heading into 2026. Maybe it’s a minor league deal for a reclamation arm, or even using Joey Wentz as more of a traditional starter instead of a swingman and long reliever. Maybe it’s Ray Kerr chipping in ten or twelve starts, or counting on more innings from the kids than we initially felt comfortable assuming.
Acquiring one notable ace-level starter, whether via trade or free agency, doesn’t eliminate Atlanta’s dependence on its internal options. It just pushes them down one spot in the hierarchy - they’re still needed, but in a lesser role than they were originally expected to fill.
What happens to the offense?
It’s worth laying this out with actual numbers here, making some rational assumptions as to a potential Ace contract based on the current projections from Spotrac.
Michael King is given a $29.9M projection, while Peralta’s at $28.7M. For ease of math, let’s call this $30M - at the top of the market, most of those projections end up being slightly conservative anyway.
Ace = $30M
Cheap rotation depth = $5M (Griffin Canning, Erick Fedde)
Money remaining for offense = $15M
But if the Braves go for deGrom, unless there’s a salary offset, it requires multiple trade-offs here:
deGrom = $37M
Rotation depth = internal options only
Money remaining for offense = $13M
Is Michael King or Freddy Peralta at $30M a better bet than deGrom at $37M, based on the trade-offs a deGrom trade would require both behind the starter and for the offense?
Or does Peralta or King’s contract length become the trade-off? The longest free agent deal Anthopoulos has given out in Atlanta is four years and $65M for Marcell Ozuna, with a fifth-year club option. The longest pitching deal the Braves have given out to a free agent is three years, with Robert Suarez ($45M), Will Smith ($39M), and Reynaldo López ($30M) all getting that same length.
Spotrac projects King at five years ($149.55M) and Peralta at seven years ($201.1M).
The upside to deGrom is the shorter commitment: one guaranteed season as things stand right now, and probably something closer to two if Atlanta has to modify the deal to get him to waive the no-trade clause.
Verdict: does the Ace Plan work?
Let’s break this down, point by point.
Does it get Atlanta 200-ish innings? Probably, assuming the ace you add can give you 160-180 and the cheap depth supplies the remainder - remember, the Steam projection we discussed did not include anything for the rotation from Didier Fuentes.
Does it materially reduce the rotation’s risk? I’d argue yes, and likely more than the other plans likely will, given the assumed quality of this addition.
Does it leave enough money to make the offense meaningfully different? And there’s the rub - $15M is nothing to sneeze at, but it’s not adding an obviously impactful bat. You’d need to nail the evaluation on a lower-tier option.
The Ace Plan is the highest-ceiling version of these three, as Chris Sale plus another legitimate October starter solves the exact pitching problem the Braves ran into back in October.
But it’s also the plan that most requires Anthopoulos to nail the cheap pieces he adds for the other holes, and requires fixing an offense that was the real problem in October without enough money left for a major offensive addition.
If I’m the one running this play, my preference is King over Peralta based on contract length, coming in around $30M, with $5M of depth and $15M for the offense (barring trades). DeGrom only jumps one of those two if Texas helps with the money or takes some salary back. I’d take deGrom in a vacuum, but not at $37M with no salary offsets, given the spending constraints we’re working under.
That’s Ending Number One: Spending big on one pitcher, counting on him to be Chris Sale’s running mate, and accepting that Jeremy Hefner needs to work some magic to get someone else ready for game three.
Tomorrow, let’s flip this around: Instead of putting $30 million to $35 million into one arm, what does it look like if the Braves spread it around the pitching staff?
If you were curious, MLB.com’s own baseball glossary splits the difference, saying “‘Ace’ typically refers to a team’s No. 1 pitcher, though it can also be used to describe an elite pitcher in general.”