The Braves Don't Need a Starter. They Need a Decision.

With Hurston Waldrep nearing a return, Atlanta may soon have to choose between upside, flexibility, and experience.

Depth will always work itself out.

It’s incredibly rare for a team to have too much depth at a position for very long. The Boston Red Sox were expected to trade one of their outfielders last winter, but defied expectations by holding on to all five of them. Now, with Roman Anthony having missed 25 days and counting with a wrist injury, they’re able to give everyday playing time to CF Ceddanne Rafaela, LF Jarren Duran, RF Wilyer Abreu, and Masataka Yoshida, who normally enters the lineup as the designated hitter.

When it’s not an injury, it’s inefficiency making the decision for you.

The Braves are about to need to make their own decision after Sunday’s news that starter Hurston Waldrep is starting a rehab assignment this week. Waldrep, who underwent arthroscopic surgery in spring training to remove loose bodies from his elbow, has been throwing bullpens in North Port for the past few weeks. Having just completed an “up-down”, a live batting practice that simulates a two-inning outing, and sitting 96-99 with his fastball, Waldrep’s about three weeks away from being ready to rejoin the major league roster.

What do the Braves do with the righty? Let’s talk about it.

The Schedule Might Save Everyone

Atlanta’s had several extended stretches on the schedule, opening the season with thirteen games in thirteen days and then doing thirteen games in thirteen days again in May.

And the schedule doesn’t get better this month, with the Braves facing another long stretch. Atlanta has nine consecutive games, with the last three being out west in San Diego, followed by an off day and another road series in San Francisco. Despite the off day, the travel demands effectively make it one continuous road trip, so it’s a possibility that Atlanta plans to go to their six-man rotation again for this stretch.

If that happens, there’s an easy solution to the ‘problem’ of Hurston Waldrep coming back and needing a rotation spot - give him the 6th spot and punt the decision to the start of July.

The likely tweak here is moving Bryce Elder around - when possible, the Braves have attempted to keep him on a schedule of only four day between starts, which Bryce prefers. Of his league-leading 12 starts, only three have come on additional rest, with two of those happening in the last two weeks. The performance numbers, small sample size that they are, show that the righty is slightly better when he stays on schedule:

4 days rest: 3-2, 2.66 ERA, .203/.283/.273 w/ 2 HR allowed (1.04%), 8.7 K/9, 2.71 SO/W
5 days rest: 0-1, 2.89 ERA, .222/.260/.389 w/ 3 HR allowed (3.9%), 4.8 K/9, 2.50 SO/W

For ease of math, let’s say that Waldrep returns on June 22nd, halfway through the team’s 13-game stretch and the start of the road portion. The rotation could look like this, projecting forward:

Bryce Elder
Grant Holmes
Chris Sale
Martín Pérez
Spencer Strider
Hurston Waldrep

(Note: This is not a skill-based SP1-SP6 ranking, but rather rooted in the current order as of this Tuesday’s start versus Toronto.)

The team would be required to drop one reliever to accommodate a sixth starter, having the option of either optioning middle reliever Dylan Dodd or long man Anthony Molina out of the final spot the team’s rotated through the last few weeks. Atlanta would still have both Reynaldo López and Didier Fuentes, former (and future, per Alex Anthopoulos on Sunday) starters that could provide length if any of the members of the rotation went short in their outing.

The Case Against Martín Pérez

Veteran Martín Pérez was added this spring on a minor-league deal, the only real rotation addition the team made this winter. Atlanta’s faith in the lefty has been rewarded so far, with a 2.79 ERA that’s better than the estimators (4.30 xERA, 4.11 FIP) but still more than acceptable for a backend arm.

Pérez does it mostly through locations, sequencing, and guile, sporting a strikeout rate of only 17.9% in the rotation and a Stuff+ of 88. That strikeout rate is the lowest for any of Atlanta’s starters this season, just behind the now-optioned JR Ritchie.

The argument against Pérez comes down to two questions: sustainability and long-term value. Can Pérez continue outperforming his inputs when he’s averaging just 90.0 mph on his fastballs and his primary pitch is a changeup? Given that he can’t reliably miss bats or induce chase, it’s a profile that’s reliant on weak, groundball contact.

Given that Pérez has already pitched out of the bullpen three times this season, Atlanta knows the transition is workable. Moving him to the bullpen would allow the team to be insulated from a regression in his results, as well as add another lefty to the pen, one that’s not terrible at generating groundballs and can cover multiple innings if needed.

The other reason to potentially move Pérez to the pen is the long-term rotation plan. Pérez is 35 and on a one-year deal, while Holmes and Waldrep are 30 and 24, respectively, and are both under two years of service time. If Alex Anthopoulos is weighing the team’s future rotations, in 2027, 2028, and beyond, both Waldrep and Holmes project to potentially be that group, but Pérez does not. We know from Anthopoulos’ comments this offseason that part of the reason the team set such a high standard for a rotation addition - the infamous “impact starter” comment - was that they wanted to avoid blocking Grant Holmes, Reynaldo López, and top prospects like JR Ritchie and Owen Murphy.

Put simply, Pérez isn’t in the team’s long-term plans, while Holmes and Waldrep are.

The Case Against Grant Holmes

The reasons to move Holmes to the bullpen are rooted in baseball reasons, not roster projections. A frustrating but persistent tendency Holmes has shown this season is an inability to contain offense on a second turn through the order. It’s a supercharged version of the third-time-through-the-order penalty that has destined marginal starters to mostly “five-and-dive” outings.

Here are the stark performance splits for Holmes’ first and second times through the order as a starting pitcher:

1st PA in game: .180/.263/.292, 2 HR in 99 PAs, 2.50 SO/W
2nd PA in game: .302/.371/.640, 8 HR in 97 PAs, 1.90 SO/W

Opposing hitters transform from Nick Allen to Yordan Alvarez when they see Holmes a second time in the same game.

(Holmes has great stats the 3rd time through the order, but this is classic survivorship bias: He’s either cruising and stays in the game, or he’s getting shelled and gets lifted, so the numbers aren’t a true representative sample.)

Moving Holmes back into his original “utility pitcher” role might be the highest and best use of the right-hander, the same one in which he put up a career-high 1.2 WAR in 2024. Atlanta used him for everything, from starting to piggybacking, covering single innings of relief or bridging a short start into the standard bullpen usage.

The problem with being the most flexible pitcher on the staff is that you’re often the easiest one to move. The Braves may conclude that he’s the pitcher most likely to move to relief without sacrificing effectiveness, given Holmes' proven history of doing just that.

The Case Against Waldrep

The obvious assumption among the fanbase and even this article so far has been “Who leaves when Waldrep returns?”

But what if he’s not good enough?

We haven’t actually seen Waldrep pitch in a meaningful game since last summer, and assuming he’ll immediately reclaim a rotation spot just because he’s throwing in the high-90s in bullpens may be getting ahead of ourselves.

This feels like the worst-case scenario, since Waldrep is optionable… for the final time this year. If he spends 20 days in the minors, then he’s required to be carried on the major league roster out of spring training next season or exposed to waivers.

If Waldrep’s return hits a snag, either on his stuff or his ability to pitch deep enough in games to rejoin the rotation, he might get optioned to the minors. It could be for development reasons, or pitch-mix reasons, or even just to protect him from too much of a workload as he works back from his elbow scope.

(For the record, this same question will come up later this year with AJ Smith-Shawver, who is also holding just one minor-league option and will be returning from elbow surgery sometime after the All-Star Break.)

What Will Atlanta Actually Do?

This Braves front office under Alex Anthopoulos is a known quantity in several ways. We know they prioritize depth, a vestige from 2021’s catcher catastrophe and last season’s rotation disaster.

We know that under Walt Weiss, the team has leaned into positional flexibility, moving starters back and forth to the bullpen as their performance or the team's needs dictate.

All of those signs point toward a six-man rotation, at least initially, and delaying the decision until they have more data about how Waldrep is faring in the majors (or until an injury makes the decision for them).

And if the Braves eventually do have to make a choice, Holmes feels like the most natural fit for the role they’ve increasingly valued: the Swiss Army knife. Atlanta has spent the last two seasons turning flexible pitchers into weapons, and Holmes may simply be too useful in that role to keep tethered to a traditional starter’s schedule.

A year ago, Atlanta was searching for enough healthy arms to survive the summer. Now they’re approaching a point where they may have too many viable starters.

Waldrep’s rehab assignment doesn’t create a problem for the Braves. It creates options.

The difficult part isn’t finding a fifth starter anymore.

It’s deciding which starter you trust least.