The Braves Have One Postseason Starter. They Need to Find the Rest.

John Smoltz once told me postseason baseball comes down to three hot starters, three hot relievers, and three hot hitters. That changes the way you evaluate Atlanta's rotation and its trade deadline.

John Smoltz once told me something that completely changed the way I think about playoff baseball.

“You need three hot hitters, three hot starters, and three hot relievers to win in October.”

That’s it. Not five starters. Not a 13-man pitching staff. Not the deepest roster in baseball.

Three dudes who shove.

The deeper I thought about it, the more it explained why contenders approach the trade deadline the way they do.

Former Athletics general manager Billy Beane reached a similar conclusion years earlier, telling Michael Lewis in Moneyball:

“My shit doesn’t work in the playoffs. My job is to get us to the playoffs; what happens after that is luck.”

He wasn’t saying the postseason is entirely random. He was saying it’s a different game. Smoltz approached it from the mound and Beane approached it from the front office, but they arrived at the same conclusion.

The 162-game slog of the regular season rewards depth and endurance (and, frankly, whether you stayed healthy enough to survive it). It’s about surviving.

We spend all summer debating ERA, innings, and the fifth starter.

None of those questions matter very much once the calendar flips to October, as it rewards stars who happen to get hot at exactly the right time. The only goal is to win four games before the other team does, and in a small sample size, stars assume an outsized impact on the result.

That’s why Alex Anthopoulos doesn’t need to answer one question over the next two weeks. He needs to answer three:

Who starts Games 1, 2, and 3 of a postseason series?

If the Braves are serious about October, evaluating the rotation means asking a different question from the one we’ve been asking all season.

The question is no longer:

Can this pitcher make 32 starts?

It’s instead:

Would I hand him the ball in Game 2 of a playoff series?

Let’s talk about it.

Game One: Don’t overthink this

If the playoffs were to start today, Chris Sale would be getting the ball, and he’d be fired up about it.

Remember, this would be Sale’s first-ever playoff start with the Braves. Towards the end of his Cy Young-winning 2024 season, Sale was dealing with back spasms. The lefty made only four starts in the month of September and was left off the Wild Card roster, although he reportedly would have gotten the ball for game one had Atlanta advanced to the NLDS.

I’d go as far as to argue that even if the Braves were to acquire one of the few starters in the sport who are better than him, he’d still be getting the ball in the first game of any postseason series, and both he and the addition would want it that way.

He’s as good as ever, the unquestioned veteran leader of this team, and he’d get the ball in game one of a postseason series.

October Verdict: Game 1 Starter

Game Two: Nobody has claimed it

If Chris Sale is the easiest decision Alex Anthopoulos has to make, Game 2 is by far the hardest.

Let’s go player by player and you’ll see what I mean:

Hurston Waldrep

He’s exciting, and his splitter is probably the best remaining swing-and-miss pitch among Atlanta’s non-Chris-Sale starters.

But will he be ready? Waldrep was optioned to Triple-A Gwinnett last week after 10.2 innings at the major league level with 10 walks and 10 earned runs. Coming off of elbow surgery, neither the command nor the control has been there to get ahead of hitters, and that’s a prerequisite for his splitter to work to maximum effectiveness. Waldrep’s three outings this year saw his pitches be in the strike zone just 42.8% of the time, while his breakout 2025 performance down the stretch saw that number over 50% on everything but his whiff options of the splitter and curveball.

It’s entirely possible, and maybe even likely, that Waldrep can get back to the 2025 form he showed as he gets farther away from this spring’s elbow scope. And that's exactly the dilemma Atlanta faces. The upside is obvious. The probability of reaching it by October isn't. Front offices don't trade for certainty because upside doesn't exist; they trade for certainty because October punishes uncertainty.

October Verdict: Not Yet

AJ Smith-Shawver

Smith-Shawver had Tommy John surgery early last summer and has been on rehab for a few weeks tonight, being scheduled to pitch tonight for Gwinnett in his fourth start since officially starting the rehab assignment. His last outing, last Saturday for the Stripers, was electric…until it wasn’t, with two walks and three singles versus Memphis ending his day with one out in the third inning.

(If you’re curious, here’s a quick podcast I did last Sunday about his start, what he said after the outing, and my thoughts after spending the day in Gwinnett as a guest of the Stripers.)

I think AJ will return to the breakout form he showed last season, when he had a 2.33 ERA through his first seven starts, but you can’t bank on that so soon after Tommy John surgery.

October Verdict: Not Yet

Reynaldo López and Grant Holmes

I’m grouping these two together because they’re in similar boats - converted relievers that have been in and out of the bullpen this season, albeit for different reasons.

López lost his mechanics and velo partway through the year as he continues to work his way back from shoulder surgery that ended his 2025 season after just one start. He’s since been reinstated to the rotation, partly out of necessity.

Holmes has a very significant and demonstrable weakness once the lineup turns over, allowing opposing hitters to improve from a pedestrian .194/.288/.276 the first time through to an absurd .305/.377/.633 when they face him for a second time in the same game. That jump in OPS from .564 to 1.010 is essentially watching an opposing lineup morph from 2025 Nick Allen (.535 OPS) to 2026 Yordan Alvarez (1.059).

That's the type of split a front office notices immediately. A starter who can't consistently navigate a lineup two times is difficult to trust in October, when every lineup is elite.

Both men are currently in the rotation mostly out of necessity, and have looked better of late. López has a 3.50 ERA in his four starts since returning to a starting role, albeit without having thrown a single pitch in the sixth inning in any of them. Holmes has allowed just two runs combined in his last two starts, although he didn’t get into the sixth in any of those, either.

The duo feels like they may be options for a game three start, if required, but not game two.

October Verdicts: Better fit for long relief or Game 3

Bryce Elder and Martín Pérez

If we can group together ‘converted relievers with transient status in the rotation’, we can do the same with ‘soft-tossing backend groundball guys.’

Both Elder and Pérez are exactly the type of pitchers you need to get through a 162-game season: They post, they (mostly) don’t get hurt, and they can usually do enough to keep you in a ball game.

But we’ve seen this in the postseason firsthand in the instance of Elder, who got victimized for six runs on five hits (including two homers) in just 2.2 innings by Philly in the 2023 NLDS. And despite Pérez having been more consistent this season, do we really expect anything different from a guy averaging 89.2 mph on his fastballs this season?

October Verdict: Regular-season value, postseason question mark

What Is An Impact Starter?

Notice what all of these conversations have in common.

None of them start with ERA.

They start with one question:

Can this pitcher miss enough bats to survive October?

That’s why front offices care so much about strikeout rate, chase rate, whiff rate, and the ability to turn a lineup over multiple times. The postseason is far less forgiving than a Tuesday night in June.

If none of those answers so far make you immediately comfortable, you’ve just identified why Anthopoulos kept talking about ‘impact starters’ all offseason.

Not a depth starter.

Not back-end starter.

Not sixth starter.

Impact. Because impact starters get the ball in October.

Adding one of the many backend guys who were available until after pitchers and catchers reported, like Chris Bassitt (5.27 ERA), Lucas Giolito (5.16 ERA), or Zack Littell (4.90), wouldn’t have fixed Atlanta’s Game Two problem.

An impact starter isn’t someone who is there to throw 180 innings. They’re there to take the ball in Game 2 of a playoff series. They can miss bats, they limit the walks, and can get themselves out of jams thanks to the ability to use multiple plus pitches to bear down and get strikeouts.

Game Three: Hope is not a plan

If you thought Game Two was grim, then look away, because Game Three is just as bad (if not worse)

The way that Atlanta defers to veterans over prospects, this felt like the right place to look at guys who are not yet established in the majors and/or not pitching in Atlanta at the moment and see if any of them would be a candidate to get the ball in October.

JR Ritchie

I’ve pretty consistently been the low man on Ritchie this season. As someone who profiles as a backend starter from an ‘inability to get whiffs’ perspective (34th percentile 23.2% mark), Ritchie’s prerequisites to be successful include limiting the walks, minimizing hard contact, and keeping the ball on the ground.

He’s struggled at times with all three. Ritchie’s walk rate is 13.9%, just 6th percentile in MLB this season, while his average exit velo is a 38th percentile mark of 89.4 mph. That penchant for hard-hit balls hasn’t been as terrible when translated to barrel rate (56th percentile mark of 7.2%) as he is decently above-average at inducing ground balls with a 68th percentile mark of 45.7%, although the games where he’s gotten into trouble have usually come from a well-timed home run cashing in some free passes.

This is exactly the statistical profile of a pitcher you can survive with over 162 games, but one you probably don’t choose for Game 3 of a playoff series. Nothing in this type of profile screams that his outcomes would be any better than those of Elder or Pérez were you to throw him in October.

October Verdict: Regular-season value, postseason question mark

Owen Murphy

The youngster, who has pitched twice in relief in the majors, makes his first career start tomorrow at home against the Texas Rangers. While he’s been mostly fine in Gwinnett, pitching to a 3.88 ERA in his 60.1 innings, it’s easy to see how he could be more suited to getting the ball in the postseason.

His 92 mph four-seam fastball, while not possessing the elite velocity you’d ideally like from a playoff starter, allowed only a .192 xBA and .365 xSLG for the Stripers. He’s shown the ability to generate both chase and whiff in the minors.

He’s also inexperienced, with just four major league innings to his name. While it’s not unprecedented for prospects to come up midsummer and be starting games in October - Yankees rookie Cam Schlitter did it last year - he also had 14 regular season starts and the capacity for 100 mph under his belt when the postseason arrived.

October Verdict: We need to know more

The injured Spencers

We’ve seen Spencer Strider throw 39 innings this season, with poor results (5.31 ERA) despite decent inputs (3.48 xERA, 95th percentile xBA of .188). We haven’t seen Spencer Schwellenbach at all, with the righthander still rehabbing from a more ‘involved’ version of the elbow scope that Hurston Waldrep had. Despite Waldrep having the surgery later than Schwellenbach, Waldrep began his rehab assignment on June 1st while Schwellenbach is rumored to being getting ready for his in the coming weeks.

Strider’s currently on the IL along with Schwellenbach, being shut down back in early June with “right elbow inflammation” and going on the 60-day injured list soon after. He won’t be eligible for activation until two weeks after the trade deadline, while Schwellenbach’s rehab assignment, even if it were to start tomorrow, would see him out until Strider’s first eligible activation date of August 13th. Neither pitcher should be counted on to contribute this season, never mind be a playoff starter.

October Verdict: You can’t count on it

Just go bullpen game

Quick, can you name all of Atlanta’s starting pitchers in the 2021 World Series? Charlie Morton got game one, Max Fried got games two and six, while Ian Anderson had five no-hit innings in game three.

But both games four and five were bullpen games, with Tucker Davidson starting one and Dylan Lee the other. Atlanta won Lee’s game four, with Kyle Wright serving as the bulk pitcher and giving the team multiple innings, while Davidson’s game five was an Astros comeback win that Drew Smyly finished off with the Braves losing by four.

With this year’s NLDS having off days between games one, two, and four, it’s possible that Atlanta might only need two bona fide playoff starters, and they can piece the rest together out of an expanded bullpen that will have more options and bulk guys than in the regular season.

But just like throwing a prospect in Murphy or a backend guy like Elder, this option doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence. The bullpen has been a strength this season, with four lockdown leverage options in the back and decent stuff across the middle relievers, but the Braves aren’t too practiced at the “opener” concept. Relying on your bullpen to cover even more innings than they’ll already take in a postseason where starters are routinely pulled early is asking for trouble.

Additionally, the more pitchers you throw in a game, the more you’re gambling that someone won’t have an off night. A starter and three or four relievers is already a lot of pitching changes, but throwing six or seven or even eight arms is a recipe for disaster.

October Verdict: Legitimate fallback option, but risky

Can the trade deadline help?

Maybe, depending on how the Wild Card race shakes out in the next two and a half weeks. Atlanta would be best served by not sitting idly by and waiting for that day to come, but rather using the seventeen days to get as much information as possible on each of the above options we’ve discussed.

The Braves need to know who from inside the organization is suited to pitch game two or game three, because the difference matters. If Atlanta needs a Game Two starter, they’re shopping in the luxury aisle. If they need a Game Three starter, they’re shopping for complementary pieces.

If it’s game two’s slot you’re trying to fill, the Braves need to shoot higher than Giants veteran lefty Robbie Ray, and either start talking to the division rival Mets about Freddy Peralta or hope that the Tigers or Red Sox fall out of contention so that Casey Mize or Sonny Gray, respectively, become available. But if they have confidence in internal options for game two and it’s game three to be filled, Ray likely would work for that spot.

The Braves need another starter.

I’m convinced of that.

But that’s never been the interesting question.

The interesting question is:

Which postseason game are they trying to buy?

The answer to that one determines everything else.