Will Atlanta's Prospect Depth Be Enough to Back the Rotation?

Atlanta’s farm has talent on the mound, but can it hold up through a full season?

The Atlanta Braves are planning on addressing the rotation this winter. President of Baseball Operations Alex Anthopoulos said as much, telling reporters after the season that “rotation is absolutely a front-burner need” this offseason.

Part of the reason Atlanta needs to address the rotation was not just the injuries suffered last season - at one point, all five members of the Opening Day rotation were on the 60-day injured list - but also a lack of quality minor league options in 2025.

Are they in a similar place in 2026, or will there be higher-quality options coming out of the farm system next season?

Let’s talk about it.

You can’t reasonably be prepared for everything

2025’s rotation injuries were unprecedented. Quite literally, that was the first time in MLB history that a team had all five Opening Day starters on the 60-day injured list at the same time.

Alex Anthopoulos is aware that trying to plan for that contingency is a waste of resources that could be better applied elsewhere, as well as just being extremely difficult. “ It’s hard to amass depth. Because you’re not gonna likely sign established starters to be in Gwinnett. You’re likely not gonna sign or trade for established starters to be in the bullpen. So, um, can you overindex and overbook a little bit? Maybe go into spring training with six and work your way through that. Maybe someone’s in the bullpen, but you know, something’s likely gonna happen” (to create playing time for whoever is initially left out.)

Brian Snitker’s stated goal was always to get to spring training with seven different starting rotation options, on the assumption that one would go down in Grapefruit League action or soon after.

I’m fond of saying that ‘depth will always work itself out’, which is part of the reason I’ve been so hesitant to trade catcher Sean Murphy after the breakout of rookie backstop Drake Baldwin. But with pitching, that’s doubly so. To Anthopoulos’ point, someone is likely to go down early in a season for an extended absence. Here’s a look at recent seasons and which starters went on the 60-day IL that year.

2024: Spencer Strider (missed 177 days)
2023: Max Fried (missed 90 days plus two other 15-day IL stays); Kyle Wright (130 days)
2022: Michael Soroka (147 days)
2021: Soroka (full season), Touki Toussaint (106 days), Huascar Ynoa (92 days), Tucker Davidson (133 days)

Coming to spring training with at least six options, if not more, should be the goal here.

They have some flexibility

The Braves have some flexibility here on this, as they are potentially going to have two former relievers that can either return to the bullpen or stay in the rotation.

Reynaldo López was fantastic in 2024, returning to the rotation with a 1.99 ERA over 25 starts and 135.2 innings. While the peripherals show he may have been a bit lucky - a 2.92 FIP and a 3.94 xERA - he looked every bit the part of a top-three starting pitcher. He just wasn’t able to repeat the feat in 2025, however, making just one regular-season start before going down with arthroscopic shoulder surgery that ended his season.

He was throwing off a mound late in the year and is reportedly open to a move back to the bullpen, although he has a stated preference to start.

Grant Holmes, similarly, attempted non-surgical rehab on his partially torn UCL with a goal of being fully healthy and without restriction for spring training. He could stick in the rotation or move back to the bullpen, where he pitched after debuting for Atlanta in 2024.

And the flexibility of both guys is definitely a good thing, as it allows Atlanta to be choosy on their rotation reinforcement this winter. In the best-case scenario, the Braves add a top-flight starter and they can bump Holmes into the bullpen, with López either taking the #5 spot in the rotation with impressive youngster Hurston Waldrep starting the year in Triple-A Gwinnett, or with Waldrep as the #5 and López working as the team’s closer.

Chris Sale
Spencer Strider
Spencer Schwellenbach
Offseason addition
Reynaldo López

And if the Braves are not able to make that add, they can pencil López into the rotation and let Holmes compete with Waldrep for the final spot.

To use AA’s own words, you can overbook/overindex to a point. But what happens when someone goes down midseason? That’s where the prospects come in.

In a better position to contribute this season

One of the more frustrating aspects of the 2025 rotation injuries was that several notable prospects were, for one reason or another, not in a position to contribute meaningful innings at the major league level.

Of the team’s top ten pitching prospects on the end-of-season Braves Prospect Composite, only two of them appeared in the majors this season - Waldrep and 20-year-old Didier Fuentes. While Waldrep acquitted himself well, pitching to a 2.88 ERA in his ten appearances, Fuentes struggled. The youngster ended up with a 13.85 ERA in four starts before being sent back to Gwinnett. Several other prospects either struggled early (like Drue Hackenberg) or were coming back from injuries of their own that prevented them from hitting enough development milestones to be on the team’s radar for a debut.

Anthopoulos believes that this year’s crop of prospects is the key to being competitive, and he’s aware that you need as many of them as possible.

“Normally, your depth has to be young, inexperienced guys that have options and/or a minor league free agent that is falling on hard times and is trying to rebuild his career and get himself going, and so on. Those are both fraught with risk. They’re going to come with risk, right? The guy who’s trying to rebuild himself is obviously coming off a down year, signing (a) minor league deal. The young player is the young player, so you want them to be (Spencer) Strider coming up and doing well. You want them to be (Michael) Soroka, (Ian) Andersen, (Spencer) Schwellenbach and so on. But you can’t guarantee they’re gonna come up and hit the ground running.”

The good news is that, barring injury, there should be more than two young guys with options that could get some Major League run next season. Let’s look at some of the possible options.

Gwinnett’s rotation could be loaded

Even operating on the assumption that Hurston Waldrep will start the year with Atlanta and not Gwinnett (he deserves to be with the Braves based on performance, but the fact that he has minor league options means it’s not guaranteed to happen that way), the Stripers still look to have a ton of talent in their rotation.

JR Ritchie profiles as the team’s number one starter on talent, followed by fellow righty Blake Burkhalter. While both are options to pitch in Atlanta next season, Burkhalter is likely to debut first, owing to his experience as a college closer and the fact that Burkhalter likely gets added to the 40-man this winter to be protected from the Rule 5 draft. Didier Fuentes will return to Triple-A to start 2026 and is another option to make an early appearance if his offseason development delivers the needed improvements in his control. Another late-season promotion to Gwinnett, Lucas Braun, will likely be in the mix sometime after the All-Star Break.

For the other part of AA’s answer, guys on minor league deals looking to get back into the majors, I’m guessing Davis Daniel and Ian Anderson are those guys as of now.

But every season, there’s one surprise performer that comes out of nowhere. Someone shoots through the system, starting in the low minors before debuting sometime in the first half:

2021: Spencer Strider, who started the season in Single-A and debuted in October
2023: AJ Smith-Shawver, who started the season in A+ and debuted in June
2024: Spencer Schwellenbach, who started the season in A+ and debuted in May
2025: Didier Fuentes, who started the season in A+ and debuted in June

And I know who my pick is to be that guy in 2026.

Let’s talk about Luke

Luke Sinnard, like a lot of Braves draft picks, was a promising arm that was taken by Atlanta somewhat early in his draft while rehabbing from Tommy John surgery. He blew out while pitching in a 2023 Regional for Indiana, missing his entire draft season before the Braves took him in 2024’s 3rd round.

He returned to Single-A Augusta this season in early April, his first game action in roughly 20 months, and pitched well before going down right after his promotion to High-A Rome with a stress reaction in his elbow. He’s making up for that month and a half IL absence in the desert, part of Atlanta’s contingent in the Arizona Fall League, and he’s impressed so far. Pitching five innings, he’s struck out six with no walks, allowing just one run on two hits.

But even more impressive than that brief statline is how he’s doing it. He’s throwing five pitches, including all three fastballs, backed by a slider and a splitter. The four-seamer has averaged 95.5 with 17.4 inches of induced vertical break so far in the AFL, while the sinker’s at 93.5 and the cutter’s at 89.5. While his 82 mph slider hasn’t graded out that well from a Stuff+ perspective (78), he has a 107 (sinker), a 106 (four-seamer), and a 99 Stuff+ cutter.

He’s clearly working on things in Arizona, likely at the team’s direction, as he’s barely used either the slider (and when he has thrown it, it’s elevated towards the very top of the zone) or the splitter.

Quick sidebar here. The elevated breaking ball is going to take the league by storm next year. With the addition of the ABS Challenge system, the ability to “steal” a strike thanks to a hitter automatically ignoring a breaking ball that appears to be up when it comes out of the hand, only for it to catch the very top edge of the zone, will be a weapon for the guys with enough control to not hang it. Several of the player development/pitching nerd folks I’ve talked to report that they’ve already seen players working on it this winter.

Here’s one of Sinnard’s strikeouts in the desert, coming on an elevated breaking ball for strike three:

If I’m picking a prospect that will shoot through the system to end up throwing 40 innings for Atlanta this season, give me Sinnard.

But even if he doesn’t end up getting that much run for the Braves, there should be plenty of options for prospects in Gwinnett to reinforce the rotation through the slog of another Atlanta summer.