Will the Braves Actually Sign a Starter This Winter?

The Atlanta Braves want to add to their rotation this offseason, but don't have a habit of breaking the bank to do so.

The 2025 Atlanta Braves used a MLB-record 71 players this season, including 46 unique pitchers (two being position players) and 19 different starters.

Not only were both of the pitching marks a franchise record, they cleared easily - Atlanta’s previous high for total pitchers was 37 and total starters was just 16. That’s what happens when the team is forced to put all five members of the Opening Day rotation on the 60-day injured list, as happened this season.

It’s what led President of Baseball Operations Alex Anthopoulos to declare that when it came to offseason priorities, the rotation was “absolutely front burner”.

Let’s talk about it.

These injuries were not normal

I mean, duh, but let’s quantify that.

The Braves typically plan for one or two starting rotation injuries every season, with Anthopoulos able to rattle off some of the recent losses. “ You’re not going to be a perfect club, but you know (with) that rotation and losing a number of starters, we’d lose a (Max) Fried for a significant period, we’d lose a (Michael) Soroka, we’d lose a Kyle Wright, um, we’d lose a (Spencer) Strider, you know, but if you’re losing five to six, that one’s tough. And that’s, look: we’re still gonna examine things and say ‘how do we make sure that we don’t have that again?’ Obviously, there’s a ton of injuries across the game, but over a seven-year period before this year, (even) knowing we’re going to have injuries, it never reached a critical mass like that.

The injuries were so severe across the pitching staff this season that of Atlanta’s 46 pitchers used this year, 17 appeared in three games or fewer, with nine different starters getting the ball three or fewer times.

On the whole, Braves starters had a 4.48 record, striking out just under one batter an inning on the season (861 strikeouts in 866 innings).

The good news is this winter has several top-tier starters available on the free market: Dylan Cease and Michael King of the San Diego Padres, Framber Valdez of the Houston Astros, and Zac Gallen of the Arizona Diamondbacks.

The bad news is that the track record for Alex Anthopoulos doesn’t give hope that the Braves will meet the top-of-the-market price for either of the four arms.

Anthopoulos is uber-conservative in free agency

It’s going to be hard to square these next two facts I drop here with the realization that this team was merely thousands of dollars away from the third CBT tier in 2024, but here goes:

While running the Atlanta Braves (since October 2017), Alex Anthopoulos has given out exactly one free agent contract that exceeded either three years or $42M: Marcell Ozuna’s four-year, $65M deal signed in February of 2021.

And that wasn’t technically what you would think of as a free agent deal, as Ozuna spent the previous season with Atlanta on a one-year, $18M contract. Sure, he was officially a free agent, but it was Anthopoulos bringing back a player who had been on the roster the previous season.

If you look at true free agents, i.e. ‘this guy didn’t play for Atlanta the season before he signed the deal’, it’s a laughably small list. The top contract here is Reynaldo López’s three-year, $30M deal he signed prior to the 2024 season.

‘But wait, there are giant contracts out there to Matt Olson, Austin Riley, Spencer Strider, and all that! What are you talking about?’

Those are extensions, rhetorical voice I created for this exercise. Those players were already under contract with Atlanta and the Braves just gave them a longer, more lucrative deal. They weren’t free agent deals.

Now, that doesn’t mean the Braves don’t sign a starter from that group at all, mind you. It just means that they’re likely to go after a guy that will sign a shorter deal with the intention of creating a platform year that gets him to the multi-season pact he is looking for.

It’s important to point out here that the Braves have offered larger deals to free agents in the past, they just haven’t been able to land those guys. Aaron Nola, who spurned the Braves to return to Philly last season, was reportedly offered six years and $162M. The reported final offer to Freddie Freeman in 2022 was five years and $140M. Both deals would have been over the ‘Atlanta Max’ of $22M AAV.

I’m looking at Dylan Cease and Zac Gallen here, for different reasons.

Cease went 8-12 with a 4.55 ERA and barely cleared 1.0 bWAR.¹ His strikeout rate of 11.5 K/9 led all of baseball, but his walk rate of 9.8% was above MLB-average and a spike from the 8.5% rate he flashed his first season in San Diego.

Cease’s struggles seemed to come from a deterioration of his stuff and some bad luck. While his fastball had its highest average velocity (97.1 mph) and Stuff+ (104, per FanGraphs), his slider took a minor step back (from an absurd 121 Stuff+ to ‘only’ an elite 115 Stuff+), and the knuckle-curve went from a 98 to a 92.

He also was the victim of some bad luck - his expected ERA, per Statcast, was a 3.47, which would have had him nearly identical in performance to last season’s actual ERA of 3.47.

While it likely won’t be cheap, a one or two-year deal for Cease (if he’s concerned about the lockout) of something around $25M AAV could do the trick.

Gallen’s in similar “pillow deal” territory, too. His 13-15, 4.83 season set career-worst marks for losses, ERA, HRs allowed (31), and strikeout rate (21.5%). Interestingly, his Stuff+ readings for his fastball also rose (from 95 to 98) while everything else either decreased or was within one point of last year’s figure. The fastball velocity was in his same 93-94 wheelhouse, slightly ticking up down the stretch, but he just failed to reliably miss bats with anything other than his knuckle curve (38.9% whiff rate) and changeup (30.2%).

Similar to Cease, a one or two-year deal around $18-20M AAV for Gallen is likely the way to go, although I’d rather have Cease than Gallen. Let me explain why.

It comes back to velocity

Baseball America dropped some fascinating work on Tuesday, looking at pitcher fastball velocity and the outcomes it leads to for a career. Titled “To Have A Lengthy MLB Career, Pitchers Need To Throw Hard”, Editor-in-Chief J.J. Cooper did the research and determined that fastball velocity is the single most important determining characteristic for success in MLB for starters. Sure, they’re more likely to be hurt - throwing harder puts more stress on the UCL - but when they throw softer, those arms are much more likely to wash out of the league due to ineffectiveness than the hard-thrower is likely to get hurt.

If you have a Baseball America subscription, I’d highly recommend reading it - exceptionally well-researched and presented.

The part that I’m pulling out to apply to the Cease vs Gallen debate is a pitcher’s four-seamer against the average fastball velocity in MLB over time. You see, the average fastball velocity has been climbing virtually every season since pitch-tracking came to Statcast. If you’re slightly above average on velocity now, you’ll likely be average within two seasons.

Which is why I’m hopeful for Cease over Gallen, despite the payroll discrepancy. Cease’s average fastball velocity of 97.1 mph (and rising) means that he should age better over the back half of the deal than Gallen, who is already slightly below average at 93.5 mph.

What if they skip the ‘Big Four’ pitchers?

They’re still looking at more ‘soft-tossers’ than is ideal. Lefty Ranger Suárez, who is potentially leaving Philly this season, averages just 90.5 mph on his sinker this season. Righty Chris Bassitt of the Toronto Blue Jays will head to the open market with an average fastball velocity of just 91.5. Teammate Shane Bieber, acquired at the trade deadline after he spent most of the year rehabbing from Tommy John, is also in the slow lane at 92.6 mph. Milwaukee Brewers righty Brandon Woodruff, who returned from a significant shoulder injury, averaged 93.0 mph in his 64.2 innings.

It’s not all meatballs in free agency, mind you - Framber Valdez is right around average at 94.2, which is actually slightly above-average for a lefty - but there’s just not a lot of velocity available on the market this year outside of pure reclamation projects like Dustin May (94.8 mph).

It’s likely that Atlanta would need to look in the trade market for an arm, with several names coming to mind. We’ll break down some of those options later this week.

1. FanGraphs has him at 3.4 fWAR and I’m not smart enough to know how the two calculations differ THAT much)