Atlanta's Rotation Struggles in 2023 Could Pay Dividends in 2024

Injury issues to the 2023 Atlanta Braves have left this year's roster with extra options they can use to their advantage

The Atlanta Braves shouldn't expect another year like 2023 from their pitching staff. 

There was so much promise as the calendar clicked over from 2022 - the Braves were returning two thirty-game starters in Max Fried and Kyle Wright, a duo that combined for 35 wins and 365.2 innings the previous season. Wright's 21 wins led all of baseball, while Fried was the runner-up to Miami Marlins great Sandy Alcántara for the NL Cy Young award. Oh yeah, and there was a full season on deck for young phenom Spencer Strider, the runner up for 2022 NL Rookie of the Year. 

Instead, Atlanta saw sixteen different pitchers make starts after Wright and Fried combined for only 108.2 innings, with Wright pitching to an ERA just shy under 7.00 and later being traded to the Kansas City Royals after shoulder surgery will sideline him out for the entire 2024 season. 

Per the Baseball Prospectus IL Ledger, Atlanta's 24 total IL placements for pitchers tied the Colorado Rockies for most in MLB.

But things should be better in 2024, because 2023 wasn't normal. Not at all. 

Sixteen starters is a LOT

Going back the last five years, Atlanta's sixteen different starters and thirteen true starters - three starts were from relievers working as "openers" - from last season is the highest total for the Braves.

It wasn't the highest over that span in all of baseball - wasn't the highest just last season, in fact, with the Oakland A's having 24 different pitchers take the ball to start games in 2023.

But for Atlanta, it was out of character. Here's what the Braves have done since 2019 for number of different starters in one season:

Year	Different Starters	Relievers as Openers	"True Starters"
2023	16	3	13
2022	12	3	10
2021	11	1	10
2020	14	2	12
2019	11	2	9

(Relievers who opened games for Atlanta in 2023 included Jesse Chavez, Collin McHugh, and Dylan Lee.)

Atlanta's count of 13 different "true starters" in 2023 even outpaced the COVID-shortened 2020 season, which saw teams forced to scramble emergency starters off of the taxi squad and from the alternate site as COVID testing, contact tracing, and mild fevers wreaked havoc on rotation plans. 

But Atlanta still persevered in 2023, winning over 100 games despite having Max Fried for only 14 starts and 77.2 innings, owing to the contributions of unheralded arms like Darius Vines (1-0, 3.98 ERA in five appearances, two starts), top prospect AJ Smith-Shawver (1-0, 4.26 ERA in six appearances, five starts), and Allan Winans (1-2, 5.29 ERA in six starts). 

Was it perfect? No. But it was valuable experience for both the players and the team. 

Take Allan Winans, for instance. The righty, selected by Atlanta in the minor league portion of the 2021 Rule 5 Draft, dominated his former team, the New York Mets, in his second career start. Just a week after debuting against the Milwaukee Brewers to only fair results, Winans took the bump in Citi Field and gave Atlanta seven scoreless innings against their divisional rival, striking out nine with only four hits and two walks. 

Buuuut then, Atlanta sent him back to the bump the next week against - you guessed it - those same Mets, and the lack of top-end "stuff" came back to hurt Winans: seven runs on nine hits in only 4.1 innings. Atlanta would go on to lose the game, 10-4. 

You see, Winans threw 155 combined sinkers and four-seas fastballs last season in the majors. The average speed for those pitches was 89.7 mph. Winans buttered his bread with an amazing changeup and a well-located slider, but facing the Mets back to back essentially gave them a 4th, 5th, and 6th at-bat against him. There's only so much sequencing you can do with four sub-90 mph pitches against a hitter who is facing you for the sixth at-bat in six days. 

The Braves learned a lesson that day. So did Winans. 

There is some turnover, but not too much

Not all of the pitchers that took starts for Atlanta last season are back. Of those three "openers" mentioned above, only Dylan Lee is still with the organization. Of the starters, several have moved on: Kyle Wright, as we mentioned above, was traded to Kansas City. Michael Soroka was traded to the Chicago White Sox. Yonny Chirinos was released, and is now with the Miami Marlins, while Kolby Allard reached free agency and signed with the Philadelphia Phillies. 

But Atlanta's got options: Once you get past your top six rotation options of Strider, Fried, Morton, Sale, López, and Elder, there's still more than a full rotation waiting for you in AAA Gwinnett:

RHP AJ Smith-Shawver
RHP Hurston Waldrep
RHP Allan Winans
RHP Darius Vines
LHP Dylan Dodd
RHP Huascar Ynoa

And if that's not enough, there's more reinforcements arriving to Gwinnett roughly around midseason in righty Ian Anderson, who is working his way back from Tommy John surgery.  

None of those, as of now, are probably guys you want starting a postseason game for you (well, Smith-Shawver and/or Waldrep might be able to - I was ready to give AJSS that game three start last season). Ian Anderson, who went 2-0 in four postseason starts in 2021, is potentially another, once he regains his pre-injury form. 

But if you need them from April through September, they're just 36 miles down the road, in Gwinnett's Coolray Field. 

And that's comforting. 

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