Braves front office failed in fixing rotation

The Braves needed more starting pitching, and the front office failed to help fill a huge deficiency

If you sat and watched your Tweet deck all Monday afternoon, only to not see a new trade pop up to strengthen the Atlanta Braves rotation, you were likely disappointed.

You might have even been mad. Shocked. Dumbfounded. Name a negative emotion, and Braves fans likely had it.

For the first time really in his tenure as Atlanta’s general manager, Alex Anthopoulos did not help his club when it needed him the most. He’s been good at filling needs, including last year at the trade deadline when he fixed the pathetic bullpen. But not this year.

This year it was an epic fail. Yes, a failure. The starting rotation for the Braves has collapsed, with really only Max Fried as the dependable starter. And he’s a Cy Young candidate. The rest of the starters have pitched more like Neil Young.

Fried is 6-0 with a 1.60 earned run average. The other Atlanta starters are a combined 1-10 with a 7.23 ERA.

And yet, a team in first place that desperately needed help to do anything special in the postseason only got a journeyman pitcher the day before the trade deadline.

Most thought Tommy Milone would be the first of two or three starters acquired. That’s what the Braves needed, several new starters. Milone went out Sunday, only hours after being acquired from Baltimore, and seemed like he fit right in with the non-Fried starters. Milone went 2.1 innings and gave up seven runs.

The biggest problem is Milone’s stuff. I thought the playoffs were where you needed hard throwers? Milone’s four-seam fastball tops out at 86 m.p.h. He’s a modern-day Jamie Moyer, depending on location and command instead of ever thinking he could blow someone away.

Anthopoulos said Monday after the deadline he tried to get more help, but the price to get a Mike Clevinger from Cleveland or a Lance Lynn from Texas, pitchers who would compliment Fried at the top of a rotation in a playoff series, was just too high.

But this is a rotation with a staff ace (Fried), a pitcher who just made his MLB debut last week (Ian Anderson), along with three pitchers who have been swing men on pitching staffs for the last few seasons (Milone, Robbie Erlin and Josh Tomlin).

If the Braves had to set a playoff rotation tomorrow, what in the world would they do? Okay, Fried is a given, and then they must pray Anderson is good enough to be the number two. And then what? Milone, Erlin or Tomlin?

The ERAs for those three pitchers as starters this year: Erlin (4.50), Milone (5.68) and Tomlin (7.50). The career ERAs for these three: Milone (4.51), Erlin (4.65) and Tomlin (4.68).

Not exactly Glavine, Maddux, and Smoltz, are they?

Why was Toronto, who had much fewer rotation problems than Atlanta, able to acquire three starting pitchers in the last week before the deadline? Taijuan Walker, Robbie Ray and Ross Stripling might not be three ace pitchers, but they would have been better than the Braves’ bottom three options.

Anthopoulos predictably mentioned the possibility of Cole Hamels coming back from being injured all year. Then he talked about how Mike Foltynewicz has gained weight and gained more velocity on his fastball. Then he talked about how Bryse Wilson and Kyle Wright have made adjustments at the alternate camp.

Blah, blah, blah.

This team was desperate for help. And Anthopoulos could not do better than Tommy Milone? Is that an indictment on the Braves prospects we’ve heard so much about since the rebuild, that there are not good enough to have other teams be interested in for trades? That’s awful.

Fans will wonder if this was Liberty Media being cheap, and it’s a fair question. Sure, there are financial constraints on every team with fans not in the stands this season, but this franchise has been printing money since it moved into its new home. That excuse seems thin.

Maybe the great bullpen Anthopoulos has constructed can compensate for the shaky rotation. Maybe Hamels can miraculously return to do something to earn his huge contract, or maybe one of the demoted four pitchers who failed in Atlanta can return in a blaze of glory.

But these players and this team deserved a better chance to do something in October. They deserved the front office doing something besides simply adding Milone. Anthopoulos failed, and the Braves will need a miracle to overcome his mistake.

Email Bill at TheBillShanksShow@yahoo.com.