The Braves came into the offseason with some notable holes that needed to be filled, some of which were while others remain unaddressed.
The outfield was undoubtedly Atlanta’s top priority. Left field was a black hole for the club in 2024 until Ramon Laureano arrived, and Ronald Acuña Jr. is expected to miss the start of the season as he continues to rehab from a second torn ACL. The Braves had to add an impact bat into the mix, and they did so with the addition of Jurickson Profar.
Profar’s presence gives Atlanta’s lineup the kind of depth they experienced in 2023, when they went onto break a slew of franchise and MLB records, especially when Acuña returns. The Braves offense is again slated to be near the top of the league, but the pitching staff lost a ton of production, and Anthopoulos did absolutely nothing to replace it.
Max Fried most notably signed a record-breaking contract with the Yankees, and Charlie Morton followed his teammate to the AL East, inking a one-year pact with the Orioles. Beyond that, the Braves top reliever over the last five seasons, A.J. Minter, departed for Atlanta’s NL East rival in New York, and Joe Jimenez might miss all of 2025 after undergoing offseason knee surgery. That’s about 400 high-quality innings that the Braves must replace this season, and as of now, all of it will have to be covered by internal options.
Even with the return of Spencer Strider, that’s a huge problem facing Atlanta as Opening Day approaches, but Braves general manager Alex Anthopoulos attempted to defend his lack of action this offseason as he spoke to the media in North Port, Florida.
“I think the biggest difference is we’ve spent a lot on our own players,” Alex Anthopoulos said. “I think we have the most long-term contracts of the majority of teams. When you start looking around the roster, not necessarily in the rotation, but we have long-term contracts all over the place.”
There’s no question the Braves commitments to position players limits their flexibility when it comes to upgrading the roster. Nearly every position is locked up for the foreseeable future; however, nobody should be complaining about the lineup. The pitching staff is the issue, and those team-friendly contracts should give the Braves plenty of flexibility to address other areas of concerns.
But instead of bringing in proven arms, Atlanta has opted to give their internal candidates a shot.
“We’ve lost free agents, no doubt about it, but we have some people we are going to give opportunities to,” Anthopoulos continued. “Strider and Fried are not the same, but we lost Strider for last year, and we had the best ERA in the game, and we lost Fried now but Strider comes back. We lose Charlie Morton, can Grant Holmes take that opportunity and be that guy? We think he’s certainly got a chance to do that.”
On paper, replacing Max Fried and Charlie Morton with Spencer Strider and Grant Holmes shouldn’t scare the Braves. At his best, Strider has much more upside than Fried, and the same could be said for Holmes compared to Morton at this point in their respective careers. However, it’s never that simple.
The Braves are counting on guys to replicate their same success from a year ago, which will be nearly impossible to do. Chris Sale won his first Cy Young after spending five years primarily on the IL, and Reynaldo Lopez pitched to a 1.99 ERA in his first season as a starter in a half-decade. There’s confidence in those guys, but there are also injury concerns, and regression is almost a certainty.
More than anything, depth is a problem for the entire pitching staff. If everybody stays healthy and pitches to the best of their abilities, of course, the Braves will be fine. Unfortunately, that almost never happens, for any team. More pitching is never a bad thing, and nobody knows that as well as the Braves, given how many pitching injuries they’ve suffered over the last several seasons.
One significant injury to one of Atlanta’s top arms — whether it be a starter or reliever — and this team is going to be in scramble mode. Considering how much money this organization makes thanks to incredible fan support, not doing more to address some of these clear needs in the middle of a championship window is a blatant slap in the face to the fan base.
—
Photographer: David J. Griffin/Icon Sportswire
You must log in to post a comment.