The Braves are banking on Spencer Strider and Grant Holmes to essentially replace the innings left by Max Fried and Charlie Morton, respectively. It makes a lot of fans uneasy.
Let’s just assume Strider hits the ground running and doesn’t skip a beat, and Holmes can give the rotation the same production as Morton. That would mean that Chris Sale, Spencer Scwhwellenbach, and Reynaldo Lopez will have to not only replicate their 2024 production but, more importantly, remain healthy.
That’s just not realistic. There’s no scenario in which the Braves rotation only features those five starters — Strider, Sale, Schwellenbach, Lopez, and Holmes. There will be injuries, as always. That means the club will need other arms.
Ian Anderson is a candidate to carve out a role out of Spring Training, but he hasn’t thrown in a major league game in several years. Expectations should be tempered. Bryce Elder is capable of giving the Braves some innings, though I’m not sure how much Atlanta wants to rely on him.
Further down the list, it will be a lot of unproven prospects. However, there are two that inspire confidence that they could contribute in a big way this season, and they have come to North Port with new pitches.
Hurston Waldrep has reintroduced his curveball to his repertoire, while A.J. Smith-Shawver has been working on a cutter, according to Justin Toscano of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“So, the focus, when we got rid of it, was to work on the slider — to work on making the slider kind of the forefront of the arsenal and let it make the splitter better, really,” Waldrep said. “So, adding the curveball back just kind of gives me a little better tool to lefties. It fits my fastball really well out of my arm slot, and it just kind of made sense to bring it back.”
“Just trying to mix in another hard pitch,” Smith-Shawveer said. “Yeah, we’ll see what the final product looks like. You play with things every day and see what you have. But yeah, I’ve been playing with a few things.”
One thing that the greats do is always refining their craft. It was one of the reasons why Max Fried ascended to the point of garnering the largest free agent contract ever for a lefty. Even if he didn’t bring a new pitch to Spring Training, it was figuring out a way to throw a pitch a different way or approaching batters differently.
Hopefully, those refinements will result in AJSS and Waldrep taking the next steps in their respective developments. Chances are, the Braves will need them at some point.
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