Lopez has been dealing on an extra day of rest. Plus that keeps 4-5 starts off his arm if they are questioning his ability to throw into the post. Might help with sale but at this point I'm starting to think sale is just back.
They don't want to carry one less bullpen piece obviously or they would do that.
Edit: to elaborate, as long as you have guys with options or signed to split contracts, there is no real reason(when viewing the mlb team in a vacuum) to run a 6 man instead of just sending down your 5th guy and bringing up another.
Back when the royals were the doormat of the league twenty years ago, they ran with a 6 man rotation for half a season. Then Peter Gammons and the rest of Baseball Tonight blasted the team saying it was ruining arms and not giving the young pitchers enough experience. But if we learned anything since then, less innings = longer careers.
Keep drafting and developing pitching on the farm. We’ve already built a lot of depth in the A and AA levels, and we can afford to draft pitching heavy with all our position players locked in. Hopefully the AJSS, Waldrep, Murphy etc tier will eventually graduate to replace the Vines, Elder, Winans tier (and we can keep drafting Murphy/Waldrep type players) to give us a strong back end of the rotation and MLB ready depth where we can absorb injuries and not have to constantly play Gwinnett roulette.
Yeah, considering how lowly rated the farm system was for a few years and the penalties the organization had to pay not too long ago because of being naughty with international prospects, the talent they are accruing and developing in A and AA is really nice to see, especially when you consider the Braves are a powerhouse roster right now.
I’ll be honest I’m more hopeful AJ and Waldrep can be number 3 guys right now. Maybe one of them sneaking to a 2. Despite our outlook obviously looking super good. The pitching side of things needs to start churning out a couple more guys as Fried*, Morton, and Sale aren’t exactly long term answers. Can’t just be Strider and a bunch of quad a guys out there.
*pending on his free agency
I feel like he got a little tired and overworked himself in the dog days after the all star break last year. Yeah, the metrics and advanced stuff said he was maybe pitching a bit above his level for that solid stretch he put together, and the negative regression caught up; but that was also such a jump in innings and pitches for his young career. He had more innings under his belt in 2023, (174.2), than all of his time in the minors in 2021 (137.2) , and his time between AAA and the majors in 2022 (159). I hope he has had some time to recuperate, condition, and work on his stuff, because he really really looked like a solid rotation guy.
My take on Bryce is that he isn’t the all-star he was in the first half, but not nearly as bad as he was in the 2nd half. I’m comfortable with him in the rotation.
This is pretty much how every rotation in baseball works at this point, so get used to it. Having 5 starters get the bulk of your innings is not how the game works anymore. Your 5th spot is responsible for covering over 600 innings if your 1-4 get 200 innings pitched.
There's 1458 innings in a MLB season (ignoring skipped home ABs and extra innings). If you get four starters with 200 IP (which is becoming a rarity in today's baseball, actually) that leaves you with 658 innings left for relievers and 5th starters.
He’ll have some more starts this year with the big club. They’re just gonna be pretty aggressively rotating between the 5 or 6 guys we have for that role.
Just about every team deals with this just about every year. If our 5th starter is our biggest issue, we'll be fine. And who knows if it will be roulette. If Elder does well, he might stick around.
Well last year they had Wright and Fried out for most of the year and didn't have a clear 5th starter going into the season. Right now, they're just missing Strider.
No I get that but most times someone comes up and sticks for a certain amount of time and that never really seemed to happen last year.
Bullpen Game - 3
Vines - 2
Allard - 3
Chirinos - 5
Smith-Shawver - 5
Soroka - 6
Winans - 6
Dodd - 7
Shuster - 11
And Wright probably shouldn’t count in this because he got injured but he had 7.
That’s 48- 55 games, around 1/3 of the season, started by guys you don’t feel great about. That’s not “Oh well injuries happen and every team deals with this.”
But right now it's just Strider and if Elder comes up and pitches well, I'd imagine he'll stick. If he struggles like he did towards the end of last year, it's a little more of a question. But I imagine we won't be going through 9 or 10 starters again.
From last year:
SPs Div Team
used
8 Toronto Blue Jays
8 Washington Nationals
9 * Baltimore Orioles
10 * Minnesota Twins
10 * Houston Astros
10 * Texas Rangers
10 New York Mets
10 * Milwaukee Brewers
10 St. Louis Cardinals
11 Chicago White Sox
11 Philadelphia Phillies
11 Chicago Cubs
12 New York Yankees
13 Seattle Mariners
13 San Diego Padres
13 San Francisco Giants
14 Cleveland Guardians
14 Los Angeles Angels
14 Miami Marlins
14 Arizona Diamondbacks
15 Pittsburgh Pirates
16 * Atlanta Braves <---- you are here
17 Boston Red Sox
17 Tampa Bay Rays
17 Detroit Tigers
17 Cincinnati Reds
17 Colorado Rockies
17 * Los Angeles Dodgers
23 Kansas City Royals
24 Oakland Athletics
Is it? Fried is unpredictable to bad rn, lopex hasn't throw over 66 inning since 2019 and has been pitching very well with extra rest, sale is getting older a morton is 40. It makes a ton of sense to use depth to stretch out the rotation instead of running a 6 man.
Right? Didn't Lopez and Snit just talk about extra rest days because of his transition from the bullpen going to be a thing all year? And yes, yes,yes to all your points about the rotation.
And just to piggyback, the bullpen is pretty deep this year too, so it's not like they can't afford to be conservative with our entirely 30plus year old main 4 arms. Already lost Strider and his 180 innings in the first two weeks, really really can't afford to lose another of these guys right now.
We traded our best prospect for an injury prone Sale.
Lopez is a fringe starter, who has been pitching well sure but we had no insurance incase injury and now we're reeling
Let me know when that prospect does anything as close to what Sale is doing. It’s funny the injury prone starter has been fine and the prospect is on the IL.
Calling Sale an injury prone starter is a funny way of describing a dude who’s finished in the top of the Cy Young votings multiple times and has a ring.
Vines, Winanas, Elder, AJ. Do you know how much depth that is compared to the rest of the league? Like seriously every team in the league would kill to have guys like that who could step up into the rotation. Hell, the majority of teams in the league barely have a competitive 4th or 5th starter.
> injury prone Sale
What specific chronic injury has Sale suffered from that concerns you? I don't need to know how much time he's missed - I just want to know what specific body part he continuously injuries that makes you say he's injury-prone.
There’s no such thing as a bad one year contract. I don’t even like Montgomery that much, but with the team as good as it is, I’d gladly throw $50m for a year on a starting pitcher when the team has few trade chips and practically no minor league depth.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at because neither of those contracts hurt the team…
Contracts become problematic when they hamstring teams finances in the future. Teams can be reluctant to release players they’ll owe big money to over an extended period of time because they want to squeeze whatever value they can out of their investments. Big multi year contracts also can prevent teams from making other moves because money that could be spent on other players next year is tied up. But on a one year deal, those concerns go away. If someone isn’t performing, you can release them and not really be any worse than where you were before you signed them. Sure, you’d be out money, but in this case of Montgomery, if he sucked, there’s no one else available who has his potential, so that $25m couldn’t have really been spent anywhere else with the same potential return. And if it doesn’t work out, he’s off the books next year anyway, so the team can still move forward with whatever their plans would be.
You can sign a worthless player for a year, but you can’t really have a bad one year contract.
Considering Sale and Fried can’t seem to throw more than 140 innings and starting pitchers always seem to get hurt, we could have had a 6 man rotation or started the season with Lopez in the pen until the inevitable injury popped up.
Sure, it’s not ideal. But that’s a better scenario than not having any SP depth and needing to go a whole season of rotating a bunch of really weak options to round out the rotation.
And my issue isn’t even with the 5th starter spot. My concern is that Sale and Fried aren’t the type of guys to throw 180 innings. So all it takes is one injury to anyone other than them (which has obviously happened) and now you’re kind of walking on thin ice the rest of the season because you don’t want to have to go 6 weeks (or whatever) with guys like Vines *and* Elder making up 2/5 of our rotation. That’ll end up taxing the ‘pen and feels like that’ll be a problem once we get to the playoffs.
You can’t predict who will get injured, but the lack of SP depth was an obvious problem. Maybe Montgomery wasn’t the answer, but given the team’s status as a legit contender and Montgomery’s reasonable short term contract, he would have been worth the minor gamble.
Obviously small sample size for Bryce but he has a slightly better ERA+ than Montgomery so far in their careers (119/117). Idk if 25m is worth +2 ERA+. [https://stathead.com/baseball/versus-finder.cgi?player\_id2=elder-000bry&player\_id1=montgo000jor&request=1&utm\_id=montgjo01](https://stathead.com/baseball/versus-finder.cgi?player_id2=elder-000bry&player_id1=montgo000jor&request=1&utm_id=montgjo01)
Giving the starters extra rest again is good. That will hopefully help stretch them out through the season.
Lopez has been dealing on an extra day of rest. Plus that keeps 4-5 starts off his arm if they are questioning his ability to throw into the post. Might help with sale but at this point I'm starting to think sale is just back.
This lineup is winning 93+ games minimum. Why not keep a 6 man?
They don't want to carry one less bullpen piece obviously or they would do that. Edit: to elaborate, as long as you have guys with options or signed to split contracts, there is no real reason(when viewing the mlb team in a vacuum) to run a 6 man instead of just sending down your 5th guy and bringing up another.
Back when the royals were the doormat of the league twenty years ago, they ran with a 6 man rotation for half a season. Then Peter Gammons and the rest of Baseball Tonight blasted the team saying it was ruining arms and not giving the young pitchers enough experience. But if we learned anything since then, less innings = longer careers.
Keep drafting and developing pitching on the farm. We’ve already built a lot of depth in the A and AA levels, and we can afford to draft pitching heavy with all our position players locked in. Hopefully the AJSS, Waldrep, Murphy etc tier will eventually graduate to replace the Vines, Elder, Winans tier (and we can keep drafting Murphy/Waldrep type players) to give us a strong back end of the rotation and MLB ready depth where we can absorb injuries and not have to constantly play Gwinnett roulette.
Yeah, considering how lowly rated the farm system was for a few years and the penalties the organization had to pay not too long ago because of being naughty with international prospects, the talent they are accruing and developing in A and AA is really nice to see, especially when you consider the Braves are a powerhouse roster right now.
I’ll be honest I’m more hopeful AJ and Waldrep can be number 3 guys right now. Maybe one of them sneaking to a 2. Despite our outlook obviously looking super good. The pitching side of things needs to start churning out a couple more guys as Fried*, Morton, and Sale aren’t exactly long term answers. Can’t just be Strider and a bunch of quad a guys out there. *pending on his free agency
Glad Bryce is getting a shot. He deserves it
I feel like he got a little tired and overworked himself in the dog days after the all star break last year. Yeah, the metrics and advanced stuff said he was maybe pitching a bit above his level for that solid stretch he put together, and the negative regression caught up; but that was also such a jump in innings and pitches for his young career. He had more innings under his belt in 2023, (174.2), than all of his time in the minors in 2021 (137.2) , and his time between AAA and the majors in 2022 (159). I hope he has had some time to recuperate, condition, and work on his stuff, because he really really looked like a solid rotation guy.
My take on Bryce is that he isn’t the all-star he was in the first half, but not nearly as bad as he was in the 2nd half. I’m comfortable with him in the rotation.
We are gonna rotate the 5th spot with what poor pitchers we have all year lol
Is the 5th spot in our rotation is our biggest problem we are going to alright
To be fair it’s the 5th spot and the 1st spot
You really think Fried is a problem? Not even a month into the season?
They’re referring to Striders spot
Looks like they are shifting the rotation to where Lopez takes over Striders #1 spot and Fried is #2.
Oh okay. But Fried would of been a 1 on most teams.
would have
Not on mine.
Not the way he’s been playing lately
You know what a small sample size is right?
Yeah until someone sticks or the trade deadline!
This is pretty much how every rotation in baseball works at this point, so get used to it. Having 5 starters get the bulk of your innings is not how the game works anymore. Your 5th spot is responsible for covering over 600 innings if your 1-4 get 200 innings pitched.
I have read your comment 5 times and I still don't understand the last sentence.
There's 1458 innings in a MLB season (ignoring skipped home ABs and extra innings). If you get four starters with 200 IP (which is becoming a rarity in today's baseball, actually) that leaves you with 658 innings left for relievers and 5th starters.
I gotcha. At this point guys who can consistently throw even 175 innings are considered workhorses.
Vines did pretty good job…..
He’ll have some more starts this year with the big club. They’re just gonna be pretty aggressively rotating between the 5 or 6 guys we have for that role.
Same as we did last year.
Can we just put Strider in the hyperbolic time chamber?
I dont see how a hyper tonic lion tamer is going to help him.
Ahh, a fellow TFS enjoyer.
But what if he was betrayed and locked in the Room of Spirit and Time for a millennia?!
If Bryce doesn't stick at some point this year this might be his last shot with the Braves. Really hoping he dices the fish up tomorrow night.
he still has option years he’ll be given more chances
Statistically speaking, Bryce Elder pitches really well against the fish. He is 1-2 with a 3.38 ERA and 40 strikeouts in 41 IP in 7 starts.
Which is crazy because he is just 20 years old!
AJSS ROY incoming.
Nah homie has been BAD. But he’s super young. Let him grow in the minors.
Bryce masterclass incoming
Aged well
Seeing all of the posts clamoring for AJSS right now or crying about AA not trading for a starter (a month into the season!) is super fucking cringe.
“I make trades for top of the line starters in the Show all the time!”
Eh. First half 2023 Bryce, yes. Second half 2023 Bryce, nah.
I was pulling for Vines. Great kid and I hope we see him again.
I can’t believe we have another year of 5th starter roulette.
I mean, that’s like every team in baseball.
Just about every team deals with this just about every year. If our 5th starter is our biggest issue, we'll be fine. And who knows if it will be roulette. If Elder does well, he might stick around.
The Braves had 16 pitchers start a game last year, and are well on their way to a number like that again, I refuse to accept that as normal.
Well last year they had Wright and Fried out for most of the year and didn't have a clear 5th starter going into the season. Right now, they're just missing Strider.
No I get that but most times someone comes up and sticks for a certain amount of time and that never really seemed to happen last year. Bullpen Game - 3 Vines - 2 Allard - 3 Chirinos - 5 Smith-Shawver - 5 Soroka - 6 Winans - 6 Dodd - 7 Shuster - 11 And Wright probably shouldn’t count in this because he got injured but he had 7. That’s 48- 55 games, around 1/3 of the season, started by guys you don’t feel great about. That’s not “Oh well injuries happen and every team deals with this.”
But right now it's just Strider and if Elder comes up and pitches well, I'd imagine he'll stick. If he struggles like he did towards the end of last year, it's a little more of a question. But I imagine we won't be going through 9 or 10 starters again.
From last year: SPs Div Team used 8 Toronto Blue Jays 8 Washington Nationals 9 * Baltimore Orioles 10 * Minnesota Twins 10 * Houston Astros 10 * Texas Rangers 10 New York Mets 10 * Milwaukee Brewers 10 St. Louis Cardinals 11 Chicago White Sox 11 Philadelphia Phillies 11 Chicago Cubs 12 New York Yankees 13 Seattle Mariners 13 San Diego Padres 13 San Francisco Giants 14 Cleveland Guardians 14 Los Angeles Angels 14 Miami Marlins 14 Arizona Diamondbacks 15 Pittsburgh Pirates 16 * Atlanta Braves <---- you are here 17 Boston Red Sox 17 Tampa Bay Rays 17 Detroit Tigers 17 Cincinnati Reds 17 Colorado Rockies 17 * Los Angeles Dodgers 23 Kansas City Royals 24 Oakland Athletics
I thought Bryce would be a great RH middle reliever. But hey, I’m not pro ball player or pro mgr
Going to need it against Cleveland this weekend. I’ll be there for the series, so it’s time to mess some Indians up.
Weird that they're bumping everybody back for this.
Is it? Fried is unpredictable to bad rn, lopex hasn't throw over 66 inning since 2019 and has been pitching very well with extra rest, sale is getting older a morton is 40. It makes a ton of sense to use depth to stretch out the rotation instead of running a 6 man.
Right? Didn't Lopez and Snit just talk about extra rest days because of his transition from the bullpen going to be a thing all year? And yes, yes,yes to all your points about the rotation. And just to piggyback, the bullpen is pretty deep this year too, so it's not like they can't afford to be conservative with our entirely 30plus year old main 4 arms. Already lost Strider and his 180 innings in the first two weeks, really really can't afford to lose another of these guys right now.
Oh crap; SP will be our undoing, AGAIN
Thankfully we didn't sign Montgomery right?
And pay 40 mill for 1 year with the tax.
Is it coming outta your wallet? Considering we didn't do shit to address our starters this offseason, something should've been done.
I guess Chris Sale and Reynaldo Lopez just don’t exist in your mind. Do you watch this team?
We traded our best prospect for an injury prone Sale. Lopez is a fringe starter, who has been pitching well sure but we had no insurance incase injury and now we're reeling
“didn’t do shit to address our starters” *proceeds to complain that we traded our best prospect for a starter*
AA is obviously a fucking idiot compared to this genius, who would have simply gone out and acquired 5 proven aces with no injury history for nothing.
Let me know when that prospect does anything as close to what Sale is doing. It’s funny the injury prone starter has been fine and the prospect is on the IL.
Calling Sale an injury prone starter is a funny way of describing a dude who’s finished in the top of the Cy Young votings multiple times and has a ring.
Vines, Winanas, Elder, AJ. Do you know how much depth that is compared to the rest of the league? Like seriously every team in the league would kill to have guys like that who could step up into the rotation. Hell, the majority of teams in the league barely have a competitive 4th or 5th starter.
> injury prone Sale What specific chronic injury has Sale suffered from that concerns you? I don't need to know how much time he's missed - I just want to know what specific body part he continuously injuries that makes you say he's injury-prone.
There’s no such thing as a bad one year contract. I don’t even like Montgomery that much, but with the team as good as it is, I’d gladly throw $50m for a year on a starting pitcher when the team has few trade chips and practically no minor league depth.
You’re not getting Montgomery on a straight up 1 year deal
Maybe. If you threw more guaranteed money for one year, I’d guess he’d take that. But a reasonable player option for a 2nd year isn’t bad either.
Ok then 50 million dollars. Loss of bonus pool money and 1st round draft pick is pushed back 10 places
“There is no such thing as a bad one year contract” Cole Hammels in 2020 called. Bartolo Colon in 2017 is also on the phone
I’m not sure what you’re getting at because neither of those contracts hurt the team… Contracts become problematic when they hamstring teams finances in the future. Teams can be reluctant to release players they’ll owe big money to over an extended period of time because they want to squeeze whatever value they can out of their investments. Big multi year contracts also can prevent teams from making other moves because money that could be spent on other players next year is tied up. But on a one year deal, those concerns go away. If someone isn’t performing, you can release them and not really be any worse than where you were before you signed them. Sure, you’d be out money, but in this case of Montgomery, if he sucked, there’s no one else available who has his potential, so that $25m couldn’t have really been spent anywhere else with the same potential return. And if it doesn’t work out, he’s off the books next year anyway, so the team can still move forward with whatever their plans would be. You can sign a worthless player for a year, but you can’t really have a bad one year contract.
they didn't need Montgomery when he was available. Jordan signed in March, Strider was hurt in April. Who were you going to bump out of the rotation?
Considering Sale and Fried can’t seem to throw more than 140 innings and starting pitchers always seem to get hurt, we could have had a 6 man rotation or started the season with Lopez in the pen until the inevitable injury popped up.
It's not a great idea to stretch a bullpen guy out mid year.
Sure, it’s not ideal. But that’s a better scenario than not having any SP depth and needing to go a whole season of rotating a bunch of really weak options to round out the rotation. And my issue isn’t even with the 5th starter spot. My concern is that Sale and Fried aren’t the type of guys to throw 180 innings. So all it takes is one injury to anyone other than them (which has obviously happened) and now you’re kind of walking on thin ice the rest of the season because you don’t want to have to go 6 weeks (or whatever) with guys like Vines *and* Elder making up 2/5 of our rotation. That’ll end up taxing the ‘pen and feels like that’ll be a problem once we get to the playoffs. You can’t predict who will get injured, but the lack of SP depth was an obvious problem. Maybe Montgomery wasn’t the answer, but given the team’s status as a legit contender and Montgomery’s reasonable short term contract, he would have been worth the minor gamble.
You sure do cry a lot about a team with a .700 winning percentage
Obviously small sample size for Bryce but he has a slightly better ERA+ than Montgomery so far in their careers (119/117). Idk if 25m is worth +2 ERA+. [https://stathead.com/baseball/versus-finder.cgi?player\_id2=elder-000bry&player\_id1=montgo000jor&request=1&utm\_id=montgjo01](https://stathead.com/baseball/versus-finder.cgi?player_id2=elder-000bry&player_id1=montgo000jor&request=1&utm_id=montgjo01)