Julio Teheran
Splashless
By: TJ Hartnett
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
During the last offseason, Braves Country waited for what seemed like forever for the Atlanta front office to make a splash.
It seemed like for a long while that Atlanta’s fans would be disappointed, but finally the day came when Alex Anthopoulos and company pulled the trigger on two signings that would figure into the Braves’ plans to improve upon their surprising win of the NL East in 2018.
Both Josh Donaldson and Brian McCann were announced to have inked to 1-year deals on the same day.
McCann, in what would be his final season as a big-league catcher, thrived in his return home.
Donaldson merely returned to his heyday form, hitting 37 home runs alongside a .900 OPS and providing the necessary protection behind Freddie Freeman to allow the first baseman to put up his career-best season. Not to mention, being a positive force in the clubhouse who became beloved by the fanbase and provided clutch hits throughout the season (but was he worth the $23 million price tag? Asking for a friend/editor).
It was the kind of banner news day that the Braves were craving.
This year the Braves made moves earlier in the offseason and yet again made news involving two different players on the same day. Though this time they were re-signing two of the pieces from their two-time division-winning team, instead of bringing in new blood.
Nick Markakis and Tyler Flowers actually both had their options declined by the Braves (as did Julio Teheran) but were then each signed to a new, 1-year, $4 million contract.
Essentially, they make the same amount of money after the buyouts are added in, but the Braves save some money on payroll because those buyouts are considered 2019 money.
The Braves still have time to make a big splash (Donaldson negotiations are, one imagines, ongoing), but this two-fer day certainly lacked the excitement of last year’s.
For one, neither of these players are likely to be everyday guys anymore or at least, they shouldn’t be.
Markakis has fallen off in a big way each of the past two years during the second half. He’s well-respected and a good hand to have, but his days of being able to spend a season in the middle of the order are behind him. Hopefully the Braves are looking at him as a backup or at most a platoon player going into 2020.
Flowers has been splitting time at catcher for a few years now to great success. First with Kurt Suzuki and then with McCann. It’s time for him to fall into a true backup role, even though that’s an imperfect solution for his presence on the roster as well.
Flowers’ primary skill is pitch framing. He’s one of the best in the league at stealing strikes for his pitchers; but he also led the majors in passed balls in 2019 as a part-time player.
Plus, he’s consistently been the lesser hitter of his platoon. So, he’s good at framing, which would be helpful five times a week, but bad at catching the ball, which should prevent him from playing five times a week. And he’s a poor hitter, so coming off the bench doesn’t serve anyone well.
The key to Flowers coming back not being a bad decision will be acquiring a front-line backstop. The Braves should be in on the likes of Yasmani Grandal, but they’ll have competition and without a Suzuki or a McCann, Flowers is going to get exposed. This is a big need.
The 2019 offseason has already had some movement, but not coupled with the excitement that 2018’s did around this time.
Luckily, there’s still a lot of road ahead for the Braves to make moves that will take Atlanta to the next level.
Arms Race
By: TJ Hartnett
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
For most of 2019 the Atlanta Braves’ bullpen has shouldered most of the criticism for the team.
Braves Country has clamored for relief help for months, decrying that Craig Kimbrel signed elsewhere when the Braves really needed him.
Despite the fact that the Braves have had one of the top bullpens in the National League since June 1st, the idea that the relief corps is struggling has continued, but that notion is starting to shift.
Max Fried hit the 10-day IL with an injury last week and it started off a chain reaction that has exposed the Braves’ actual need: depth of starting pitching.
With prospects coming out of their ears, this might sound crazy, but guys the Braves were counting on to be reliable this season – namely Mike Foltynewicz, Kevin Gausman, and to a lesser extent Sean Newcomb – have been anything but.
Even with the injuries and poor showings by those three, the Braves have roared to the top of the NL East behind a stellar season from Mike Soroka, consistently good outings by Max Fried, a return to form by Julio Teheran, and the recent addition of Dallas Keuchel.
But after Fried went down, the Braves starting plugging holes with pieces that haven’t been up to snuff.
Bryce Wilson and Kyle Wright are talented pitchers and may very well still be huge parts of Atlanta’s future, but they haven’t been able to perform at the level that a first-place team needs them to. Certainly not Wright, who couldn’t make it out of the 3rd inning in his start against the Washington Nationals on Thursday.
And that’s the biggest sign that the Braves don’t have the depth they need in the rotation: Going into a four-game series against the team directly under them in the standings (and a scorching hot team to boot), the Braves pitched an unproven rookie in the first game and turned to Gausman and his 6.21 ERA to prevent a second straight series loss in game four (that previous series loss, to the Brewers, came ominously after Fried hit the IL and was Atlanta’s first series loss since the first week in June).
The Braves have just about a week and a half before the trade deadline (remember: starting this year, July 31st is the ONLY trade deadline). Gausman and Folty might turn things around, but Alex Anthopoulos can’t bet the whole season on that.
Atlanta needs to start wheeling and dealing for rotation help or – even if they manage to hold on to their NL East lead – they’ll get eaten alive in the playoffs, again, probably by the Dodgers, again.
Marcus Stroman, Zack Greinke, Trevor Bauer, Zach Wheeler, Madison Bumgarner; these are all potentially available pitchers that could make a difference in Atlanta’s fortunes.
They don’t need to go out and try to pick up the most dominant ace in the history of the game, but they need reliability on the mound every turn through.
It’s always stress-inducing to give up prospects. No one wants to overpay, but the price for the kind of pitcher the Braves need to succeed in the postseason is going to be steep.
That’s okay. The time of considering the future is in the past. The Braves have a chance to win in the here and now, but only if they act.
The comfortable lead the Braves carved out for themselves is getting less comfortable, especially over the weekend during their series against Washington.
Atlanta needs to arm itself (pun very much intended) in order to keep some distance between themselves and the Nationals (and Phillies, who are still playing above .500 with a dangerous lineup).
Young Guns
By: TJ Hartnett
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
Going into Spring Training, the Atlanta Braves felt like they had two strong anchors in their starting rotation in Mike Foltynewicz and Kevin Gausman.
Both guys had a few years in the bigs under their belts and both had successful campaigns in 2018. Gausman’s success coming after he was traded to Dixie from the Baltimore Orioles, in particular.
It was the rest of the rotation that was covered in question marks. The loss of Anibal Sanchez to Sean Newcomb’s second half crash to the ever-changing consistency of Julio Teheran, the starting corps was less of a strength and more of a potential strength.
The talent was there. The Braves had built up a mountain of wealth in the arms department but there was no track record because a few flashes of brilliance from most of the prospects.
So, there was reasonable concern when both Folty and Gausman couldn’t make it to the finish line of Spring Training healthy. These were the guys Atlanta needed to lean on while the prospects and younger arms of the rotation were put to the test.
Flash forward to the June 1st, the season is two-thirds of the way done, and the Braves have two strong anchors in their rotation: but the twist is that the anchors are two of those same prospects the Braves weren’t sure they could count on in March.
Mike Soroka and Max Fried have been the stalwart performers of Atlanta’s starting rotation in 2019, leading the team in earned run average and wins, respectively, and each of them rank second in the category they aren’t leading in.
In fact, the question marks surround Folty and Gausman, who both returned from the Injured List and have been inconsistent at best (Gausman, for the most part) or just bad at worst (Folty, for the most part). They haven’t been able to secure wins for their team, going 3-8 collectively, and neither can boast an ERA under 5.50.
If there’s good news among the bad, it’s that both are talented enough to break out of these funks. In fact, both have had recent games that looked like a turnaround point only to have poor outings the following turn.
Soroka and Fried, on the other hand, have been consistently great. Fried has kept Atlanta in pretty much every game he’s started, as his 7 wins show. Finally, getting a chance to stick in the rotation (he made a total of 9 starts out of 23 appearances over the past two seasons), Fried is showing why the Braves coveted him so much when they traded Justin Upton to San Diego for him in December of 2014.
Soroka has been a revelation; picking up from where he left off last season before he got hurt and proving that he’s got the moxie to be a top starter even at the age of 21.
Soroka has been so good since joining the rotation that when he went eight innings in San Francisco against the Giants last month and only gave up one run, his ERA actually went up.
The kicker is that the last piece of the rotation puzzle, Julio Teheran, has actually been pretty good this year as well. He may have finally settled into the middle-of-the-rotation guy he was probably always destined to be anyway.
What this all amounts to is this: if (when?) Folty and Gausman figure it out, the Braves rotation will be among the most formidable quintet in the game today. And that’s thanks in large part to the teams two studs: Mike Soroka and Max Fried.
Young Guns
By: TJ Hartnett
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
The starting rotation for a professional baseball team going into the start of the season can set the tone for a club early on.
Some rotations are intimidating and strike fear into the hearts of opponents from the get-go. Some showcase talent without experience – potential, defined.
Look at the Boston Red Sox, for example. They have two former Cy Young award winners in David Price and Rick Porcello slotting in a two and three in their rotation behind ace Chris Sale. You think the Seattle Mariners are excited to launch their season staring down the barrels of those guns?
Washington has the same feather in its cap: Max Scherzer leads the charge with Stephen Strasburg and new National, Patrick Corbin, at his back. These are scary arms to contend with, and teams have every right to be nervous.
The Atlanta Braves, however, are sort of in the latter category but the situation with the starters is fluid.
They have already announced their starting rotation to begin the year, starting with Julio Teheran opening the season in Philadelphia.
Atlanta will follow that up with Bryse Wilson in game two of the series and Kyle Wright making his first ever big league start during the third contest.
Following that trio is Sean Newcomb getting the nod for the Braves home opener, and then Max Fried taking a turn on the mound after Julio gets his second start of the year on normal rest.
No Mike Foltynewicz and no Kevin Gausman to start the season. Both of them will miss time due to injury, though mercifully it doesn’t seem like either will be out for the long haul.
Still, beginning the year with this rotation; an Opening Day starter who will likely never live up to expectations and four kids with barely a season’s worth of a starts under their belts combined is potential trouble as much as it is full of potential.
Setting aside Julio for now, there is very little experience in the rotation. That’s not a guarantee of failure, but four kids are probably not going to make the leap all at the same time.
Newcomb knows how hard a major league season can be; just look at his second-half struggles in 2018.
If nearly the whole rotation struggles for the first few weeks of the season before the “veterans” Folty and Gausman can come back and do their thing, the Braves will be looking up from a self-dug hole that they may not be able to climb out of. Especially given the huge improvements made by nearly the rest of the NL East.
Still, there is plenty to be excited about. The two rookies (Wilson and Wright) and the two not-quite-rookies (Newk and Fried) are highly touted prospects, and the more time they spend facing Major League hitters the better chance they’ll have at developing into winning pieces on the staff.
It’s frustrating to open the season with unknowns when the knowns are injured (or sitting at home as unsigned free agents), but the talent is undeniable, and Wilson, Wright, and Fried all had very strong springs.
Fake Ace
By: TJ Hartnett
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
Pay attention, because this one is going to have a twist ending.
Julio Teheran, the right-handed pitcher whom the Braves once thought could be their stud, is sadly kind of an afterthought in Atlanta these days.
Mike Foltynewicz is the young, flame throwing ace and he’s backed up by Kevin Gausman and a slew of homegrown prospects like Sean Newcomb, Mike Soroka, Touki Toussaint, and what feels like dozens of others.
There was a time when Julio was the next big thing and he’s got a pretty nice paycheck to prove it. He’s got two All Star appearances to his credit, and three out of his first four seasons he managed an ERA of 3.21 or less.
But something has just failed to click. He hasn’t been awful in the two seasons since that run, but he hasn’t been able to rack up wins. He went 7-10 in 2016, 11-13 in 2017, and dead-even 9-9 despite an ERA under 4.00 last season. For whatever reason, he just hasn’t been the guy that Braves Country wanted him to be.
Teheran has slipped from being a top-of-the-rotation piece to being the guy everyone was positive would get moved at the trade deadline. That did not happen but everyone knew he would get traded in the offseason. However, that didn’t happen either.
And now, instead of being traded, Julio Teheran is going to make his sixth consecutive Opening Day start next week.
Why not the ace of the staff? Where is Folty? Folty is hurt; maybe for all of April. Gausman has only made two appearances this Spring due to injury. Soroka has been sent down to the minors to begin the season. Newcomb’s second half struggles from last season seem to be following him into the new year.
So, Julio Teheran will make his sixth straight Opening Day start; not because he deserves it, but because he is the only option.
By hitting six in a row, Julio joins the illustrious ranks of legendary Braves pitchers like Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine. Except, here’s the thing: no, he doesn’t.
He’s already surpassed them. Maddux never made six in a row. Neither did Glavine. Nor John Smoltz or Phil Niekro or Johnny Sain.
In fact, the only other pitcher in Braves history to start six consecutive Opening Days is Hall of Famer Warren Spahn.
In fact, Julio will be fourth all-time in overall Opening Day starts by the end of the week, trailing only Spahn, Niekro, and Maddux.
I don’t mean to crap on Julio. He seems like a nice guy and I like him. He’s been remarkably healthy for a pitcher in the 21st century: he started 30 games his rookie year and has never started fewer in the five seasons since then.
He’s never had an ERA above 4.49, and his next highest is 4.04. That’s far from awful.
But the guy whose rookie season set Dixie on fire didn’t evolve into an ace. He didn’t become a guy who should be pitching the first game of the season for a sixth year in a row. And yet, here we go.
Jason Bishop Show w Kipp Branch April 7
Braves Future After Bartolo Colon
By: Kipp Branch
TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services
The Braves have designated Bartolo Colon for assignment and called up LHP Rex Brothers from Gwinnett.
The Colon experiment is finally over in Atlanta. 2-8 with an 8.14 ERA coming off being bombed by the Padres Wednesday night. The Braves front office has finally had enough. Let’s look at the Braves rotation for the balance of the season.
