The Winter Meetings have (un-)officially gotten started, as all of baseball’s higher-ups and luminaries have descended upon Orlando, Florida for a week of getting some offseason business done. While we’re
all looking forward to fireworks, Alex Anthopoulos is simply trying to get a job done — even if it means starting it at the Winter Meetings and finishing it somewhere down the road later this offseason. He spoke to the press on Sunday evening and gave a bit of a debriefing on what to expect and how things have been going so far during this particular offseason.
“The meetings are definitely a focus of the offseason but it’s just a continuation, right,” explained AA. “There’s no difference for us between today, tomorrow, the day after. Obviously it’s great for the industry and the game seeing everybody get together but things haven’t changed for us.” With that being said, Anthopoulos is still focused on doing what he can in order to fortify the squad going forward. “Things don’t change because the Meetings officially start tomorrow. The focus is the same,” stated Anthopoulos. “We’re looking to get better and obviously at this time of year, there’s two ways to do that: Trade and free agency.”
“During the offseason, you have to work with what’s available — similar to the Trade Deadline,” continued AA. “There’s ways to make your team better, whether it’s on the mound or the position player side. You’re looking for deals that you think make sense. As much as you’d like to fill certain spots or do certain things, if an opportunity presents itself where it’s not the cleanest fit but it’s a good deal, then you’re probably still going to run that play out.”
So while Alex Anthopoulos is focused on making the team better, he’s not exactly pointing a laser right at his target — or at least he isn’t doing so publicly. He’s a GM, after all. “I wouldn’t say that we’re focused on the ‘one thing we need to do’ — when you miss the Postseason and finish under .500, there’s a lot of areas where you can improve,” explained AA.
“We’re looking for opportunities. The areas of the roster are pretty clear where we can add but you know, there might be some things we do that maybe aren’t as obvious but we think it makes the team better. Those are the types of opportunities that end up being available this Winter,” said AA. One of those “pretty clear” areas is starting pitcher and while AA didn’t shut the door on this being a priority need of improvement going forward, he did state publicly that the Braves aren’t exactly panicking when it comes to their rotation.
“We have more information on our roster right now that we’re into December than we did at the start of the offseason,” revealed AA as he went on to specify how he’s feeling about the rotation at the moment. “Specifically on the mound, we’ve got some really, really encouraging reports on all of those starters who got hurt. Guys like [Spencer] Schwellenbach, [Spencer] Strider, [Reynaldo] López, [Grant] Holmes. Everybody’s looking good and feeling good throwing.”
Even with the reportedly clean bill of health, Alex Anthopoulos still didn’t close the door on adding a starter if the right opportunity came up. “We’d still like to [improve our starting pitching],” confirmed AA. He did go on to explain that the improving health of the internal options has played a factor in their offseason dealings. He went on to add that “There was much more uncertainty at the beginning of the offseason and even at the GM Meetings [in November]. We just didn’t know but as we’re progressing, you know, we’ve had Winters where we get to this time of year a player reports into the training staff and says ‘Look, I’m a little sore, I’ve been throwing […] It’s actually gone the opposite this year where everyone’s doing well. We have guys coming to the ballpark day in and day out and playing catch and throwing.”
Still, AA continued to maintain that even with the fluid situation, they’d still like to fortify their rotation just to make sure that the depth is there.“ “I don’t think it changes that we’d like to add, though. I think just having depth is always a good thing,” AA reiterated. He continued on by sharing some of the information he found out from Grant Holmes as he’s been progressing from a serious injury during that doomed 2025 campaign.
“At the beginning of the offseason, I talked to Grant Holmes and I said […] ‘Look: I’m not counting on you in any form. You’re out of options. We’ll plug you in as the last guy out of the ‘pen and see how it goes,” said AA. “I just talked to him maybe a week ago and I just kept saying ‘Look, I keep getting these unbelievable reports, I want to hear from you.’ He’s like ‘Look, my stuff is better now than when I was healthy.’ So I said ‘So this is a totally normal offseason for you, no changes?’ and he said ‘Yes.’ […] He’s done a ton and thrown a ton. It’s a normal offseason for him. That’s a significant change there.” AA went on to clarify later on that Holmes is, in fact, being treated as “fully healthy” at this moment, so there’s that.
AA also proceeded to go into detail about the rest of the rotation. “Reynaldo López, same thing. You just don’t know until you get later into the Winter,” said AA. “Schwellenbach is continuing to build up but he’s completely pain free. I saw him maybe a week or two ago he’s feeling really good too.”
“When you start looking at it on paper right now, we’re in pretty good shape with what I think will be our top four in Reynaldo, Strider, [Chris] Sale and Schwellenbach,” said AA when he was asked about how he felt about the current status of the rotation.
He had a lot more to say about the tail end of the rotation. “Then you’ve got those guys in the fifth spot: [Hurston] Walrdep obviously did a phenomenal job and he has options left. [Bryce] Elder is out of options but the month September was phenomenal [for Bryce]. The velocity was up and overall, I’d say he had a nice year for us but he really looked good in September. We saw what Grant did when he’s totally healthy. We like having guys like that and having those options.” For what it’s worth, Elder did put up a 3.13 ERA (74 ERA-) and a 3.14 FIP (78 FIP-) and while that’s a pretty short sample size, it was clearly enough to catch the eye of the President/GM of this particular ball club.
AA still wasn’t done discussing the internal rotation options and kept on going. “Obviously there’s other guys like Joey Wentz who did a nice job and [José] Suarez made a spot start. Those guys are out of options. That doesn’t mean that if we can add what we would feel like is an impact starter that we wouldn’t do that,” said AA as he continued to reiterate that the Braves are keeping their options open when it comes to the rotation. “We’ve gone down the road on some of those conversations. Obviously we haven’t gotten anything done but we have had conversations so we’re not ruling it out. On paper, it’s a pretty good group but we’re trying to make sure we’re able to plan from a health standpoint.”
The last bit of information concerning Braves pitchers came in the form of an update on AJ Smith-Shawver from Alex Anthopoulos. “[AJ Smith-Shawver] is doing well. He’s on track rehabbing. I think the 12 month mark will be mid-June, right around there. I think those injuries are 12-13 months,” said AA. “You don’t see too many guys come back at the 12-month right now. I think the All-Star Break will be a good kind of barometer where you see how he goes. We’re still far off but he’s done well, no problems at all.
Speaking of injury reports (and hoo boy, there were plenty to talk about both during the 2025 regular season and beyond), AA also gave updates on Sean Murphy and Austin Riley. Both updates were positive, so there’s that.“[When it comes to] Sean Murphy, really, the four-month mark [on from his injury] will be when we really have a handle. That’ll be the middle of January,” said AA when asked about his starting catcher. “He’s doing well […] Even the doctors had told us that there are going to be moments where you feel great and ready to go but you want to make sure that everything heals correctly. The four-month mark is when we’ll have a much better idea in mid-to-late January.”
AA didn’t have a lot to say about Austin Riley’s progress but the news was positive enough to where Anthopoulos was able to just get to the point and be done with it “Austin Riley is doing well. He’s going to be ready for spring, so no concerns,” confirmed AA.
So while you could probably include ‘shortstop’ and other areas of concern in the category of ‘a lot of areas where we need to improve,’ there wasn’t a lot of talk about that position or any other position outside of starting pitching, so that could very well be where the Braves feel like they could have their best chance of improving the roster for now. For the time being, all we can do is wait and see what happens as we’ll hopefully continue to see AA and Atlanta’s front office continue to improve the squad as this busy portion of the offseason kicks off.
