As of right now, the Atlanta Braves rotation in its current form is healthy enough with four starters who are doing fine here in the infancy of camp. It’s gotten to the point where Braves President of Baseball Operations/General Manager Alex Anthopoulos has gone ahead and claimed that four of the five rotation spots are already spoken for. According to Braves beat writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Chad Bishop (welcome to the neighborhood!), AA has declared that the fifth spot will be open
for competition during spring training.
As Bishop mentions above, things likely would’ve been set had Spencer Schwellenbach’s elbow not started acting up on him in a severe manner. Instead, the Braves are now going to explore their options in camp and give some of their in-house hurlers a shot at getting into the rotation. That means guys like Joey Wentz, Bryce Elder, Hunter Waldrep and José Suarez are likely going to be the ones to keep an eye on as spring training progresses. The Braves have plenty of starters in camp at the moment but I’d imagine that those are the ones who are most likely to end up competing for that final spot in the rotation.
With that being said, there’s always the possibility that this could be GM-speak on the part of the GM since there’s always a possibility that the Braves could potentially dip their toes into the free agency market once again in order to pick up a starter from outside of the organization. As I mentioned in my post from Thursday, Lucas Giolito is still available and he was linked to the Braves during the offseason. Zac Gallen is also still a free agent, but the qualifying offer may dissuade the Braves from going down that particular avenue since they’d have to part with the No. 26 overall pick in this year’s upcoming draft.
Whether you choose to take AA at his word or not, the fact of the matter is that the Braves are publicly saying that they’re going to stick with their in-house options for the time being. We’ll see how that pans out but for now, it looks like we’re going to have a good ol’ fashioned position battle on our hands for one of the most important positions on the diamond in any given ballgame. We’ll see what happens!
