It might be difficult to remember, given the blinding carnage we’ve witnessed over the past three seasons of this rebuild. (”Rebuild”: a Latin word meaning, “Do you have a new roster? I haven’t updated mine in the past 12 seconds.”). But there was a time when the Braves could wrap their golden arms around their pitching staff.
Theirs was a staff of strikeouts and ERA titles and future Hall of Famers. They had shutdown closers and solid bullpens and starters who could dazzle even when their fastball traveled roughly the speed of a moving van grinding uphill. Why? Because they knew how to pitch. It wasn’t about radar gun ribbons.
“You see dudes throwing 86 miles per hour but throwing the ball by guys because they knew how to throw inside, outside, changing speeds,” Braves pitcher Mike Foltynewicz said. “And you think, ‘Holy cow, what is this guy doing?’”
The Braves are asking a different question about their starters now: Where are these guys going?
Don’t look to the past three seasons for rosy projections. The Braves have used 28 starting pitchers since 2015, posting season team ERAs of 4.41 (27th overall) in 2015, 4.51 (24th) in 2016 and 4.72 (24th) in 2017. They’ve churned through kids, veterans and undefined organisms.
The staff issued a total of 1,681 walks in the past three years. It’s 90 feet from home plate to first base. So that comes to 151,290 feet, or 28.7 miles of uninterrupted strolls.
Analytics.
This is where we remind you of the potential cloud break: The scouting universe is an agreement that the Braves’ organization has stockpiled some of the best young arms in the game. But it’s all potential now. There’s no certainty.
Strangely, it was safer to project results last year when the Braves acquired three old arms (Bartolo Colon, R.A. Dickey, Jaime Garcia) with the idea of building a bridge to this year’s youth. But that bridge collapsed, and one year later nobody knows if the youngins’ are ready.
“If you had an older team, it would be easier to project what guys were going to do just by looking at the back of the baseball cards,” new general manager Alex Anthopoulos said. “But some of these guys have one line on the back of their card. Some don’t have a card.”
Some we’re still trying to figure out. Here’s the projected rotation, subject to (likely) change:
Julio Teheran: He was an All-Star in 2014 with career-bests in ERA (2.89), innings (221) and strikeouts (186). But he has struggled with consistency since and last season pitched poorly at SunTrust Park (5.86 ERA) and ballooned to an overall ERA of 4.49. He's somewhat at a crossroads.
Foltynewicz: He also had consistency problems last season, particularly struggling with his approach on two-strike counts. "There were too many two-strike counts when I gave them too good of a pitch to hit, like right down the middle," he said. "Or it was an non-competitive pitch where they didn't care about it." This is his fourth full season in the majors. It's kind of show time for him.
Brandon McCarthy: Acquired in the Matt Kemp trade, McCarthy would be a fine middle-to-low-rotation starter if healthy. But he has been injury-prone, completing only 155-2/3 innings over the past three seasons.
Sean Newcomb: One of the Braves' young arms showed promise in 13 starts last season, but struggles with control problems.
Luiz Gohara: Another one of the next-generation pitchers with enormous upside, Gohara suffered an injury early in camp and has gotten behind. Having a weight issue doesn't help. "There's a lot to like," pitching coach Chuck Hernandez said. "But right now he's a little behind with a tight groin. So we have to catch him up."
Hernandez, in his second season as pitching coach, said overall staff improvement is a mandate.
“You’re either getting better or you’re getting worse,” he said. “If they’re staying the same, we’re not going where we need to go.”
It was a good day Friday, at least for a while. In the Braves’ opening game of spring, their first six pitchers, led by Matt Wisler, failed to allow the New York Mets a run and issued only two walks in seven innings. Then Miguel Socolovich, a non-roster invitee, was dinged for six runs in two-thirds of an inning. He likely won’t be coming north.
Anthopoulos said each pitcher was given specific things to work on this spring.
“Some of the results are always going to influence you,” he said. “But I just want to watch them. We challenged each one of them to improve on certain things. I just want to see how they do with those things we talked about.”
Anthopoulos is forming his opinions as he goes. When asked how big of a sample size he will need before determining which pitchers to keep, option or trade, he said: “I don’t know. It might come together in a month. It might be five months or six months.”
The Braves’ success used to linked to their starting pitching. One day, it will again. Just don’t ask when that day is.
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