Braves should sign Chris Bassitt to fill hole left by Schwellenbach injury

The Braves have done well with developing homegrown players. Braves president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos has made some lopsided trades in his favor. He tends to only dip his toe in free agency.

Now is the time for Anthopoulos to make a splash by signing Chris Bassitt.

The Braves had question marks about their starting pitching before the news of Spencer Schwellenbach’s elbow injury. Now they’ve got a huge hole in the rotation. Schwellenbach had a chance to be their No. 1 starter, but he’s going to miss “significant time” while mending his right elbow, manager Walt Weiss said.

The Braves desperately need a pitcher like Bassitt. He’s good, he’s durable and he’s still on the free-agent market as spring training begins. But it’s not clear whether the Braves are in the running to sign Bassitt.

On a recent episode of the “Gate 14 Podcast,” host Johnny Giunta said Bassitt told him that four teams were “in the mix” to sign him: the Cubs, Padres, Orioles and Yankees.

The Braves need to join that list because the weakest area of the team got a lot worse when Schwellenbach was placed on the 60-day injured list.

Lefty Chris Sale is the best available pitcher on the roster. He won the NL Cy Young Award in 2024, but that’s the only time he’s pitched more than 126 innings over the past five seasons. Sale was on the IL for two months in ’25 with a rib injury, and he turns 37 in March.

Braves right-hander Spencer Strider was very good in 2022 and dominant in ’23. He pitched nine innings in ’24 before elbow surgery, then missed a month with a bad hamstring during last season’s subpar campaign (4.45 ERA). Grant Holmes and Reynaldo López also have injury concerns, and they have short track records as effective starters.

The Braves are an injury or two away from needing to rely on shaky options to pitch important innings. That was the story during 2025. Signing Bassitt would help them avoid a similar outcome in ’26.

Bassitt averaged 176 innings pitched over the past five seasons while compiling a 3.66 ERA. He’s been on the injured list twice since the start of the 2022 season for a total of 18 days. Bassitt turns 37 later this month, but he doesn’t have a lot of mileage on his arm (1,278⅔ innings).

Bassitt made $22 million in 2025. Anthopoulos has more than enough in the budget to give him a raise if Braves chairman Terry McGuirk is sticking to his goal of having a “top-five” payroll.

The Braves’ $255 million payroll ranks seventh among MLB teams, per Spotrac. The Blue Jays are fifth ($295 million). Anthopoulos could sign Bassitt for much less than that $40 million gap.

McGuirk called the payroll a “fluid decision-making concept” during a November earnings call for Atlanta Braves Holdings, but added: “We are a win-now team. We want to fill in the places where we might have a player that needs replacing.”

Well, the Braves badly need a fill-in starting pitcher. Winning now will be hard with the current state of the rotation. It’s worth it for the Braves to spend significant money to sign Bassitt, who is the best fit for them among the pitchers on the market.

The largest salary for a free agent signed by Anthopoulos was $23 million for third baseman Josh Donaldson in 2019. Bassitt is worth something close to that. Donaldson’s deal was for one year. The longest free-agent contract Anthopoulos has signed was Marcell Ozuna’s four-year deal in 2021.

Bassitt likely can’t get a deal like Michael King signed with the Padres: three years for a reported $75 million. King had shoulder issues in ’25, but he’s six years younger than Bassitt and finished seventh in Cy Young voting in 2024. Maybe Anthopoulos can sign Bassitt for three years at a cheaper price.

Bassitt certainly would help the Braves. In addition to his durability and good regular-season numbers, Bassitt is a proven postseason performer. He allowed one run over 8⅔ innings of relief for the Blue Jays during their run to the 2025 Word Series and has a career 3.04 ERA in the playoffs (23⅔ innings).