If you can bear to watch the Braves, you’re seeing what this rebuild was all about. We saw something similar last year, but two of those young arms – Alex Wood and Shelby Miller – were traded. After opening this season with a rotation including journeymen Bud Norris and Jhoulys Chacin, the Braves have again gone 25-and-under. For a team holding the worst record in the majors, it’s the only way up.
Julio Teheran, age 25, has yielded three earned runs in his past 26 innings. Matt Wisler, 23, has yielded five in his past 23 1/3 innings. Aaron Blair, 23, was touched for four earned runs by the Mets and Cubs in his first two big-league starts. Mike Foltynewicz, 24, has been touched for two in the past 15 innings. Williams Perez, 24, yielded one run and two hits in eight innings last week against Philadelphia.
The Braves’ starters have the sixth-lowest ERA (3.25) among big-league teams in May. This rotation has worked six quality starts (six-plus innings with three or fewer earned runs) over the past seven games. In two starts against the Cubs, Blair and Teheran yielded one earned run. In three starts against the Royals, the reigning World Series champs, Teheran and Foltynewicz and Wisler yielded three earned runs.
No, not much of this shows in the standings. The Braves are 1-4 in Wisler’s five quality starts, 1-3 in Teheran’s four. When yours is the lowest-scoring team in the majors, such is life. But this was the plan. This remains the plan.
Of the Braves' prospects as rated by MLB.com, 12 of the remaining top 17 (Blair and Mallex Smith having been promoted) are pitchers. On the day in September 2014 when they terminated Frank Wren, the Braves said they would rebuild around pitching. They did not deceive.
Said general manager John Coppolella: “We said all along that young pitching was going to be the priority, and we got pitching back in every trade we have made. The Braves and other teams who have experienced long-term success were built around pitching. Put simply, the demand for pitching is inelastic. It goes beyond the absurd number of pitching injuries that all teams suffer or the increasingly absurd free agent prices some teams choose to pay.”
There are two reasons to stockpile pitching, the first being the vagaries of the human arm. John Hart, the president of baseball operations, invokes the axiom regarding pitchers: “It takes 10 to get three.” In the mid-’90s, the Mets were high on Jason Isringhausen, Bill Pulsipher and Paul Wilson, collectively dubbed “Generation K.” Each would have Tommy John surgery. Only Isringhausen, as a repurposed reliever, amounted to much.
Reason No. 2: The Braves have scored 682 runs since 2014; the next-worst team over that span is Philadelphia with 752. Every other team has three times as many homers as the Braves this season. Some and perhaps most of these arms must be used as currency to buy hitters. It would be no shock if Teheran is dealt this July.
Arms-for-bats was the reason behind sending Wood to the Dodgers for Hector Olivera, envisioned as an immediate run-producer. (Whoops.) It was the impetus for shipping Miller to Arizona for Blair, outfielder Ender Inciarte and shortstop Dansby Swanson, who’s the Braves’ No. 1 prospect. (Much better.)
Said Coppolella: “We hope to grow our young arms and build a strong and cost-efficient rotation that will allow us to spend our money on bats.”
That was the plan. It remains the plan. “It’s exciting to think about the wave after wave of young pitching we have percolating in our minor leagues,” Coppolella said, and it is.
For now, the pitchers atop the chain are the only reason to keep watching. Nobody likes what the Braves have become, but they’ve done as they said. This might not work. It also might.
