With Spencer Strider’s injury, these pitchers should be prioritized

The Atlanta Braves should spend this season analyzing and pushing their young arms in the minors.

With starting pitcher Spencer Strider’s UCL injury, which might sideline him for the whole 2024 and 2025 seasons, the Atlanta Braves have work to do.

Strider was expected to head a rotation that was already facing the potential loss of Max Fried, a free agent after 2024, and Charlie Morton, both of whom will turn 41 shortly after the season and have no further contractual control.

However, with Strider potentially out for the entire season, the Braves are in a precarious situation: Chris Sale and Reynaldo López are the only current starters who could carry over to 2024, and both of those pitchers’ availability is uncertain, due to Sale’s recent injury history and workload concerns for López after multiple years of relief. Bryce Elder, who made all but one major league start in 2023, is expected to spend the entire season in Atlanta as well.

The Braves appear to have enough of rotation options to get through the summer; last season, the Braves employed thirteen “true starters” and three relievers, who worked as openers, to get through a season marred by rotation injuries to Fried, Kyle Wright, and other players.

The top performers among those starters remain with the franchise, while Michael Soroka, Jared Shuster, Kolby Allard, and Yonny Chirinos have all been assigned to different teams for 2024.

No, Atlanta will not be short on innings in 2025; with Darius Vines, Dylan Dodd, and Allan Winans, they can augment Atlanta’s current rotation depth to give innings over the summer and “backfill” the rotation to get through 162 games.

However, Atlanta should target two sets of pitchers for major league time in 2024 to prepare them for 2025.

The first group includes some of the top prospects, specifically AJ Smith-Shawver and Hurston Waldrep.

Smith-Shawver, 21, made his major league debut last June after starting the season in High-A Rome. Alex Anthopoulos, a superb athlete who is still fresh to pitching in comparison to his colleagues, told the media that he was the equivalent of a sophomore in college throwing in major league baseball, and he made it via sheer athleticism and arm talent.

However, the youngster’s complete winter of development paid off in Grapefruit League play, as he profiled as a more well-rounded pitcher with a true four-pitch mix, with his changeup showing as a legit weapon in spring training. He began the season in AAA Gwinnett and has only made one start, going two-thirds of an inning against Lousiville, allowing three runs on two hits and three walks. Despite that one start, he’s one of the organization’s highest-ceiling pitchers and needs opportunities in 2024 to both increase his workload – he pitched 87.1 regular-season innings last year – and test his fresh pitch mix and’stuff’ against major league hitters.

Waldrep, Atlanta’s first-round pick out of the University of Florida last season, rose quickly through the minors following the draft, pitching at all four levels of the organization. The 22-year-old threw 29.1 innings and struck out 41 hitters last season, the most of any 2023 draftee, as he advanced from Single-A Augusta to AAA Gwinnett for his final start.

Waldrep, a non-roster invitee to spring training who appeared in one game, opened the season at AA Mississippi. Because of his advanced stuff (his splitter is potentially the best non-fastball in Atlanta’s system) and his healthy workload (he pitched 131 innings between college and professional ball last season), he’s the best bet to be able to handle a full season in the majors if necessary.

But Atlanta must allow him to test the quality of his stuff against major leaguers and become comfortable at the highest level this season, because he will be required.

The second group consists of two major league starters who have recently suffered catastrophic injuries: Ian Anderson and Huascar Ynoa. Both pitchers have proven themselves in the major leagues, with Anderson pitching a no-hitter through the fifth inning of Game 3 of the 2021 World Series and Ynoa pitching a dominant seven-game stretch in early 2021 to a 4-1 record and 2.29 ERA before breaking his hand and missing three months.

Ynoa, who underwent Tommy John surgery in September 2022, has returned to competitive play and been assigned to AAA Gwinnett. (He is actually expected to start Tuesday afternoon on the road at Omaha.) One of the most important things to watch for with Ynoa is if he has established a consistent third pitch, as well as where his velocity settles in.

During his 2021 “breakout” season, Ynoa was largely a two-pitch pitcher, throwing his 96 mph fastball less than half of the time and his mid-80s slider roughly the same. The remaining 5-6% of his pitch usage went to a solid changeup, which is comparable to Spencer Strider’s pitch mix, who considered it vital to develop a curveball during the winter.

When Ynoa made his 2024 debut in spring training, his fastball averaged slightly under 94 mph, which might have been attributed to a spring ramp-up, a strained shoulder earlier in camp, or a sign that he is still recovering from Tommy John surgery 18 months ago.

Anderson, on the other hand, has less time to ‘figure it out’, as the date of his operation (April 2023) means he won’t be back on the mound in competitive action until the second half of the year. In 2021, he demonstrated three pitches, the most notable of which was his excellent changeup, though his third pitch was a curveball that scored low in terms of run value.

Anderson has reportedly been working on his mechanics throughout his rehab, attempting to include more of his lower body for power creation and somewhat lowering his arm slot, which was previously quite high and over-the-top.

He’s a big game pitcher who’s been successful at the top level and in the most important situations, but he’ll have a shorter preparation period than others for the 2025 season due to his predicted second-half debut this year.

There are other possibilities in the organization, as the Braves have led baseball in financial commitments to pitching prospects in the draft in recent years. It’s unclear whether Atlanta intends to change the publicly stated timeframe for promoting them to the majors in light of Strider’s injury and the team’s increased expected need for major-league pitching in 2025.

Once the farm system has completed a few weeks of starts, we will look at prospect performance to see how the most recent newcomers to the organization are doing and if there are any realistic alterations to their schedules.