Proven veteran pieces that have more than enough experience in both the regular season and the postseason, youngsters who are looking to build off of a solid start to their career, and players in between in their careers just trying to prove if they are worthy of a starting rotation role or a bullpen spot – these are all roles of various arms on the roster of the Atlanta Braves, heading into the 2020 regular season.
Gone is southpaw Dallas Keuchel, who signed late in the season after having received scant interest in the offseason. Now on the Chicago White Sox, Keuchel is looking to finally cash in on his long wait for a big-time deal, and now the Braves are needing to fill the hole he left with a bunch of in-house options and a veteran looking to re-make a name for himself on a new team.
Felix Hernandez, who was a member of the Seattle Mariners for the first 15 years of his storied career, signed with the Braves this offseason on a minor-league deal, was invited to Spring Training as a non-roster invitee and is putting in a solid camp that would guarantee him $1 million for making the active roster.
For King Felix, putting up impressive numbers (six strikeouts, one ER, 4 2/3 innings, two starts) is nothing spectacular obviously, but the fact remains that the former Mariners ace has been showing signs of getting back to his dominant self, and maybe all he needed was a change of scenery to do it.
Outside of Hernandez, the Braves also have righties Mike Foltynewicz and Mike Soroka, and southpaw Max Fried firmly locked into the top three spots of their starting rotation, leaving two spots up discussion. It would only be one spot, but 36-year-old lefty Cole Hamels, who the Braves are very familiar with because of having faced him for a very long time as a member of the in-division Philadelphia Phillies, is currently on the shelf with no determined timeframe to return from a battle with left shoulder inflammation, which has sidelined him since January.
Due to Hamels having a very outside chance of making his Braves debut in the month of April, the team will need to fill two rotational spots early on in the season, and with Hernandez playing as well as he currently is, the race for the final spot may come down to a few youngsters looking to make a splash in the team’s rotation.
Sean Newcomb, Kyle Wright, and Touki Toussaint all project to be the main horses in the race for the fifth and final spot in the rotation, with nine starts between the three of them. Both Newcomb and Wright made four starts apiece for the Braves in 2019, yet neither showed quite enough to distance themselves from one another.
Newcomb made his presence known in Atlanta’s bullpen last season but would be the likeliest candidate to make the jump back into the rotation if Hamels needed to miss a considerable amount of time. The eldest of the three finalists at 26 years of age, Newcomb would represent the safest bet of the three, which would provide more time at the minor-league level for both Wright and Toussaint.
Wright figures into the rotation in an interesting way, as he was forced into the rotation in 2019 after injuries bumped him up the ladder a few pegs much sooner than he was expected to be. While his dominance of the Grapefruit League through two starts is a very positive step for the 24-year-old, Wright would ultimately benefit from more time in the minors to refine his craft, so he would not have to ride the shuttle of being sent up and down, which is a very difficult commitment for a starting pitcher to deal with.
The final candidate, and what seems to be the most unlikely, is Toussaint, who has a super high ceiling but is needing to try and put the ‘19 season behind him and move forward. As a reliever in the major league and a starter in the minors, Toussaint was asked to wear many different hats, which may have taken an unintended swipe at his potential last year.
Still with a lot to learn on the mound, Toussaint’s role for the Braves in 2020 should resemble that of an upstart player that should not be counted on in a heavy amount early on in the season. Younger players like Toussaint should not be rushed into any sort of MLB role, and even though he was on the MLB level for 24 games and one start last season, the experience that he was able to gain should do enough for him to boost his confidence and his skills enough to get him back up to the highest level soon.
Being in the really solid spot that the Braves are in, with having won the National League East division in 2019 behind a solid core of Freddie Freeman, Ronald Acuna, Ozzie Albies, Jos Donaldson, and Dansby Swanson, among others, means that their roster issues are put underneath even more of a microscope than most teams. But so is life with having to deal with being in the spotlight as one of the better teams in a professional sport, something that Atlanta has got to be very much alright with.
As Spring Training winds to a close in a few weeks, all signs point to Hernandez joining the starting rotation on a regular basis, with Newcomb filling in at the back-end in lieu of Hamels, while he nurses his injury. While the Braves would be smart to go out and potentially add a middle rotation starter before this year’s trade deadline in order to shore up one of their somewhat weak areas of their roster, they will be perfectly fine if they move forward with the players that they currently have in house.
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