The 2016 season was not a good one for starting pitchers when it came to the Atlanta Braves. Our review of the “rotation” from last season sums it all up, and the scare quotes are appropriate because it wasn’t really a rotation. Instead, it was a revolving door as a whopping 16 different pitchers took the mound as a starter for the Braves last season. That’s the type of chaos that can either lead to a relative amount of success in the face of adversity — as evidenced by the Dodgers somehow making it to last season’s NLCS despite using 15 different starters, themselves — or utterly dire straits for a team that’s rebuilding.
However, the Braves made it known from the moment that they announced their move to the new stadium that they planned to be competitive in their new ballpark. If that’s going to happen, then it means that the five men below are going to have to serve as stabilizers to what was a position that seemed to be in flux all year in 2016.
#Braves rotation order to begin 2017:
— Grant McAuley (@grantmcauley) March 19, 2017
4/3 - Julio Teheran
4/5 - Bartolo Colon
4/6 - Jaime Garcia
4/7 - R.A. Dickey
4/8 - Mike Foltynewicz
For the fourth straight season, Julio Teheran will be entering the year at the top of the Braves rotation and if 2016 was the year for him to prove that 2015 was a fluke, then 2017 may be the year for him to prove that he can take a step up. If he can, then that could be the start of something really great for the Braves going forward, and it would also make his contract look even more attractive in the coming seasons. With that being said, there would be nothing wrong with Teheran staying the course and continuing to keep his ERA and FIP in the low 3’s. If he can manage to take his BB/9 and HR/9 to even lower rates than he posted last year, then we’ll really be in business when it comes to Teheran. For now, we should look forward to Teheran continuing to be the most reliable arm in the rotation every five days for the Braves.
Meanwhile, the Braves addressed their chaotic starting pitching situation by going out and acquiring three pitchers for their rotation. If the team is going to accomplish its goal of at least being competitive this season, then it will take a solid performance from Bartolo Colon, R.A. Dickey, and Jaime Garcia to make it happen.
Amazingly, it’ll be a good bet to get health and consistency from a pitcher heading into his age-44 season. Bartolo Colon has six straight seasons of 150 or more innings pitched, and three straight seasons of 190+ innings. This includes last year, when nearly everybody in the Mets’ rotation went down injured for significant periods of time except for Big Sexy. The living, breathing .gif may not look like it, but he’s the picture of health and it’ll be a huge shock if he goes down this year. He hasn’t put up spectacular numbers during that time of consistency, but he’s been extremely reliable during that time and you know that he’s going to eat innings for you.
The same could be said for the new knuckleballer in town as well. Dickey went into 2016 with five consecutive seasons of 200+ innings thrown under his belt, and while that number went down to 169 last season, he’ll be afforded every opportunity to increase that number for 2017. His ERA (4.46) and FIP (5.03) in 2016 both took concerning jumps from 2015 (3.91 and 4.48, respectively), but the obvious hope is that a return to the National League will help take those numbers down a tick. We shouldn’t expect him to return to the numbers that he had during his final season with the Mets, but if he can put up a 1-or-2 WAR season while eating up somewhere around 200 innings, then the Braves will be pleased with what they got out of this one-year deal with Dickey.
While Dickey and Colon are ageless wonders, there’s still questions surrounding Jaime Garcia and his ability to truly bounce back from what was a disappointing season in 2016 for him. You could put most of the blame for Garcia’s downturn on fatigue getting the best of him. After all, this was the most he’d thrown since 2011. He’s probably not going to hit the level of production that he was at during that 2011 season, but again, the goal here is for him to simply be reliable enough to not be a burden. If he reaches that level, then he could play a very interesting role in the immediate future of the Braves — either as a trade chip (which is the preferable option here, in my opinion) or with a potential (and hopefully cheap) contract extension.
Mike Foltynewicz will round out the rotation he’s arguably the most fascinating part of this crew. There are still some rumblings that he could be transformed into a reliever in the future, but he seems to be making serious strides towards becoming a good starter for the Braves. Of course he took some lumps during his first full season, but that’s to be expected for a young pitcher — especially one who was coming off of a health scare to end the previous season. However, he showed flashes of promise during 2016 and has also shown signs during this spring that he could be in for taking a leap to the next level. If that’s the case, then we’ll probably see Folty reach the middle part of the rotation sooner rather than later.
Overall, there’s a lot to like about this rotation. It’s definitely not one of the elite rotations in baseball or even just the National League, but it has the makings of a respectable one. Most importantly, it’s a far sight better than what we saw the Braves trot out to the mound last season, and should be much more reliable. If this crew can stay healthy and continue to be steady like they were last year for the most part, then this alone should help the Braves out in their efforts to be a competitive squad in 2017. At best, this is a solid rotation. At worst, it’s a rocky bridge to the promised land of the many, many pitching prospects that the Braves currently have on their farm. We’ll see what happens as the season progresses.