A way, way, way-too-early analysis of 2019 Julio Teheran

Let’s keep it real right out of the gate: It’s probably not the best idea to make a bunch of blanket conclusions after game one of 162. Nobody knows that better than the person who runs the Boston Red Sox Twitter account, who took the internet victory lap to end all internet victory laps after they got bopped on Opening Day 2018 only to have the last laugh on Closing Day 2018 (aka the clinching game of the World Series). So the moral of this story will come right at the beginning: Opening Day results are very likely not going to be any sort of indication of what’s to come for the next few months.

With that being said, it’s time to take a look at how Julio Teheran’s first start of the 2019 season went. At first glance, things actually went better than expected. Despite our worst fears following another underwhelming season from the former ace of the Braves’ staff, Teheran did pretty well for himself in his 2019 debut. While he definitely didn’t come out of it unscathed (and the first at-bat was, um, not the best), it definitely didn’t look like he was over-matched or over-exerting himself out there.

Aside from the first inning dinger, I didn’t really feel like I was watching the 2017-2018 version of Julio Teheran. If he didn’t run into some bad luck at the tail end of his start, he probably could have made it even deeper into his start than just the five innings. Teheran finished with seven strikeouts and four hits allowed with just two walks. It was also impressive that he managed to keep the walks down when the umpire’s strike zone was all over the place on this particular day.

However, I think the main thing that everybody was keeping an eye on when it came to Julio Teheran in 2019 was to see if his velocity would keep on trending in the correct direction. As you all know, he’s throwing exclusively from the stretch now and based on what he showed during spring, I mentioned that there was hope that this could make things a bit better for Julio. Now, it’s not like there was going to be a drastic change between the latter stages of spring training and Opening Day but it’s clear that Julio’s velocity is up.

Again, this is one start compared to an entire season’s worth of data so I cannot stress enough how big of a grain of salt that you have to take this with. Still, it’s encouraging to see!

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It may be only the first start, but it’s safe to say that it’s “so far, so good” as far as Julio is concerned. He’s got a solid foundation to build on now and there continues to be a sense of optimism surrounding Teheran, instead of a looming sense of dread that started to creep in at some point during the past two seasons.

The obvious question now is whether or not this will continue to go in the right way as the season progresses. It’s extremely early in the season so this could go in all sorts of directions. Obviously it would be great if Teheran can keep this up and the Braves can rest easy knowing that they have an experienced rock in the middle of their rotation. There’s also the possibility that the bottom could continue to fall out and this could just be turning his demise into a slow and painful one instead of being quick and snippy.

This could all end up being inconsequential as even with the slight improvements, the rest of the rotation could take strides that force Julio back into the bullpen role that he took on during the 2018 postseason. Shoot, maybe the Braves could even make some sort of pitching signing. I know that’s such a controversial idea, but it could happen! Everything’s possible right now.

That’s the beauty of Opening Day. Yeah, the baseball games actually count now but at this juncture, we still don’t have a concrete idea of what’s going to happen when it comes to the rest of the season. With that in mind, it definitely helps to have a solid foundation to build on for the long and arduous season ahead and it appears that Julio Teheran could be building his 2019 house on some decent-quality concrete. Hopefully things will get better as we get into this new campaign.