Atlanta Braves' lack of splash at deadline will show up in October

Five years ago, Atlanta Braves general manager Alex Anthopoulos had about the best two weeks in the history of baseball for a team executive. With his team lingering near .500 and not clearly showing which way it would go the rest of the season, Anthopoulos made six trades to try and help his team.

Ronald Acuña, Jr. had just torn his knee ligament and would miss the rest of the 2021 season. Marcell Ozuna was hurt and then suspended. Anthopoulos then went out and acquired four outfielders, three within the last five hours leading up to the trade deadline.

Joc Pederson, Adam Duvall, Eddie Rosario and Jorge Soler all played a major role in the Braves winning the World Series that October. The seemingly bad circumstances of losing two major pieces of the lineup were simply fixed by Anthopoulos’ work before the deadline.

Fast forward to 2026. For the third straight year, the Braves have had a revolving door in the starting rotation due to injuries. While they have an eight-game lead in the National League East, most have worried the starting rotation was still not good enough to compete in the postseason.

Last October, it was Anthopoulos who said he was going to target a “playoff-caliber” starting pitcher. It didn’t happen over the offseason. Instead, Anthopoulos rolled the dice and counted on his internal options. Then the injuries started to pile up, making the need for someone to be behind Chris Sale in the rotation an emergent situation.

With a drastically improved farm system, Anthopoulos had the currency to shop in the aisle of the most expensive pitching market. He could have acquired anyone he wanted, if he had given up some of the young prospects. Instead, the only starting pitcher he acquired before Monday’s deadline was Tyler Mahle (rhymes with rally), a mid-rotation starter with a 5.13 ERA for a bad San Francisco Giants team.

That’s it. No Tarik Skubal. No Foster Griffin, Freddy Peralta, or Dustin May. Just Tyler Mahle. The Cubs got Kevin Gausman and Clay Holmes. The Padres got Robbie Ray and Casey Mize.

Just Tyler Mahle.

The problem with Mahle is it’s hard to distinguish him from the other Atlanta starters. Martin Perez has a 3.49 ERA in 20 games, 16 starts. Bryce Elder has a 3.84 ERA in 21 starts. Grant Holmes has a 3.88 ERA in 21 games, 20 starts. Reynaldo Lopez had a 3.86 ERA in the six games since he had returned to the rotation, only to get hurt again.

It’s not that these starters have been horrible, but they rarely pitch deep into games. Just because you’re a good regular season starter does not mean you’re going to be counted on in October. Can these four pitchers pitch in a huge game, with the season on the line, in the postseason?

The gap between Sale and those other starters is wide. He’s a clear No. 1, an ace, one of the best pitchers in the sport. The other four are No. 4 or 5 starters in a good rotation. There is no clear No. 2 starting pitcher. That’s what Anthopoulos was charged with getting before the deadline, and he failed miserably.

With Lopez hurt (again), Mahle will likely slot into the No. 2 role, followed by Elder, Perez, and Holmes. The Braves will see how AJ Smith-Shawver progresses in Triple-A, as he continues to return from Tommy John elbow surgery. And, unfortunately, they’ll beat the drum on the slim (and likely unrealistic) chance Spencer Schwellenbach comes back after missing a full year with arm injuries. Spencer Strider will not be back this season, and neither will Hurston Waldrep.

Is that good enough? Well, perhaps it is to maintain the NL East lead and win the division. But what about when the Braves face the Cubs or Padres in the first round of the playoffs? And if they were to somehow win that round (note the tone of skepticism in the wording), how would the Braves match up against the Dodgers, Brewers, or Phillies in a second round?

They can’t. They won’t. We found out three years ago, when the Braves had one of the best offenses in baseball in the last 100 years, that if you don’t have pitching in the postseason, you don’t have much of a chance. And for an organization whose success was built on starting pitching to have these sort of concerns entering the stretch drive is simply embarrassing.

Anthopoulos first messed up not addressing the pitching issues last offseason. Instead, he spent money on the bullpen, signing Robert Suarez, one of the best closers in the game. Yet the Braves already had a closer in Raisel Iglesias. Relievers are cheaper than starting pitchers, and that was exactly what that smelled like: a cheap decision.

Two-and-a-half years ago, Anthopoulos made one of the best trades in Braves history when he traded Vaughn Grissom for Sale. He even convinced the Boston Red Sox to pay a big chunk of Sale’s salary. But what big move has Anthopoulos made since then that has worked out? Some might point to the acquisition of Mauricio Dubon. He’s been a nice player, but he’s more of a super-utility man than anything.

Anthopoulos gave $20 million to shortstop Ha-Seong Kim, and that’s been a disaster. The Sean Murphy trade from several years ago has not been good. Murphy has been injured in each of the last three years and, when he has played, has hit only .193. Murphy has two more years of earning $15 million, even though Drake Baldwin has taken over as the starting catcher.

The Braves have not won a playoff series since they won the World Series. The window this team might have had to catapult that year’s success into a strong run is closing. The strong start to this year’s season made it even more crucial to try and win this season. This deadline period was not about ensuring the Braves won the division, but only to prepare for the postseason.

The craziest part of this is, once again, the Atlanta farm system has drastically improved this year, so Anthopoulos had more prospects to dangle in deals than he has had in his tenure as general manager. He basically got Mahle for a quad-A pitcher in Anthony Molina. He ga...

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