Braves Looking for Starters

The Braves main focus as they go into the off-season is improving their starting rotation:

The Braves seek to add at least two starting pitchers on either one- or two-year deals. They don’t want anyone with long-term contracts blocking the elite prospects in a next wave the Braves expect to arrive within 2-3 years or possibly sooner in a couple of cases, such as top prospect Max Fried.

While this winter’s free-agent pitching class pales next to last year’s, that isn’t really relevant to the Braves since they wouldn’t have pursued pitchers like David Price, Johnny Cueto and Zack Greinke.

“We weren’t going to go after those guys anyway. It was not efficient for us,” Coppolella said. “You don’t buy No. 1 starters; you grow them. You draft them, you develop them. For us, it’s not efficient for us to go out and buy a No. 1 starter. Unless something drastically changes, you won’t see us going after a No. 1 starter.”

It’s not clear how much they can improve the starting staff with players willing to take a one or two year contract. The trade would need to be with a team that has free agency looming for a good pitcher, but little hope of competing soon. Given how quickly teams can bounce back from off years, and the ease of making the playoffs through the wild card, those teams might be few and far between.

Here are the pitchers who started at least five games for the Braves in 2016. Julio Teheran and Mike Foltynewicz are solid. Rob Whalen is young and needs to improve his walk rate. So if the Braves can find a couple of number three starters that will last them two years, they might be in good shape with a good offense. They finished 14th in the NL in runs per game, however, so that might be difficult.

from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/2fvNTdG