Alex Anthopoulos’ blind spot continues to plague Braves

Just one day into Spring Training, and the Braves have already announced a significant injury to their starting rotation. Spencer Schwellenbach is dealing with elbow inflammation and will begin the season on the 60-day IL. The Braves are hoping he can avoid season-ending surgery, but at this point, it’s impossible to say it isn’t at least on the table for the 25-year-old rising star.

Understandably, the news has sparked widespread conversation — to put it mildly — across Braves Country, with several pointing the finger at Alex Anthopoulos. The Braves GM made it clear since the end of last season that adding starting pitching would be a priority. Yet here we are, just over a month away from Opening Day, with not a single addition to the major-league roster, and now one of the Braves’ best pitchers could potentially be out for the season.

Atlanta will have to find a way to navigate without Spencer Schwellenbach, and unfortunately, he’s just the start of their concerns.

Chris Sale, as great as he’s been over his two seasons with the Braves, hasn’t stayed fully healthy for a 162-game season in about a decade. Spencer Strider hasn’t looked like the same pitcher since undergoing InternalBrace surgery in April of 2024, posting a 4.45 ERA in 2025. Reynaldo López is coming off shoulder surgery and made just one start last year. He’s probably better suited for the bullpen given the fatigue issues he’s dealt with, but the Braves don’t have much of a choice but to stretch him out as a starter at this point. Additionally, Grant Holmes is coming off a UCL injury that ended his season a year ago.

There currently isn’t a starting pitcher on the Braves’ roster who feels 100% reliable, and that was true even before Schwellenbach went down. His 2025 campaign also ended prematurely following a fractured elbow. All of this has been known since the end of last season, and still, no additions have been made.

That’s a tough look for the Braves and specifically Anthopoulos, whose blind spot when it comes to acquiring starting pitching may be catching up to him.

Not once during Anthopoulos’ tenure has he taken a big swing on a starting pitcher in the offseason. There have been success stories — most notably Chris Sale — but he was attainable largely because of his injury history, with the Red Sox literally willing to pay teams to move off of him. Those are the types of gambles Anthopoulos prefers over long-term risks, a strategy that has begun to derail the organization.

Last season was somewhat of an anomaly. Nobody could have predicted that nearly every starting pitcher in the rotation would suffer a significant injury. Still, even when the Braves were winning, their lack of starting depth has cost them chances at a World Series.

The 2020 season is a good example. The Braves entered short-handed after opting for a low-cost signing in Cole Hamels, who made just one start. They then declined to add help at the trade deadline, even after Michael Soroka’s season-ending injury, and had to rely on unproven rookies like Kyle Wright and Bryse Wilson in the postseason. A.J. Minter even started a game in the NLCS.

The Braves ultimately fell one game short of the World Series after leading that series three games to one.

They broke through in 2021, which in hindsight was nothing short of miraculous. Ian Anderson had a postseason for the ages, and they somehow manage to navigate the World Series with Kyle Wright, Tucker Davidson, and Dylan Lee starting games at various points.

Atlanta had no business beating the Astros with that pitching staff, and perhaps that result is where the downfall of the organization began — creating a false sense of confidence that a team can win without investing heavily into their rotation.

Since then, the Braves starting pitching has repeatedly entered October with question marks. In 2022, Max Fried was battling illness and Spencer Strider had an oblique injury. In 2023, Charlie Morton went down before the postseason. The following year, injuries to Reynaldo López and Chris Sale hurt the staff late. Then last season, things unraveled from the start and never recovered.

The Braves enter 2026 with a payroll north of $260 million, the highest in franchise history, yet they don’t have a starting pitcher making more than $20 million. As of now, the projected rotation is set to make about $55 million combined. Bad luck has certainly played a role, but if the rotation struggles again in 2026, resource allocation and abysmal preparation will be to blame.

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