General manager Alex Anthopoulos and the Atlanta Braves are currently gearing up for what figures to be a highly important 2024 MLB season, in which anything short of a World Series championship will feel like a relative disappointment. Anthopoulos raised eyebrows across the sport this offseason when he traded for veteran pitcher Chris Sale of the Boston Red Sox, setting expectations for the Braves’ revamped pitching staff even higher than they were this past season.
Of course, the Braves’ pitching core is led by Spencer Strider and Max Fried, both of whom had relatively disappointing outings in the postseason against the Philadelphia Phillies this past fall despite the Braves being the hire seed.
For his part, it seems that Alex Anthopoulos believes that the addition of Chris Sale will help in Fried and Strider’s development process.
“Chris Sale, what he can do on the field between the lines, that’s absolutely the majority of this,” said Anthopoulos, per Foul Territory on X, the social media platform formerly referred to as Twitter. “But who he is as a person, as a teammate, that’s going to make Max Fried better. That’s going to make Spencer Strider better. That’s going to make Ian Anderson better. It’s going to make all of our young guys better.”
Chris Sale surely figures to provide a strong veteran presence to the Braves’ locker room in addition to his on-field talents. The Braves have just a few short weeks before they take the field against the Phillies to open up the season.
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