The Atlanta Braves are watching what few position battles they have play out in real time, as bench options are mashing and the candidates for the fifth spot in the rotation are going out there this weekend to make their case.
Meanwhile, for some of the veterans, the goal is to just get ready for Opening Day..
Charlie Morton, the elder statesman of the Braves roster at 40 years old, threw a live bullpen this week and is close to making his Grapefruit League debut.
Justin Toscano of the AJC, among others, had the news from Brian Snitker's media availability on Friday.
Morton had a similarly slow spring training in 2023, pitching only 9.2 innings across three appearances before the regular season. But he was as ready as ever when April rolled around, making thirty starts and pitching to a 3.64 ERA, the 2nd-lowest ERA of his Braves tenure.
And as he enters his seventeen season in the majors, it's pretty apparent that Morton knows exactly how much work he needs to be ready for the regular season.
And when the regular season comes, he has, in fact, been ready. Since Morton re-joined the Braves after the 2020 season, he's one of only eleven pitchers to make thirty or more starts in each of the last three seasons (per Baseball Reference's Stathead). Morton's 94 starts are sixth-most during that span, and while some of the peripherals aren't tops in the league - he's 17th in innings, for instance - it's an overall effective package, with Morton being 7th in strikeouts (604), 5th in strikeout rate (10.4 K/9), and 8th in ERA (3.77) among that sample.
So you may not see a lot of Charlie Morton during Grapefruit League action. But when April rolls around, he'll be ready.
He always is.
(Milestone watch: Charlie Morton is 7th in career strikeouts among active pitchers and is only 120 strikeouts away from reaching 2,000 for his career.)
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