The Rotation Depth Question Nobody Wants to Answer

Forty-three.

That's how many combined starts Chris Sale, Spencer Strider, and Reynaldo Lopez made in 2025. Sale contributed 20 before a rib injury shut him down. Strider managed roughly 23 on a rebuilt elbow. Lopez contributed zero — shoulder surgery in April, season over before it started. A healthy top three projects for 90-plus starts in a given year. The Braves got fewer than half that. And the depth behind them did not save the season. The record, 76-86, confirms it.

The question for 2026 is not whether this rotation can be elite. When Sale, Strider, and Lopez are all healthy and throwing well, this is a top-ten staff in baseball. Sale won the Cy Young two years ago. I wrote earlier this week about what Strider's spring velocity suggests — 97 mph fastballs, a slider generating a 41.7 percent whiff rate, the 2023 version flickering back into view. Lopez, before the shoulder, posted a 1.99 ERA and made the All-Star team in 2024. The talent is not the question.

The question is what sits behind them. And the answer, examined honestly, is thin air.

Grant Holmes is the projected fourth starter. His spring has been excellent — 12.1 scoreless innings, 16 strikeouts, a slider generating a 93 percent whiff rate in one start against the Pirates. The numbers are legitimately impressive. But Holmes is also a 29-year-old who didn't see meaningful major league time until last season, posted a 3.99 ERA in 21 games before UCL and flexor tendon damage ended his year, and then chose rehabilitation over surgery. The structural issues have not been repaired. They have been managed. That is a different thing, and the distinction matters across 162 games.

Bryce Elder occupies the fifth spot, partly by merit and partly by circumstance — he's out of minor league options, which means the Braves can't send him to Gwinnett without risking losing him on waivers. His full-season 2025 ERA was 5.30 across 28 starts. The optimistic case points to his final seven starts: a 2.82 ERA, velocity up 1.3 mph, six outings of six-plus innings allowing two or fewer runs. The pessimistic case points out that seven starts is one-fifth the sample of 28, and small samples lie with great confidence.

Behind Holmes and Elder, the options thin further. Didier Fuentes is 20 years old with a two-pitch mix and a 13.85 ERA in his 13 major league innings last season. His spring — 9.0 innings, zero hits, 17 strikeouts — has been extraordinary, but he's headed to Gwinnett after the opening stretch, not the rotation. Joey Wentz recently suffered an injury scare with uncertain details. Carlos Carrasco is 39 and on a minor league deal. Martin Perez is organizational depth. The cavalry everyone is waiting for — Schwellenbach and Waldrep — are recovering from elbow surgeries with vague first-half return timelines.

This is, statistically speaking, not ideal.

MLB teams typically use 10 to 13 starters over the course of a season. The Braves can currently name five before reaching minor league deals and Double-A arms. The gap between the committed investment in the top three — roughly $50 million in combined salary across the Sale extension, the Strider deal, and Lopez's contract — and the replacement-level insurance behind them is enormous. The front office pursued Framber Valdez in free agency, even signing his battery mate Maldonado as an incentive. Valdez signed elsewhere. The Braves did not pivot to another starter.

This was a choice, consistent with the Anthopoulos philosophy: develop, extend, replace. Never chase sentiment with dollars. It is a philosophy with a proven track record. It is also a philosophy that, in its current application, is betting everything on health in a division projected to be decided by two to three games.

The Braves have already lived this movie. Twice. In 2024, Strider went down in April with the internal brace procedure, and the team limped to a wild card berth before an early exit. In 2025, Lopez's shoulder failed, the depth could not absorb the loss, and the franchise posted its first losing record since 2017. The response to two consecutive seasons defined by rotation attrition was not to overhaul the depth — it was to trust the same arms and hope for different results.

There's a version of this season where everything holds. Sale stays healthy at 36 and makes 30 starts. Strider's spring velocity is real and sustains through summer. Lopez's surgically repaired shoulder handles competitive pitching after 14 months away. Holmes's rehabbed UCL doesn't betray him. Elder's late-2025 surge was growth, not noise. In that version, the Braves win 92 games, take the NL East, and enter October with a rotation built for a short series.

But the Braves have always been a franchise defined by its pitching — from Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz through the present. When the arms are right, everything else follows. When they aren't, no amount of lineup depth compensates. The franchise understands this better than anyone. Baseball has a long memory, and the last two Octobers are very recent.

FanGraphs gives the Braves an 87 percent chance of making the playoffs. That number assumes the top three stays intact. It does not account for the void that opens if one — or two — of them doesn't. The projection is a best-case document, not a plan.

And a bet on health, after losing that bet twice running, is not a plan either. It is a prayer dressed in spreadsheets.