Another was Bryce Elder, who made 31 starts, but didn’t make the Braves Opening Day roster. To make matters worse, only three pitchers made 30 or more starts, and one of those was Charlie Morton who missed time at the end of the year due to injury. Thirteen pitchers started two or more games for Atlanta in 2023 and 11 made five or more starts. With no organization depth at either position heading into 2024, the Braves will likely bring in either a bench player who could step into a starting role in needed or look to add at least one plausible depth option to Triple-A, even if it is a true “break in case of emergency” signing.
Luckily for Atlanta, Austin Riley played in 159 games and Matt Olson started all 162, making the need for a gap-filler moot. The concern was warranted as the Braves added former All-Star Jesus Aguilar to Gwinnett’s roster in June after he was waved by Oakland after starting the season with the Athletics. Starting with the overlook roster concerns, let’s take a look and if I was on-base or not. Now the time has come to see how many of those were hits and how many were swings-and-misses. In February 2023, I wrote an article on some overlooked roster concerns as the Atlanta Braves headed into Spring Training and in April I took a tongue-in-cheek approach to some analog projections for the rest of the 2023 season.
