Today is Opening Day, the blissful final end of spring training and the start of the grueling 162-day major league regular season. The Braves escaped the spring relatively healthy, with catcher Sean Murphy‘s cracked rib, which will keep him out the first two to three weeks of the season, as the only acknowledged injury to the team’s central casting.
This was a team going into the spring that had few personnel questions, and without injury surprises the team exits spring essentially the same way. Nevertheless, I have have questions.
Question 1: Which Matt Olson Will Show Up in 2025?
Matt Olson had a down year in 2024, which isn’t to say he was bad — he produced 3.8 bWAR and a 118 OBP+. That’s helpful, but absolutely nothing like the MVP-caliber 2023 season (7.5 bWAR, 164 OBP+). No one was predicting he would match those numbers again last year, but in the wake of injuries and down years from others, Olson’s own lackluster season meant the offense was running on maybe half-cylinders all season.
Olson has admitted to pressing at the plate as his performance failed to improve and the line-up crumbled around him. The best thing that could happen for Olson of course is the line-up around him producing, but Olson is being paid like a line-up anchor. He needs to meet the moment just a little more than in 2024.
Question 2: Will The Reconstituted Front-End of the Bullpen Hold Up?
All spring the Braves could point to a solid back-end of the bullpen to build around. Closer Raisel Iglesias had the best season of his career at age 34 while veterans Pierce Johnson and Aaron Bummer usually were able to maintain leads to get to him. Left-hander Dylan Lee had a monster year.
Unfortunately, that leaves four other spots. A big blow came early in the offseason when it was announced that set-up man Joe Jiménez would require knee surgery and would miss most, if not all of the 2025 season. The Braves did not bring back longtime lefty A.J. Minter and rookie find Grant Holmes was pretty much slated for the starting rotation from the outset. That left four spots left in the bullpen, plus needed depth.
Those four spots are currently being filled by veteran free agent pick-ups Héctor Neris and Enyel De Los Santos, homegrown fireballer Daysbel Hernández, and last-minute trade acquisition José Suarez. The good news is that these four are extraordinarily cheap by baseball standards: the Braves will pay this foursome just a little over $5 million for the season. The bad is that those four combined for 4.84 ERA in 2023. Atlanta also signed a slew of major league veterans to stash in triple-A as this season begins: left-handers Chasen Shreve and Kolton Ingram and right-handers Buck Farmer, Dylan Covey, Chad Kuhl, Zach Thompson, Wander Suero, Jordan Weems, Jesse Chavez, Enoli Paredes, and most intriguingly former closer Craig Kimbrel.
In short, if any of the Opening Day-anointed relievers stumbles out of the gate, there is a slew of pitchers in-house to take their spot. The question is how long will it take this bullpen to stabilize? Will it be another 2019 situation where the bullpen took its lumps hard early on before finding stability around the trade deadline? Or will it be the relatively smooth 2023?
Question 3: How Durable Is the Starting Rotation?
On paper, the Braves will look to return a formidable starting rotation, headed by reigning Cy Young Award winner Chris Sale. Top 2024 rookie Spencer Schwellenbach will follow him, then righty Reynaldo López and his 1.99 ERA from 2024 slots in third. Righty Grant Holmes will slot in fourth after making 7 starts for Atlanta in 2024, then rookie and #1 OFR prospect AJ Smith-Shawver will hold down the fifth spot.
After one sterling and one solid spring outing, ace Spencer Strider is arrowing toward a mid-April return as well.
That all said, there are questions about the durability of each. Obviously Strider is coming back from serious injury and will be carefully regulated by the team. Sale has a long recent history of injury issues, most recently back problems that kept him from making a start in the final week of the 2024 regular season and the post-season. None of Schwellenbach, Holmes, or Smith-Shawver has had to post up 30 or more starts in a season.
Perhaps most concerning is López, who was held by the team to only 4 spring starts and 13 innings. López had off-and-on inflammation issues last season that limited him to 23 starts.
The Braves likely could weather one of these top 6 starters not being able to answer the call, but beyond that we could see starts for the likes of Bryce Elder, Davis Daniel, Hurston Waldrep, or one of the minor league vets currently off the 40-man roster like Chad Kuhl or Zach Thompson. Not to disparage any of these pitchers, but that’s a deep drop in expectations for a rotation that was best in the majors last year.
Question 4: How Long Will It Take Ronald Acuña Jr. to Have an Impact?
Acuña is expected back in the line-up sometime in early-to-mid May from rehab of the ACL tear suffered last season. The 2023 MVP is reportedly in fantastic shape and both he and the team seem to have learned from 2022, when the consensus is that Acuña returned to action too soon from the ACL injury to his other knee. That year Acuña played tentatively in the field and was uncharacteristically anemic at the plate, and he admitted that his knee was sore the whole time.
A healthy, energized Ronald Acuña Jr. is a season-altering talent, and the question is a simple one — when is that version of Acuña going to assert himself? Even a 2022 version will produce more than a Jarred Kelenic/Bryan De La Cruz platoon, but it won’t be a significant difference-maker for a team fighting in the most competitive division in the league.
Question 5: How Will The Catching Situation Shake Out?
Perhaps the biggest surprise this offseason for the Braves was when the team elected not to exercise catcher Travis d’Arnaud‘s option on his contract and allowed him to hit the free agent market. d’Arnaud subsequently signed with Atlanta Braves West the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, leaving Murphy and perennial third catcher Chadwick Tromp as the likely catching duo in 2025, with Murphy expected to handle the position 4-to-5 times a week.
Murphy’s spring cracked rib has changed that math, at least early on. Rookie Drake Baldwin, the consensus top Braves prospect by national writers, won a roster spot this spring and at least for the first few weeks of the season will see Baldwin likely taking a larger slice of the catching pie.
My question isn’t if Baldwin will play well. I am certain he will, though one should never anticipate instant success for someone making his major league debut. The question is how the position shakes out upon Murphy’s return. If Baldwin stumbles out of the gate, it’s an easy decision — Baldwin is optioned to triple-A Gwinnett to get regular plate appearances and wait for his next shot. If Baldwin starts strong however, he may force the team to pair him with Murphy in a more even catcher time share. This, in my opinion, is the best way to ensure that you have at least one catcher not totally gassed after that previously mentioned long 162-game season. However, it would mean likely trying to sneak Tromp through waivers to get him back to triple-A, even if he accepts the assignment. Given the state of catching leaguewide, it’s quite possible another team will snatch Tromp away.
This gives greater importance to the team’s late-spring signing of veteran James McCann to a minor league contract. If Tromp leaves the organization and there’s a subsequent injury to Murphy or Baldwin, McCann could play a big role for the team.
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These questions will answered in the fullness of time and the crucible of that 162-game regular season and for all my questions, the hope of Opening Day sees me expecting to be delighted at how this version of the Atlanta Braves will reveal itself in the coming weeks and months.
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