There has been a decent bit of discussion around Alex Anthopoulos’ comments regarding essentially only looking to add a starter who would be a middle/top of the rotation guy and not really trying to add just a guy to fit into the back of the rotation. I have conflicted feelings on these comments. A guy like Chris Bassitt would have made this roster better on paper. That’s not really something disputed. I think there is an argument if you think that Bryce Elder and/or Joey Wentz are 1-1.5 fWAR/162 starting pitchers, then adding a 2-2.5 fWAR/162 starter for just under $20 million isn’t good return on investment and doesn’t substantially improve depth when it results on the likely loss of a guy like Elder from the roster entirely. One counter-argument to that would be that Elder or perhaps a Holmes or Lopez could be stashed in the bullpen to preserve depth if a guy like Bassitt had been added, but I don’t see Elder as a particularly strong bullpen candidate and that scenario wouldn’t have made much sense until Schwellenbach’s injury status was discovered. That said, adding a top 3 starter to the roster for reasonable cost is a very difficult task, so perhaps that is an unrealistic self-imposed bar for adding to the pitching staff. It’s an interesting approach and I hope that the Braves don’t suffer from another plague of injuries to their pitching staff this season.
