The Atlanta Braves without a doubt have had their share of issues this season. From injuries that included the loss of Spencer Strider to several key player like Ronald Acuna Jr. and Matt Olson having struggles at the plate, the Braves have found themselves staring adversity in the face and despite their setbacks, they find themselves as the third best team in baseball with a 26-13 record and second in the National League East.
And while the lack of production at the plate has been of concern of late for Atlanta, when starting pitcher, Spencer Strider was lost for the season early on, questions surrounding the starting pitching rotation arose, however those concerns have seemingly been addressed as Max Fried, Reynaldo Lopez, Charlie Morton, Bryce Elder and Chris Sale having a combined record of 15-4 heading into Wednesday’s matchup with the Chicago Cubs.
On Wednesday, Steak Shapiro and Rusty Mansell shared their thoughts on how well the pitching staff has been performing and coming off the performance of Chris Sale, who is 6-1 with 61 strikeouts through 49.2 innings pitched with a 2.54 ERA, the two-midday host praised Braves’ President, Baseball Operations & General Manager, Alex Anthopoulos, for his ability to construct a roster that would land Chris Sale in a trade with the Boston Red Sox.
“If he gets off the plane at Logan Airport, there’s going to be two Boston cops arrest him for what he did. He fleeced the Red Sox,” Shapiro said as he and Rusty discussed the transaction that sent Vaughn Grissom to Boston for the veteran left hand pitcher and Boston having to pay $17 million of Sale’s salary.
“Let me just say this about letter grades for the Braves this year, Reynaldo Lopez is an A, Max Fried is an A, Charlie Morton is an A, Chris Sale is an A, Marcel Ozuna is an A, but four of those guys are your starters. You can’t be better than them,” Shapiro said adding that when talking about Sale, “people thought we were getting a banged up guy at the end of his career is dominating,” Shapiro added.
