Alex Anthopoulos has proven unafraid to make uncomfortable moves. But when it came to making a big swing for a star pitcher this year, he decided against it.
The Braves were among the teams who would have benefitted from adding a frontline starter at the trade deadline. Atlanta lost its ace in Spencer Strider for the season to an elbow injury, and has been leaning on Chris Sale this season to be the No. 1. He’s handled that with aplomb, but certainly a team with postseason aspiration like the Braves can never have too many quality arms.
Jack Flaherty ultimately was the top starter moved, getting traded to the Dodgers from the Tigers. White Sox star Garrett Crochet was widely expected to be traded, but a deal never came together. There was speculation that the Tigers could also part with a bona fide ace in Tarik Skubal, but he stayed put as well.
So, ultimately, it’s not as though there were a bunch of top-of-the-rotation starters that got moved and the Braves stood pat. The market just never materialized in a way that made sense for the Braves, Anthopoulos indicated Wednesday on The Steakhouse.
"We had a lot of conversations,” Anthopoulos said. “But the tricky part for us was the way our rotation is set up with (Reynaldo) Lopez looking like he’ll be fine and Max (Fried), same way, they’re going to be back soon here. The only guy that we have options on that we’d send down – not that we want to – would be (Spencer) Schwellenbach. That’s not to say we wouldn’t have found a way to come up with maybe a six-man rotation or something like that – but we weren’t going to go get a back of the rotation guy or anything like that at all.
“So, it was (going to have to be someone) someone who was really an impact starter, a Chris Sale-type, a guy that could go start one, two playoff games. If those guys were available, we were definitely going to have conversations and we had conversations on those guys. It’s hard to characterize close or not, we just had discussions. One got moved in Flaherty, definitely a pitch at the top of the rotation guy, and the other guys that were rumored to be out there didn’t get moved. We were in on it, we talked about everything.”
Ultimately, the Braves made their deadline splash by reuniting with Jorge Soler in a trade with the Giants that also brought right-handed reliever Luke Jackson to Atlanta. When everyone is healthy, the Braves rotation going forward likely will consist of Fried, Sale, Lopez, Schwellenbach and Charlie Morton.