Braves 2018 Preview

The curtain goes up Thursday afternoon on the 2018 season for the Atlanta Braves The Braves’ spring performance has yielded mixed results and the regular season is likely to do the same.

The biggest change in the organization this year is not on the field, but in the front office where new GM Alex Anthopoulos tries to steer the mothership back toward a winning trend, one that has been absent the past 4 years – but the strange, sudden and not wholly sad departure if former GM John Coppelella promises a new direction.

Out with the GM, also went John Hart, Coppy’s overseer (who apparently wasn’t watching too closely) and with him also went “the Braves’ Way”, which had come to mean chronic repetitive poor performance, with 4 straight losing seasons (after having only 2 losing seasons in the preceding 21 years). Time to get a new “way”.

So what do we have? We have a team still built more on hope than expectation. Last week the Braves announced that their best performer this spring, wunderkind outfielder Ronald Acuna, would not be on the roster Opening Day. This tells us that the Braves care more about 2024 – when they will still “control” Acuna – than they do about putting their best team on the field on Day One of this season. Whether that decision is best won’t be known for several years.

That said, the biggest question for this team is the pitching staff–especially starting pitching. Julio Teheran is the number one starter, and Braves’ faithful hope he can regain–and sustain– the form that has intermittently made him a top-notch pitcher. It is also hoped that Mike Foltynewicz can blossom into a consistent front-line starter, and that Brandon McCarthy’s health will hold up, and that Sean Newcomb will find the strike zone regularly, and that…..

That’s a lot of hope. Not much confidence. Although any or all of those things could happen, the likelihood is that they won’t all happen. Teheran has been an up and down performer for several years and on many rosters would be the 3rd or 4th starter. The other projected starters are not proven performers. Newcomb and possible 5th starter Luis Gohara are young and promising–but only promising. Behind them are a slew of exciting young pitching prospects, and the arc of the Braves season will hinge on whether their ascension to major league pitchers is prompted by their proven early season performance or desperation from a floundering current rotation.

In the infield, the Braves are set on the right side with Freddie Freeman at 1st base and young Ozzie Albies at 2nd. The left side is less secure. Dansby Swanson faces a career fork in the road in 2018 at shortstop. Is he a rising star, as we thought in 2016, or a middling journeyman performer whose career topped out in college? He’s shown flashes of both this spring. At 3rd is Johan Camargo, yet another unproven presence. He played well last year at short before sustaining a bizarre knee injury while running onto the field. Camargo has good range, a great arm, and a sneaky good bat. None of those talents has seen a full campaign yet, so he’s an unknown (which still rates as an improvement over 2017 when the Braves treated the hot corner as an on-field experimental station, even trying all-star star first baseman Freddie Freeman there for a few weeks).

The outfield features steady, solid but unspectacular Nick Markakis in right, and all-star Ender Inciarte back in centerfield. That leaves left field where Lane Adams is projected to start the year until the Ronald Aruna Appearance Watch cranks up in earnest.

Does baseball history give us examples of teams that caught fire and exceeded expectations over an entire season? Of course it does, including right here in Atlanta in 1991. Those years are magical, in part because they are so rare. Much more often, mediocre rosters produce mediocrity, as has been the case in Atlanta since the last winning record was posted in 2013.

The Braves’ bullpen does hold promise this year, if only because it’s now impossible to bring in Jim Johnson since he’s off the roster. The question will be whether there will be many late-inning leads to protect. It seems unlikely, but there’s always hope. Lots of hope.