Braves Off Season Trouble Spot–The Rotation

Sep 25, 2015; Oakland, CA, USA; San Francisco Giants starting pitcher

(13) throws to the Oakland Athletics in the second inning of their MLB baseball game at O.co Coliseum. Mandatory Credit: Lance Iversen-USA

What kind of help do we need?

There’s no doubt that the rotation could use a veteran arm that can swallow some innings and hopefully help the young pitchers get through rough patches. Guys like James Shields have done successfully this for their new teams without being the ace – or number one starter if you prefer – of the staff .

How the Braves add that pitcher is the question.  Hart said on multiple occasions that the Braves would be aggressive in the free agent market without shopping at the high end of the scale so lets see how he could do that.

Free agents without a QO

The list of free agent pitchers isn’t all that impressive once you get past those big names and surrendering a draft pick for an arm is probably not of the list of things to do.  Which free agents wouldn’t cost a draft pick and could provide the required attributes?

Mike Leake

Leake skipped the minor leagued and though he’s still young this is his sixth major league season.  He was traded to his home area Giants for a minor league pitcher and a backup first baseman/outfielder but wasn’t quite what they needed to make a run at the Dodgers towards the end of the season.

Over the last three seasons Leake’s 3.59 ERA was just a touch better than league average (105 ERA+) while his 4.03 FIP in 94 starts covering  598 2/3 IP produced an average 2.0fWAR.  He’s  a heavy ground ball pitcher who managed to keep the ball in the Great American Small Park  while consistently posting 200 inning seasons, that’s not an east feat.

At 28 however, he’s not exactly a veteran who could mentor the Braves rotation and one estimate says that because of his age and consistency Leake will get six years and $90M. The Braves might give $90M to a top of the rotation type arm but Leake isn’t that guy.