What Atlanta Braves fans think of the team as we start 2019

The Pitching Questions

P1: How many different starting pitchers will the Atlanta Braves use during the regular season? [13 in 2018]

• 13 or fewer (47.6%)
• 14 or more (52.4%)  PESSIMISM

Here’s our first note of pessimism – if you choose to look at it that way.  In general, you’d think that fewer starters means that pitchers are doing way, not getting hurt, etc.

In this day and age, however, more pitchers may be more about limiting innings and cycling arms around to encourage better rest between starts.

The Braves are off to a great start on this question, too:  Since Gausman and Foltynewicz are kind of missing a turn, that’s making room for Wilson, Wright, and possibly Fried.  And you know Touki Toussaint won’t be down in Gwinnett forever, either.

So that ’13’… looks beatable.

P2: The Atlanta Braves team leader in regular season innings pitched will have…

• 150.0 innings or fewer  (25.9%)
• 150.1 innings or more  (74.1%)  OPTIMISM

I admit being on the pessimistic side of this one… for right now, I’m not at all certain who could get to 150 besides Julio Teheran, and there’s reasons to believe that he might not, either.

Ideally, you’d like to get 6 or 7 innings out of your starter routinely.  Over a 33-34 start season, that gets to 200+.

However, the world is changing and 200 innings – which used to be automatic less than 20 years ago – is now a lofty goal.  Instead, 150 is starting to look like the goal… and perhaps the ‘wall’ as well.

P3: The Braves bullpen staff will have a walk rate of 4.0 or less in 2019 [4.41 per 9 innings in 2018].

• True  (63.2%)  OPTIMISM
• False  (36.8%)

Oh I so much hope that this is true at the end of the year.

Walk rate has been a focus of almost everything the Braves have attempted to do with pitching this off-season… even to the point of hiring on Josh Tomlin at the end of last week.

In short, if you throw strikes consistently, you have a real shot at making either the rotation or the bullpen… and that’s a good thing.

P4: The Braves pitcher with the most saves in 2019 will be surnamed…

• Minter (36.5%)
• Vizcaino (25%)
• Neither of the above (38.5%)

This was probably my favorite question of the whole batch – and y’all split on it very well indeed!

Yes:  this is the ‘Craig Kimbrel‘ question.  Neither Vizzy nor Minter have that many career saves… despite even the veteran status of Vizcaino.

That’s exactly why any mention of Kimbrel and the Atlanta Braves in the same paragraph gets my attention… well, that and the fact that our starters are going to need serious support from the bullpen.

I’m not going to assign an Optimism/Pessimism tag on this one, for the answer here is truly up to whether the Braves can muster 40-50+ saves as a team… regardless of who actually records them.

P5. The entire pitching staff will have an ERA better than last year’s 3.75 figure.

• True (58.7%)  OPTIMISM
• False  (41.3%)

What do you think?  There are definitely some serious challenges to this one…

• Rookie starters
• Rookie relievers
• Loss of Anibal Sanchez (holder of the team’s lowest ERA)

I love the enthusiasm here, but it’s also fair to suggest that a higher team ERA would not be surprising.

But it would be outstanding if they can pull it off.