Atlanta Braves: Why we should appreciate Julio Teheran

The 2019 season wasn’t his best year for the Atlanta Braves, but Julio Teheran did enough to garner our appreciation.

It’s rather apparent by now, Julio Teheran will probably never be as good as he once was. The 2014-2016 days are more than likely gone forever. The Atlanta Braves are more than aware of this.

The organization has rightfully turned its attention to the newest wave of starters: guys like Mike Soroka and Max Fried, even Mike Foltynewicz — who joined the Braves’ organization seven years after Julio threw his first pitch as a Braves’ minor leaguer.

And ultimately, the team may choose to lean on those guys — as well as Dallas Keuchel — in the postseason, saving Julio for mop-up duty or other insignificant innings.

But let me explain to you why that’s OK, and why — with the regular season all but officially wrapped up — what Julio did in 2019 deserves some credit.

Durability

While Soroka (3.9 WAR) and Fried (2.9) have been the Atlanta Braves most productive starting pitchers this season (in that order), Julio (1.6) is next in line on the FanGraphs WAR leaderboard — admittedly with more than 1 WAR less than Fried.

But leading the Braves’ rotation in WAR probably wasn’t on Julio’s list of things to accomplish in 2019. If I was a betting man, I would assume his ultimate goal was to just pitch well and remain a mainstay on the team’s starting staff this season.

Well, Julio accomplished that.

The 28-year-old righty has made more starts than any other Braves’ starter (33) in 2019, giving him an astounding seven-straight seasons with 30 or more starts — a true testament to how durable Julio has been during his 9-year career (all with the Atlanta Braves).

While several different arms in the Braves’ rotation have broken down over the years, there has always been Julio, seemingly always healthy (his most recent then-DL stint came last June with a thumb injury).

That’s sort of Julio’s motto: He may not always give you a great outing, but he runs out there every fifth day and makes his scheduled start.

Julio’s durability has allowed him to put up numbers in 2019 that we haven’t seen from him in a couple of seasons. If the season ended today, he would finish with his best ERA (3.81) since the 2016 campaign — when he posted a 3.21 ERA and 3.0 WAR (he’s at 1.6 WAR in 2019).

Consistency

While Julio’s consistency has wavered a bit on a month-to-month basis this season, he’s been practically the same pitcher in this year’s second half relative to the first three months of the season:

• 1st Half: 3.75 ERA, .229 BAA
• 2nd Half: 3.89 ERA, .230 BAA

Regrettingly, this piece may be ill-timed — he’s given up 15 runs, including 6 home runs over his last four starts — but Julio has had two separate 8-start runs of three earned runs or less this season.

In fact, in that first 8-start stint (May 5 to June 13), Julio didn’t allow a single home run. Those eight outings were his best stretch of pitching this season (though it did involve quite a bit of luck… and a fair amount of walks):

3-0, 44.2 IP, 0.81 ERA, 3.54 FIP, 32 K, 22 BB

During that run, batters hit just .135 versus Julio, at a time where he looked a lot like his prime self.

Another season down

Unfortunately, after putting together a pretty solid five months of the season, Julio is limping to the end (not actually limping). He hasn’t pitched a quality-start since September 7 (four starts ago) and has a 6.56 ERA in his last five outings (2.31 HR/9).

It’s a shame that this final month’s worth of poor starts will be the last stretch of performance Braves’ fans see before the regular season ends. It’s almost as if he’s wearing down here at the end.

I’m not sure if we’ll see another start by Julio during the regular season (I would imagine he’d at least get some relief work). I also haven’t seen any news regarding his status for the upcoming postseason, either.

In a sense, I’m not too concerned if he’s included in the playoff rotation (though it would be a little odd not to include your third-best starter, by WAR, on a postseason roster).

I think the Atlanta Braves will be fine with a combination of Soroka, Keuchel, and Mike Foltynewicz as the NLDS rotation.

No matter how Julio is used, or not used, though, it doesn’t change the fact that for another year he did his job, and did it rather well. And because of that… he deserves our appreciation.