Braves: What a Kyle Wright Breakout Would Mean in 2022
As the Atlanta Braves look to fill out the back of their starting rotation, what they really need is someone to stick in the rotation.
The Atlanta Braves have a great stable of young starting pitchers who are all performing well in Spring Training as they fight for a rotation spot.
But what the Braves really need more than anything is for one of those young starters to emerge as a regular in the rotation, and Kyle Wright seems like the most likely candidate.
The former fifth overall pick out of Vanderbilt is entering his age 26 season and it feels like the time is now for him to stick in the starting rotation after three years of inconsistency at the big league level.
He’s coming off a year in which he was great at Triple-A with a 3.02 ERA in 137 innings with 137 strikeouts. And then he came into the biggest game of his career on the biggest stage of baseball, and pitched 4.2 brilliant innings in game four of the World Series.
It’s really all about trusting that sinker in the zone for Wright and getting ahead of hitters, which is exactly what he did against the Astros. He got 10 outs on that sinker.
Now it’s just about finding that consistency start to start.
Braves — Another Rotation Mainstain Would be Huge
It’s a bit obvious, but the Braves come into the 2022 season with three solid, proven arms in the starting rotation with Max Fried, Charlie Morton, and Ian Anderson.
Beyond them, it’s really a lot of questions marks — some potentially good questions marks — but question marks nonetheless.
What happens if one of those big three gets injured? Two of them?
Morton is coming off a major injury and is 38 years old.
Fried has yet to throw more than 170 innings in a regular season and seems to always have a blister issue or something that lands him on the IL.
Anderson has never thrown more than 130 big league innings in a regular season.
Atlanta will need somebody to step up in the rotation and be someone that be counted on to help carry the team at times — much like Huascar Ynoa did early in 2021.
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Wright has the ability to be that guy, and the Braves need him to be that guy in 2022. If he can, it would do wonders for the depth of the starting rotation.