It’s almost hard to imagine, but the Atlanta Braves have to be considering a change in the rotation as the trade season starts cranking its engine.
Summertime. It’s barely underway, but it’s the time teams start assessing their needs and determining whether their roster can handle the rest of the year. Our Atlanta Braves certainly are having those kinds of meetings… perhaps even on a daily basis.
Something that may have come as a surprise to this Front Office, though is a name that has to be coming up a lot these days: Ian Anderson.
Perhaps, though… they’ve seen this coming.
Sure: in the 2021 postseason, Anderson was brilliant. In 8 starts, his earned run tallies went like this:
- 0, 0, 0, 2, 0, 2, 1, 0 (over 35.2 total innings, a 1.26 ERA)
However, check out these numbers from the second half of 2021 in the regular season (starting June 26th):
- 3, 2, 1, 4, 0, 4, 2, 4, 1, 2 (10 starts, 52.2 total innings, an ERA of 3.97)
Now let’s add in Anderson’s earned runs allowed for each start this season:
- 5, 1, 3, 2, 1, 3, 1, 4, 4, 5, 2, 4, 0, 4, 7
76.1 innings over 15 starts with an ERA that has now ballooned to 5.31.
The cause for these changes is hard to pinpoint, but the trend is definitely headed in a bad direction for the 24-year-old right-hander and whether he needs a break or some time at Gwinnett to regain his command (walks are up and his WHIP had jumped up since the 2021 season began.
In addition, Anderson’s homer rate has skyrocketed… starting in 2021 (from 0.84 in 2021’s first half to 1.95 in the second half). It’s a bit better so far this year, but… maybe the dead balls have temporarily helped him out?
Regardless, more hitters are getting on base — his batting average against is up 60 points — and clearly the ERA is taking a hit.
In Philadelphia on Thursday, the Phillie hitters were just teeing off on his fastball and not even offering at the changeup. That’s a problem.
So the majority of the discussion on this week’s Off Leo’s Rocker episode involves Anderson and what the Atlanta Braves might do at the trade deadline to… yes, replace him in the rotation.
I was a slacker last week and didn’t pen a post about last week’s episode. If you happened to miss that and wanted to catch up, here is the direct link for you to download that audio.
But as for this week…
- Your favorite subscription service should already have notified you that episode 17 is available… if you’ve turned on the notifications!
- If not, here’s the (new) direct download link for you to listen at your leisure.
- Finally… here’s our inline player so that you can get at the audio directly:
Thanks again for tolerating our rants… we’re just a couple of old curmudgeons trying to figure this stuff out like the rest of y’all. But we appreciate your participation in the process as we try to figure out this team we root for.