When the Atlanta Braves announced that starting pitcher Spencer Strider would start the 2026 season on the IL, every fan's nightmare since the start of spring turned into reality. The Braves, who refused to add starting pitching all offseason and spring, suffered yet another pitching injury.
Unlike when Spencer Schwellenbach and Hurston Waldrep went down, where the Braves had an obvious like Lucas Giolito fit that they simply refused to sign, simply adding a starter won't be enough.
Lucas Giolito wouldn't fix the Braves' starting pitching problem
Schwellenbach and Waldrep both went down before spring training games even began. Even though pitchers and catchers had already reported, a free agent starting pitcher would still have had time to ramp up in time for the regular season.
As the days passed, and spring training games got under way, the likelihood of a pitcher like Giolito signing with the Braves decreased dramatically. Given that they would simply not have enough of a runway to build up their arm in time, any new pitcher probably wouldn't be able to make much of a difference during the window Atlanta would need them the most early on.
Even before Strider's oblique injury, signing Giolito, at least as an immediate fix to a rotation that will now likely include Bryce Elder and Jose Suarez was already out of the question. Baseball was simply too close to the regular season. Instead, Braves fans were left holding their breath that another starting pitching injury wouldn't happen.
The Braves haven't announced a timeline for Strider, but he'll likely be out at least a month, which is about the same amount of time needed for a free agent starter who didn't pitch in spring training games to ramp up.
For an organization who typically prioritizes depth, there was obviously a glaring hole with the Braves starting pitching after the first injuries of the spring. Not addressing it during the early parts of spring training, at the very latest, looked like a foolish misstep before Strider's injury.
At this point, the Braves cannot afford another pitching injury, and there are already concerns with the remaining members of the rotation, specifically with Reynaldo Lopez's shocking decrease in velocity and Grant Holmes recovery of his partially torn UCL.
Although the team has rookies like JR Ritchie and Didier Fuentes, waiting in the wings to jump into the rotation, the lack of another veteran arm could be the the first things fans circle if things go wrong this season.