Shanks: Thankfully, the Atlanta Braves have pitching options as baseball continues to change

Can you imagine what a bullpen game would have looked like for the Atlanta Braves some 35 years ago?

Now starting, for your Atlanta Braves, number 26, Gene Garber. Or how about 25 years ago. Can you imagine John Rocker starting a baseball game?

Wow, that’s sort of hard to imagine. Baseball has changed a lot, especially this year. But nothing has changed more than pitching. The days of pitchers pitching on four days rest, logging 300-plus innings and starting more than 35 games per season are long gone.

It’s more than that, however. Bullpen games have gone from a strategy of allowing a certain reliever shut down a lineup for a couple of innings to a necessity. Pitching has always been important, but now it’s plum scarce.Teams tweak their rosters daily, and managers likely arrive at their stadiums wondering which pitcher will show up hurt.

We use the Braves as an example because that’s the team we watch, but this is an industry epidemic. And it’s not like teams have done anything wrong, except perhaps for believing that overprotecting pitchers will keep them from getting hurt. No, it just delays them from the inevitable.

Most believe pitchers are damaged goods by the time they sign a pro contract, that the overuse of kid pitchers in travel ball has put too much pressure on young arms. That’s probably true, but it’s the frequency of the injuries that have to alarm baseball executives.

Again, the Braves are our example. When they arrived at spring training in February, the expected rotation was Max Fried, Spencer Strider, Kyle Wright, Charlie Morton and Ian Anderson. Well, three are not pitching right now. Anderson is out for the year after havingTommy John surgery on his elbow. Fried is also having elbow issues, while Wright’s ailment is his shoulder.

Through two months of the season, 60% of the expected rotation has combined for 10 starts. The Braves hope they’ll get Fried and Wright back between the All-Star break and the end of July.

Hope. But you know they’re scared to death that both could miss even more significant time.

If not for the emergence of Bryce Elder, the Braves would likely not be in first place right now. Jared Shuster has also done okay, and this weekend we will see a 20-year-old named A.J. Smith-Shawver make his first MLB start. Thankfully, the Braves have still had a priority on pitching to have backup options in case the injuries jeopardize the season.

Smith-Shawver, by the way, got the call to the big leagues with 110.0 minor league innings under his belt. In contrast, Steve Avery, who was also 20 years old when he got promoted to Atlanta 33years ago, had 319.1 minor league innings when he got the call. The dire need for more arms is causing teams to rush pitchers to the big leagues, whether they are ready or not.

Not all teams are that lucky to have those options. That’s why we’re seeing bullpen games, where a team uses relievers, who themselves are getting overused, to get through the start of a game. And, like with the Braves, who had three bullpen games this season, the relievers are also coming up lame.

Again, there’s little organizations can do to prevent this. Last year, in the MLB amateur draft, the Braves placed an emphasis on pitching. Two of their first four picks, who were all pitchers, havealready gone down with elbow issues and had Tommy John surgery. You know teams don’t draft pitchers who will soon be on the injured list. It almost shows there is no true way to guard against drafted or trading or signing pitchers who will get hurt.

On Tuesday, Texas Rangers’ right-hander Jacob deGrom, who signed a five-year, $185 million contract last winter, announced he would have Tommy John surgery for the second time in his career. Now, deGrom has had trouble staying healthy the last three seasons, but even someonewho has previously had Tommy John surgery is not immune from additional elbow trouble.

That probably scares the Braves about Fried, who had Tommy John surgery nine years ago. He’s got to prove he’s completely healthy before they would give him a large contract extension.

So, is there a solution, an answer, for all of these problems? No, or else it would have stopped being a major concern years ago. Limiting starting pitchers to 100 pitches per start, or the number of times through a batting order, is not keeping them from getting hurt.

Managers have to be smart, and they have to worry about getting players through the course of a six-month regular season, but you wonder if scrapping that plan and just letting them pitch would create the same results. Survival has superseded a normal pitching plan.

As for the Braves, luckily, they have done some things to perhaps guard against this industry dilemma. First, they have locked up seven of the nine position players into long-term contracts.This should allow them to focus on drafting and developing more pitchers, since the merry-go-round is going to cause a regular need anyway. The more the Braves can develop, the more options the team will have to get through a season. And they obviously need them.

In 1980, the Braves used 11 pitchers the entire season. Eleven. Five starting pitchers started 159 of the 161 that were played that year.

So far this season, through two-plus months, the Braves have already used 21 pitchers and 11 have made starts.

Welcome to Baseball, 2023. Like it or not, times have certainly changed. Forget about teaching your son to be a pitcher. Let him instead go to medical school to perform the surgeries that allpitchers seem to inevitably need sooner or later.

Listen to The Bill Shanks Show weekdays at 3:00 pm ET on TheSuperStations.com. Email Bill at thebillshanksshow@yahoo.com.

This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Bill Shanks: The Atlanta Braves still have pitching options