Alex Anthopoulos has one decision made for him thanks to yet another meltdown by this Atlanta Braves bullpen.
He doesn’t need to worry about repairing it. It’s time to sell at the trade deadline and turn the page to next season. This bullpen has been disappointing all season and with the Braves out of playoff contention at the moment, there’s no sense in saving this thing. This season couldn’t have been more disappointing as a Braves fan.
Things went from bad to worse and while getting Ronald Acuña Jr. back should have been a highlight, it was merely a step forward for a team that has already regressed beyond recovery.
Spencer Strider has been less than exciting, AJ Smith-Shawver was hit with an injury just nine games into his season and for as good as Spencer Schwellenbach has been, it hasn’t really meant much. And that’s just the starters. That’s not including Raisel Iglesias’ letdown season and the other arms that have been disappointing. It’s time to make some changes.
The only way the Atlanta Braves can salvage this season is by selling at the trade deadline
Though Anthopoulos made it clear Chris Sale isn’t on the trade block, it might be something worth looking into over the next couple of weeks. Sale is 36 years old and holding onto him during this miserable season seems like a lost cost.
He’s been one of the only arms to look respectable this year.
It doesn’t makesense to hold on to him when they’ll bring back some younger arms next year, get healthy and hopefully have a much more competitive rotation than this year.
On top of that, does losing Sale really hinder this bullpen for the future? Probably not. That’s why it might be worth seeing what you could get in return for him.
There haven’t been many other arms the Braves have talked about offloading over the next few weeks, mainly because they spent the last couple months trying to repair this fractured bullpen. That didn’t work and now they need to shift their focus to salvaging this year and looking to next year.
With 43 wins, this team is out of reach of the wild card and 12.5 games back off the division lead. They shouldn’t be worried about retaining guys like Sale right now when he has enough value to yield some sort of return.
This season is a lost cause and the sooner Antopoulos accepts that, the sooner the Braves can make amends with this season.
