Meet the Gwinnett Express
There are big-league starters, there are prospects, and then there's the shadowy space in between.
It’s nice and simple to conceptualize the Braves’ rotation as consisting of five or six pitchers: Spencer Strider, Max Fried, Chris Sale, Charlie Morton, and then probably Reynaldo Lopez or Bryce Elder. Indeed, when Opening Day rolls around, that’ll hopefully be what the first turn through the rotation looks like. And even casual fans have a vague idea of the promise that lies in store with AJ Smith-Shawver and Hurston Waldrep; it seems pretty likely that both will get some run with the big league club this year, and both have prodigious upside.
So there you go. Eight pitchers to fill a five-man regular season rotation and hopefully a three- or four-man postseason rotation. A mix of wily veterans and new kids, overpowering fastballs and devastating breaking stuff. A group that FanGraphs likes as much as any rotation in baseball.
Except eight isn’t even close to enough. Not to traverse the long, unforgiving slog of June and July games. Not when the team needs to skip starts for veterans, or when Max Fried’s blister is bothering him for a week, or when the prospects need more development time in Gwinnett. Thirteen different pitchers got multiple starts for the Braves last year. The group of AJ Smith-Shawver, Kolby Allard, Jared Shuster, Michael Soroka, Yonny Chirinos, Dylan Dodd, Darius Vines, and Allan Winans combined for more starts than Spencer Strider and Max Fried.
Chances are that they’ll need some surplus guys this year, too. Not high-end prospects or established vets; just good old spot starters who might show enough to hold down a rotation spot for a month here or there.
So here are three future unsung heroes.
Dylan Dodd (age-26 season)
Last year wasn’t a rollercoaster for Dylan Dodd so much as it was a ski slope. Things started well; Dodd was dominant in spring training, with his fastball averaging 94 mph and his command as preternaturally good as it had been for his whole minor league career to that point. Dodd wasn’t just impressing Braves fans; FanGraphs snuck him into their Top 100 on the strength of his spring with the following blurb:
Dodd . . . has been surgical even amid his own two-tick velo spike and while adjusting to a relatively new delivery. He is getting deeper into his legs than he was in college, and his stride is more closed off, altering the angle of his fastball in addition to helping unlock some extra velocity by better using his lower half. His stuff is fine, not great, but he has plus-plus command of everything, he goes right at hitters, and his fastball has enough hair on it to stay off barrels even though it isn’t a dominant, riding pitch. He belongs amid the high-floor 50 FV pitchers toward the back of the Top 100.
That’s basically the perfect luxury candidate for sixth starter/spot starter job, and it seemed like a real win for the Braves’ development team given that Dodd was a cheap senior sign in 2021.
And then Dodd got major league innings and they went absurdly badly. His final major league line for the year was 7.60 ERA/8.53 xERA/6.92 FIP/6.50 xFIP. I didn’t realize that a pitcher could have an xERA that high.
Both of the things that made Dodd succeed in the spring - his velo spike and his excellent command (FanGraphs gave it a 70 grade, which, for reference, is a higher grade than FanGraphs gave any of Ronald Acuña Jr.’s tools other than his arm) - disappeared at the big league level, and neither really came back when he was in Triple-A. The silver lining: Dodd had a dominant four-inning relief appearance for Gwinnett in September in which his fastball was parked at 93.6 mph. He then had a poor final outing in Atlanta and then a weird stint in the Arizona Fall League in which his walk rate was pretty good and his K rate was decent but he was giving up way too many homers.
Dodd is probably an afterthought for most fans at this point, but I’ll be keeping a close eye on him in the spring (though as he showed last year, spring can be a deceiving time). If he does something to suggest he can maintain better velocity on his fastball without throwing command out the window, I’m cautiously in.
Darius Vines (age-26 season)
Vines came into last year with a similar profile to Dodd: a punchless fastball but plus command, and while that command wasn’t quite Dodd-tier, Vines also came with a plus changeup.
Vines pitched 20.1 innings in Atlanta, and they were . . . fine. Good, even. The FIP and xFIP (4.98/5.58) are ugly, but strikeouts might not be his game anyway. Vines demonstrated some really impressive contact suppression, with a .221 xBA against, a 30.6% hard-hit rate, and 86.7 mph average EV against, all of which would have put him above the 80th percentile leaguewide if he qualified. Of course, it’s hard to make any strong conclusions off a 20-inning sample, but those are promising pieces, and they allowed Vines to post a 4.01 xERA.
Allan Winans (age-28 season)
Acquired by the Braves in 2021 as a minor league Rule 5 draftee (not to be confused with the majors Rule 5 draft, in which a draftee must spend the next season on the drafting team’s 26-man roster), Winans took care of Mississippi in 2022 (2.44 ERA/3.20 FIP/3.72 xFIP) and then was easily the Braves’ best starter in Gwinnett in 2023 (2.85 ERA/3.87 FIP/4.16 xFIP), for which he was rewarded with 32.1 major league innings.
While, as with Dodd, things blew up for Winans in a final-series start against the Nationals (5.1 IP, 6ER), Winans put in good work against the Brewers, Mets, and Pirates in earlier starts. There’s not a whole lot to dream on here - the changeup and slider played well in the majors, while Winans’ fastballs both got crushed. It seems like Winans can’t really locate either (though he has pinpoint command over the slider and decent command of the changeup).
This is not the story of a guy who has clear plan with his fastballs.
If Winans is the same guy this year, he’s quintessential Quad-A starter material and perfect for this list. That’s a reasonable expectation of him. If he overhauls his fastballs - or can just keep them out of the heart of the zone more effectively without walking way more guys - there might be a path to something even more interesting here.
It would be surprising if any of these guys become mainstays in a major league rotation. But for a time - a week here, a month there - they might effectively fill the gaps that come up over a long major league season.