The Mysterious Case of Julio Teheran
What will the Braves do with the new Ace of their staff?
It is a vast understatement to say that expectations were low going into the 2016 season for the Atlanta Braves. The path that this year’s team is on was paved in 2014. The Braves missed the playoffs despite a 79–83 record and finishing second place in the NL East. That 2014 team was especially a let down because of the endless amount of talent that the team possessed in all three major areas of a baseball team: Offense, Starting Pitching, and Bullpen Pitching.
On October 23 of that year, the Atlanta Braves moved on from President of Baseball Operations Frank Wren who was immediately replaced by the current President John Hart. Hart knew when he first came in that the team that was assembled before him was a country mile away from being a serious playoff contender, let alone a competitor for a World Series championship.
Hart also quickly realized that the team’s farm system was among one of the worst in the league. Hart was left with two options: keep the current team together and try to scrape together a good season or rebuild the farm system and lay the foundation for a perennial 90 plus win team for years to come. Hart chose the ladder, and he got to work flipping the teams top assets in order to build the team from the ground up with potentially franchise altering prospects.
The Braves rebuild came as a shock to the rest of Major League Baseball who could not believe that a team with a tradition of success as long as Atlanta’s was now getting rid of basically their entire starting lineup, starting rotation, and bullpen. As a matter of fact, out of the top 12 Braves in 2014 based on WAR (Wins Above Replacement) only 2 of those players remain on the current roster just two years later.
John Hart had no sacred cows as he was able to sell established MLB talent such as Jason Heyward, Evan Gattis, Andrelton Simmons, the Upton brothers, and even some of the team’s younger players such as Alex Wood and Christian Bethancourt. One of the biggest moves the Braves have made in the time since Hart took over is the trade that sent closer Craig Kimbrel to the Padres for two outfielders, two top pitching prospects, and a protected draft pick. Even during the 2015 regular season, the Braves dealt pitcher Shelby Miller to the Diamondbacks in order to acquire Marietta, Georgia native, Golden Spikes award winner, first overall pick, and all around stud Dansby Swanson.
But one of the peculiar things that has happened over the course of the last three seasons isn’t who they have traded, but who they have decided to keep around.
One of the players who has been here through it all is the 25 year old right-hander Julio Teheran who has been the defacto “Ace” of the Braves rotation since that eventful 2014 season. During these last three years for the Braves, Teheran has been one of the lone bright spots on the team alongside fan favorite Freddie Freeman.
After a down season in 2015 where Julio posted the highest ERA of his pro career, Teheran has not just been living up to the expectations he set for himself after his All-Star campaign in 2014, he is exceeding them in an extraordinary way. In this season so far, he has put up some of the best pitching statistics in the National League and he is on pace to have the best season of his career in terms of ERA, Innings Pitched, and WAR.
Now one might be thinking, “If the Braves truly are building for the future, why would they not move Teheran to a contending team at the trade deadline for a bunch of prospects since you know they’ll overvalue your player?”. To those people I would cautiously remind you that for the Braves, the damage has already been done. In all of the trades since the infamous 2014 offseason, John Hart and his staff have been able to revamp the Braves farm system into the best in baseball. A farm system that also includes some of the best pitching prospects in the game who project to be ready for the show at some point before or during the 2017 regular season.
For every team that’s in “rebuilding mode” you eventually reach a point where you need to shift your main emphasis away from the minor leagues and start focusing on building the major league club. When you reach this point, it’s important to realize that there can be just as much, if not more, value in keeping a player as there is in moving him. This is where I believe the Braves are at with Julio Teheran. As it stands right now, the benefits of keeping him on your roster far outweigh the consequences of trading him to another team.
So even though it may seem appealing to trade your best pitcher in order to mug another poor team out of their best young stars, I care to remind you that although the Braves have the second worst record in baseball (Suck it Minnesota), they are actually not as far away from being a successful franchise as you might think. Just remember, in 2014 the Houston Astros were an abysmal 70–92 and the very next year they came within outs of competing for an American League championship.
The Braves should hold on to Julio Teheran with all of their strength because not only does he provide your team with the best chance to win in the present day, but he is a potential anchor at the front of the Atlanta rotation for years to come. In fact, the Braves have Teheran under team control 0n a very team friendly contract through 2019.
It should also be noted that unlike many pitchers who feast on the horrible lineups of their opponents, Teheran has been put up against the best teams in the Major League Baseball and has emerged from that gauntlet with the a 2.72 ERA and a team high in strikeouts and innings pitched. Those are stats that even Braves greats Tom Glavine and John Smoltz didn’t have in their first three years with the team, but we all know how it worked out when the team kept both of those guys. There is no reason why that level of success cannot be reached again.
