Injuries to Fried, Wright another obstacle

This story was excerpted from Mark Bowman’s Braves Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

Max Fried is on the injured list with a strained left forearm and Kyle Wright is sidelined with a right shoulder strain. But what will pain these two Braves pitchers the most over the next couple months is the inability to compete.

“As a competitor, you want to win or lose,” Wright said. “You don’t want to bow out because of pain.”

Wright exited his start in Miami on May 3 after just two innings because of shoulder discomfort. Fried completed six innings against the Orioles two days later and then told the Braves “something doesn’t feel right.”

So, within a span of three days, the Braves lost two of their top three starters. Or to further emphasize the significance of these losses, one guy (Fried) who finished second in last year’s Cy Young Award balloting and another guy (Wright) who was MLB’s only 20-game winner last year.

After seeing the Braves win the 2021 World Series without Ronald Acuña Jr. and then overcome a 10 1/2-game division deficit last year, I’m thinking the baseball gods were like, “OK hot shots, try this one.”

When the Braves lost Acuña two days before the 2021 All-Star break, they were able to acquire four outfielders over the next couple weeks. Last year’s sizeable deficit was erased with the help of Spencer Strider moving to the rotation and Michael Harris II coming up from Double-A Mississippi.

There aren’t any clear cut easy fixes to the current dilemma. But in fairness, nobody declared Joc Pederson, Jorge Soler, Eddie Rosario and Adam Duvall to be saviors when they were acquired with two months left in the 2021 season. And nobody was predicting Strider and Harris were going to become the most impactful rookie duo in Braves history.

So, maybe Jared Shuster, Dylan Dodd and Michael Soroka will prove up to the challenge of combining to capably fill the two gaping rotation voids. Dodd has been effective in two of the three starts he’s made in Atlanta this year and Soroka was an All-Star before first tearing his right Achilles tendon on Aug. 3, 2020.

As soon as the Braves listed TBA as their starter for Sunday’s game in Toronto, many fans excitedly began clamoring for Soroka. It was understandable. Everybody wants him to overcome the odds of returning to the big leagues after twice tearing his right Achilles tendon.

To see him make this celebrated return on Sunday in his native Canada would have been great. But the sentimental angles take a back seat to what are the best long-term interests of Soroka and the team.

So, the Braves had Soroka make his scheduled start for Triple-A Gwinnett in Nashville on Thursday.

Soroka gave up three earned runs in four innings and is 0-2 with a 5.47 ERA at Triple-A.

The Braves have said they want to monitor Soroka’s workload like they did a couple weeks ago when they had him skip a turn. They can also limit his innings and pitch counts while he’s at the Minor League level. This obviously isn’t an option at the big league level.

Before this past week’s events, it made sense to keep Soroka on a schedule that creates an opportunity for him to still be available to make an impact down the stretch. But if he creates confidence that he could be effective every five days over the next couple months, there might be an urge to bring him up earlier than expected.