The Atlanta Braves were hoping that 2026 would bring a little better injury luck than 2025. Just a few days into Spring Training, though, things have somehow gotten worse: Days after the news that Spencer Schwellenbach would need to start the season on the 60-day IL with an elbow issue, the team announced that fellow righty Hurston Waldrep ... would start the season on the 60-day IL with an elbow issue.
According to Gabe Burns of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Waldrep underwent a procedure to address "loose bodies" in his pitching elbow, which sure sounds unpleasant. If there's a silver lining here, it's that neither Schwellenbach nor Waldrep required major surgery, and a rough timeline based on similar operations in the past would peg them for a midsummer return. The bad news, however, is that the team itself isn't sounding too optimistic right now:
It would seem Schwellenbach and Waldrep are still in play for this year?
— Gabe Burns (@GabeBurnsAJC) February 18, 2026
Walt Weiss: “I’m not sure. We all hope for that, but you never know how these things go.”
"I'm not sure" is never what you want to hear about the odds of 40 percent of your projected starting rotation pitching at some point this year. And it turns a Braves rotation from potential strength to question mark to four-alarm fire — one that Atlanta has no real way to put out after sitting on their hands this offseason.
Hurston Waldrep injury creates yet another hole in Braves rotation
With Waldrep and Schwellenbach both on the shelf for at least the first two or three months or the regular season, here's how the Braves pitching situation currently stacks up.
Position | Pitcher |
|---|---|
SP1 | Chris Sale |
SP2 | Spencer Strider |
SP3 | Reynaldo Lopez |
SP4 | Bryce Elder |
SP5 | Grant Holmes |
SP6 | Joey Wentz |
SP7 | Martin Perez |
There are a lot of names on that list, and Atlanta isn't hurting for viable Major League arms. But look at that list more closely: Strider missed most of 2024 and didn't look like himself when he returned last year; Lopez threw all of five innings last season before a shoulder injury ended his year; Holmes ended 2025 on the IL with a partially torn UCL the team hopes won't wind up requiring surgery to fix. Heck, even Sale has thrown more than 125 innings exactly once since 2019. That's a ton of injury risk, to say the least.
All of which puts a ton of pressure on Elder, who posted a 5.30 ERA last season amid near-constant calls for the team to pull him from the rotation, and Perez, a 35-year-old who's pitched to a 4.83 FIP over the last three years. It's not an exaggeration to say that this rotation is hanging by a thread right now. And after a very quiet offseason, the team has only one real path toward addressing it.
Lucas Giolito is all that's left in MLB free agency — but buyer beware
All winter long, Braves fans waited for their team to add some more pitching depth to the mix. Alex Anthopoulos suggested as much whenever he met with the media.
And yet, that help never came. No one expected a big-ticket addition given Atlanta's payroll reality, but there were plenty of options that the team declined to pursue. Zac Gallen and Merrill Kelly returned to the D-backs on short-term deals. Chris Bassitt signed a one-year contract with the Orioles. Justin Verlander returned to the Tigers. Steven Matz and Nick Martinez went to the Rays, of all places.
All of those pitchers could've helped the Braves this season, even before injuries started taking their toll. But Anthopoulos never seemed to be seriously interested in any of them. And now that Schwellenbach and Waldrep are on the shelf and the need has become acute, the cupboard is pretty much bare: The only names left on the market with any sort of MLB track record are Max Scherzer, Lucas Giolito and Zack Littell.
Scherzer has previously suggested he's fine even waiting until midseason to choose the right contender with which he can likely finish his future Hall of Fame career. Giolito's 3.41 ERA last season looks shiny, but the underlying metrics suggest he got very lucky. He also underwent UCL reconstruction in 2024, and ended last season on the IL With another elbow issue. He's a name brand option and former Cy Young candidate, but that was a long time ago; at this point, he might just make Atlanta's problem even worse.
All of which could have been avoided, had Anthopoulos been proactive weeks or even months ago. But he trusted his organizational depth, and now that depth has been eroded to more or less nothing. Maybe top prospect JR Ritchie will be ready to step up, but that's a huge if. And what if Sale or Strider or Lopez suffer another injury? The Braves are stuck between a rock and a hard place, and they only have themselves to blame.