Braves Insider Suggests Braves Avoid Signing Future Hall of Fame Starter

Straight and to the point, the argument made was the Braves would have been better off retaining the services of a starter who left in free agency

As enticing as it would be to have Mad Max in the rotation, maybe that ship has sailed | Tim Heitman-Imagn Images

There are still a few notable options still on the free-agent market for the Atlanta Braves. However, one notable team insider isn’t keen on the idea of them signing a future Hall of Famer. 

The Athletic’s David O’Brien put on X (formerly Twitter) his takeaways for the Braves quiet offseason. He immediately led off with advising against signing Max Scherzer. 

“I still expect a move or two, probably via trade and hopefully not signing [Max] Scherzer when they could’ve just kept [former Braves starter Charlie] Morton at that kind of price,” O’Brien said. 

For those who don’t know the greater context of this remark, it would be perplexing to say the Braves should keep Morton over Scherzer. But for the last couple seasons, Morton has arguably been more reliable. 

Morton has made at least 30 starts a season, besides the 2020 COVID season, every year since 2018. This represents every season he has made 30 or more starts and all have come at age 34 and older. 

Meanwhile, the similar-aged Scherzer has only made 30 starts in a season once since he turned 34. This was back in 2021. 

If he was coming off his 2023 campaign where he still made 27 starts, there would be an argument to get Mad Max. The difference is a handful of starts for a three-time Cy Young Award winner. But 2024 saw him make only nine starts. 

When he pitched, he wasn’t that much better than Morton outside of his WHIP.

Scherzer: 3.95 ERA, 1.15 WHIP, 101 ERA+

Morton: 4.19 ERA, 1.32 WHIP, 99 ERA+ 

And this moderately better performance came in fewer than one-third of the starts. 

This isn’t meant to join the advocation of avoiding Scherzer, but this is an understanding of where O’Brien is coming from. 

Personally, O’Brien is a proponent of acquiring San Diego Padres starter and Georgia native Dylan Cease. He continued to make that case later on in the same X thread. 

“Dylan Cease would fill a major need for Braves and still leave them well below the luxury-tax threshold.”

This isn’t the first time he’s pushed for it on X. In mid-January, he made his case as if he is trying to speak it into existence. 

Whether it’s saying the Braves should keep Morton or trade for Cease instead, it shows how times have changed. Mad Max for over a decade was one of the most coveted arms in the game. That’s no longer the case.