How do the Atlanta Braves replace Chris Sale?

The Braves lefty was placed on the injured list over the weekend with a left ribcage fracture

Just when it felt like things couldn’t get worse for the Atlanta Braves in 2025, they did.

I woke up from a nap on Saturday to the news that Atlanta had placed Chris Sale on the 15-day injured list with what they were calling a “fractured left ribcage”. Further reporting from the beat in Miami confirms that the injury happened in his Wednesday night start, coming when Sale laid out for a diving stop of a Juan Soto grounder in the 9th inning.

For now, the short-term answer is Didier Fuentes stays in the rotation. Manager Brian Sntiker was pretty brief and emphatic about that prior to Saturday’s game against Miami. “We’ll go with the five guys we have,” he told the media in Miami, including the AJC’s Gabriel Burns. But Snit was also relatively unconcerned, expressing that the team was used to things like this by now. “It’s not the first time we’ve been through this,” Snitker said. “We’ve lost our best position players, our best pitchers all in the same year. We’ve handled it before and we will again.”

How will the Braves handle it? Let’s talk about it.

The decision depends on how long he’s out, right?

The most notable part of the entire situation is that neither the team in their announcement on Saturday or Snitker gave an estimated timeframe. Per David O’Brien of The Athletic, it’s not expected to be an exceptionally quick recovery.

The Braves won’t have a timeline for Sale’s return and will wait until symptoms diminish before estimating when he’ll be back. It likely will be a significant period, given the nature of the injury, perhaps magnified by his age, his slender physique and the amount of torque that the 6-foot-6 sidearming lefty produces in his delivery.

And I do think the length of his absence matters here.

If Sale were to be out for, say, a month, that’d put him returning soon after the All-Star Break. It’s entirely conceivable to think that the Braves might decide to stand pat in that situation, using the five guys they have, and trying to fill any unexpected spot starts out of their motley collection of arms in Gwinnett.

Starters on the 40-man in Gwinnett include Hurston Waldrep, Nathan Wiles, and Davis Daniel. They also have Ian Anderson starting weekly, Royber Salinas on a rehab assignment, and have gotten starts from relievers Zach Thompson (0-3, 5.52 ERA), José Suarez (0-1, 4.24 ERA), and even Jackson Stephens (4 hitless, scoreless innings with nine strikeouts in his first start of the year on Friday night.)

Obviously, similar to the promotion of Spencer Schwellenbach last season, there’s always the potential that Atlanta grabs a guy out of Double-A Columbus and gives them a spot start, as well. Look for Blake Burkhalter or Lucas Braun there.

Remember: Atlanta went into spring training with seven starters stretched out and Spencer Strider on the way back, as well, but the losses of AJ Smith-Shawver, Reynaldo López, and now Sale have completely wiped away all of that depth.

If Sale’s out for a bit longer - say, closer to the trade deadline than the All-Star Game (or beyond), an outside move feels likely.

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Who could they go trade for?

Going back to Thursday, I wrote about Alex Anthopoulos’s claim that he was trying to make a trade “very hard” right now, as he wanted to “signal to everybody that hey, we will not sell.”

There are a few options from that newsletter that are still valid here, as well as a few other moves that could be made.

The #1 proposal I endorsed last week was calling the Pittsburgh Pirates for a package deal of closer David Bednar and starter Andrew Heaney. Now that Atlanta’s lost their only lefty in the rotation with Sale’s injury, Heaney makes even more sense as a veteran stopgap/innings eater for the summer and Bednar, with his additional year of team control, would go a long way to helping Atlanta bridge the loss of Raisel Iglesias to free agency after this year.

Going outside of the division is important, I think - reiterating what I said last week, the Marlins and Braves have made a grand total of four trades together since 2002, including just one this decade. While it’d be nice to see Sandy Alcantara fly to New York with the Braves after Sunday’s finale, it just doesn’t feel like it’s in the cards based on both the anticipated cost and the reluctance of divisional opponents to do deals together.

Two of the other outside trades are going back to old friends for various reasons. The first is reaching out to the Baltimore Orioles for Charlie Morton. After a dreadful start to his season (0-6, 10.36 ERA in his first six starts), a demotion to the bullpen appears to have done the trick. Since returning to the rotation on May 26th, Morton’s made five starts and is 4-0 with a 2.42 ERA, striking out 36 with only eight walks in his 26 innings.

With Baltimore having lost Adley Rutschman to an oblique injury late last week and backup catcher Maverick Handley leaving Sunday’s game after getting hit in the head on a collision at the plate, it’s possible they look to add a veteran catcher behind newly-minted starter Gary Sanchez.

And Atlanta has someone Baltimore knows toiling for them in Triple-A: James McCann. The veteran hit .297/.331/.493 for the Stripers this year. He has a rolling opt out, meaning a MLB offer from another team can allow him to opt out and become a free agent, and speculation has fueled that the scenario is happening after he was scratched from Saturday’s start on the road in Charlotte. If he was, in fact, offered a deal by Baltimore, there’s no leverage for Atlanta to make a deal here. But if someone else offered him a contract, it’s entirely possible that Atlanta could engage Baltimore and trade him prior to the opt-out officially triggering.

Logistics on this: When a veteran notifies a team that he’s going to exercise his opt-out, required to be done in writing, there’s a specific time period (usually 48 or 72 hours) with which the team can either respond to the opt-out by adding him to their major league roster or doing nothing, allowing it to trigger and process the transaction officially. What I’m not 100% sure about is if the team can do some sort of other move (like a trade) in the interim, but I’ve reached out to an MLB transaction expert to get clarification on this.

UPDATE: Late on Sunday, news broke that James McCann was signing with the Arizona Diamondbacks. Snakes starter Gabriel Moreno is on the injured list with a hand injury.

Another old friend is Los Angeles Angels GM Perry Minasian, a former assistant general manager under Alex Anthopoulos in Atlanta. Since he took the head job in LA after the 2020 season, the two teams have made eleven different trades (including five since the end of last season, per the MLB Trade Rumors transaction tracker. While the Angels are just two games out of a Wild Card spot in a down American League, it they slip a bit in the next few weeks, the two former colleagues might get together again for another deal.

A potential Braves-Angels deal probably depends on how much ground Atlanta has made up in the Wild Card race. If they are mostly treading ground, the acquisition might be something small like starter Kyle Hendricks or Tyler Anderson. Suppose the Braves look to be closer to postseason contention than expected (and LA’s fallen out of it). In that case, they might either go for a bigger package by adding a position player (like leftfielder Taylor Ward) or a reliever (closer Kenley Jansen) to the deal. While I don’t expect Atlanta to pick up the multiple remaining years of Yusei Kikuchi’s contract ($21.225 AAV in 2026 & 2027), that’d be a giant swing at playoff contention both this and next year.

What if they just signed somebody?

Despite AA’s desire to make a trade as a confidence boost to his clubhouse, he might not need to give up an asset for rotation help.

Veteran starter Kyle Gibson opted out of his minor league deal with the Tampa Bay Rays over the weekend and is now a free agent. Tampa Bay didn’t add him to the major league roster despite impressive rebound performances in Triple-A with the Durham Bulls.

After signing with Baltimore in the back half of spring training, Gibson was released after just four starts and a 16.78 ERA. But the time in Tampa Bay’s minor league system was productive - a 0.52 ERA in four starts after he allowed just one earned run in 17.1 innings, striking out 22 against six walks.

This might be a “two birds, one stone” thing with the CBA, as well: By virtue of being on Baltimore’s Opening Day roster, they’re on the hook for everything remaining on his $5.25MM free agent contract, meaning Atlanta could theoretically ink him for the league minimum were there not to be any other competition for his services. His total cost would be a roster spot and a prorated portion of that $760K minimum.

Again, this all is contingent on the length of time Sale’s out, but I’d rather do something than nothing. Atlanta’s strength this season has been the rotation, with Braves starters having a top-ten mark of 3.58 (as of the start of play on Sunday).

Interestingly, Atlanta’s 3.58 mark is 9th this year and the exact same ERA was third last year, a sign of how the deadened baseball has made pitchers more comfortable pitching in the strike zone and suppressed offense overall.)

But as almost every situation has this season, it all comes back to the underperforming offense, as they now have even more pressure to get their stuff together. Per Anthopoulos’ comments earlier this week to 680 The Fan, Atlanta is already not giving their pitching staff that much margin for error.

And the Chris Sale injury just further exacerbates that the offense needs to be better.