BS Report: Braves lose another pitcher to injury, Hawks win seventh straight

Bill Shanks discusses the Braves’ pitching depth after another injury and the Atlanta Hawks’ recent winning streak.

On Sunday, Braves pitcher Joey Wentz covered first base and went down in pretty good pain. It was learned then on Monday that he had torn his ACL in his knee and will miss the rest of the season. So that’s three pitchers that since the start of spring training down in North Port, Florida, the Braves have now lost to injury.

First it was Spencer Schwellenbach and then Hurston Waldrep, two pitchers who had to have procedures done and will probably miss half the season. And now Joey Wentz, who will miss the entire season with his knee operation. It has thinned out the Braves starting pitching just a little bit, and that’s something they wanted to avoid after what happened last year, when the entire rotation was impacted at some point by the issues of the injuries.

In fact, for a seven-week stretch, all five members of the opening day rotation were actually on the injured list. So the Braves want to try to avoid that at any cost. Of course, we are looking forward to seeing Chris Sale at the top of the rotation again. I don’t think there’s any doubt that when he’s healthy, he’s one of the best pitchers in baseball. Spencer Strider looked better in his last outing. That’s a good sign. He’s going to be counted on as the number two. Then Reynaldo Lopez, who has pitched well this spring, will be the number three. Grant Holmes, and I saw him pitch on Saturday, he looked good. He’s going to be the number four. Of course, he’s got a partially torn elbow ligament.

So we have to hold our breath on Grant. And then now number five with Wentz out of the picture you look at Bryce Elder who has not pitched well this spring. And Martin Perez a veteran who is in camp on a non-roster deal. That’s it. That’s the rotation. I would imagine that JR Ritchie will be put in Triple-A to begin the year, but there is no question, as I have said many times, that there’s a good chance JR Ritchie is going to have an impact on this team at some point in 2026. So the Braves once again impacted by injuries and hopefully they can keep everybody healthy until the season starts in two weeks.

All right. As far as the Atlanta Hawks are concerned, they have won seven games in a row. And boy they are playing really good basketball. They won on Tuesday night against Dallas. They’ll play Brooklyn on Thursday night. But seven games in a row and they’re now a couple of games over .500. And look this Eastern Conference is kind of bunched together between the five spot and the nine spot where the Hawks currently are. If the Hawks continue to play great basketball for the final 17 games of the season, there’s a chance they’ll move into either the 5 or 6 spot and avoid the Play-In tournament, which is what they have been in and lost in each of the last two years, so we’ll have to keep an eye on that. But man, Jalen Johnson’s playing great. Dyson Daniels is playing outstanding basketball right now. Nickeil Alexander-Walker with a game high 29 points last night. He was great and has been all season long, now averaging 20 points per game. Onyeka Okongwu doing great. So this team is healthy. The schedule has been a little softer here recently and they’re getting some time off in between games.

This is the first stretch of the season, believe it or not, where the Hawks have a number of games in a row where they have two days at least, maybe even three in between games. They were playing so many games back to back and it was wearing those young kids down. But now, with a day off in between of games, they’re at least able to recover a little bit and you can tell they’re healthy and they’re fresher and they’re playing really good basketball. So we’ll see what they do for the rest of the season, and see how they do on Thursday night when they have the Brooklyn Nets come back to Atlanta. That is game three of a five game homestand with Milwaukee there on Saturday and then Orlando in a big game on Monday.