2017 Atlanta Braves Season Preview: Julio Teheran

Along with teammate Freddie Freeman, Julio Teheran has been one of the few steady foundation pieces in Atlanta during the Braves rebuild. With expectations on the rise, the franchise will be looking at him for continued consistency through the 2017 season.

The Atlanta Braves recently announced that Julio Teheran would make his fourth consecutive opening day start for the team, maintaining his designation as the staff ace.

At 26, Teheran has four full big league seasons under his belt since his MLB debut in 2011, and will headline Atlanta’s five-man rotation.

A two-time all-star, the Colombian native is 47-40 though 130 major league starts, and has a 3.39 career ERA.

Last Season:

In 2016 Teheran posted his first season with a losing record at 7-10, but the wins and losses weren’t necessarily reflective of his overall performance.

Atlanta’s ace gave his team 188 innings, and posted a career low in walks and intentional walks, but also struck out the fewest batters during any full season thus far in his career.

Opponents hit only .223 against Teheran last season, a year that saw a career low 1.05 WHIP and total hits allowed (157).

In a first half that was by all accounts pretty terrible for Atlanta, Teheran pitched well enough to earn the second All-Star Game appearance of his career.

Early in his career, Teheran had a solid changeup, but has developed a nice off-speed slider, and has the ability to throw it for strikes, as he did often last season. His fastball topped out in the low-90’s, and tended to draw quite a few swinging misses.

2017 Preview:

Teheran has a chance to get himself, and his team off on good footing with a solid opening day performance at New York when the Braves play the Mets April 3.

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There’s really no reason to believe that Teheran won’t be able to improve his win-loss record over last season, just as he did from the first to second half of the year in 2016.

As the Braves got better at the plate in 2016, Teheran’s record improved, going from 3-8 in the first half of the season to 4-2 after the all-star break. His stats didn’t necessarily get any better, but the staff ace started getting that tangible credit for his solid pitching.

In 2017, the Braves should be an even more improved version of that lovable, and exciting-to-watch second half team from last season, and if Teheran can maintain his personal levels of performance over the last four seasons, Atlanta could start turning his outings into more wins, which is the reason the games are played in the first place.

Next: The March 2018 Atlanta Braves?

Without getting too technical, or delving into a heap of stats or metrics, the short of it is that as the Braves bats improve, the starting pitching will get more results, and be forced to tap into the bullpen less often. Atlanta should be improved in 2017, and if off-season moves pan out, the pitching staff should reap the rewards, most of all Julio.