Atlanta Braves: How Concerning Is Mike Foltynewicz Poor Start To 2019?

It’s been a rough season so far for starter Mike Foltynewicz. A reversal from his recent performance will be a key component to the Atlanta Braves success in 2019.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. After such a statement-season in which the Atlanta Braves not only shocked the baseball world with a division title, but also received an impeccable turning-of-the-corner from their staff ace — things haven’t quite panned out just right for Mike Foltynewicz.

Sure it would’ve been nice for Foltynewicz to of had a normal Spring, instead of one that consisted of just a measly two innings. There’s no doubt that his lack of preseason work has at least partially attributed to his poor performance thus far.

But even despite his absence in Spring Training this year from right elbow soreness and the fact that we were all plenty aware of a possible regression — due to said injury or not — I’m quite sure no one expected such a poor start to the 2019 season.

Now 27-years-old and coming off of that 2018 campaign, Foltynewicz had just recently captured the status of which we all thought him to be capable of — a big league Ace.

In exactly 183 innings last season, the righty accrued a 3.8 fWAR, struck out 202 batters and made the NL All-Star team.

Armed with more than just his usual power-pitching arsenal, Foltynewicz was better equipped even mentally in 2018.

Now that’s not to say there wasn’t the occasional minor blow up on the mound following a four-pitch walk, or a few choice words after giving up a homer immediately after that four-pitch walk. His attitude and body language weren’t perfect, but it did, in fact, look much improved.

But it seemed that somehow Foltynewicz had finally learned to harness his emotions in a way that he could at least avoid digging that familiar hole any deeper.

Last season Foltynewicz finished with the sixth-highest strikeout-per-nine rate, at 9.93, as he hurled his fastball faster than ever before, averaging 96.8 MPH.

Other than a minuscule sample size of 18.2 innings when he was with the Astros in 2014 (avg. 98.3 MPH), Foltynewicz had never finished a season with such a high average fastball velocity.

More importantly, home runs happened on a rare occasion for Foltynewicz in 2018. At 0.84 HR/9, his homer-rate ranked 9th-best among all starters in the Senior Circuit, better than the likes of Max Scherzer, Jon Lester, and Jake Arrieta.

And to piggyback off of his excellent home run prevention, Foltynewicz prevented runs, in general, better than most of the league.

His 2.85 ERA was tied for the 6th-lowest rate in the NL, lower than that of Patrick Corbin, Zack Greinke, and once again, Lester.

The stats could go on and on. There’s a reason that Foltynewicz finished with the 10th-highest fWAR by a starting pitcher in the National League — he was great.

So great that he was paced by only seven pitchers when it came time to hand out the NL Cy Young Award.

Foltynewicz was supposed to build off of that great year last season. A similar season this year was, at least to me, comfortably assumed.