Should Atlanta consider a six man rotation?

The biggest advantage to a six-man rotation is easing the full season workload on your frontline options, keeping them healthy for the postseason.

Adding an additional starter during the season could conceivably reduce the max number of starts any given pitcher might make from 32 or 33 to only 27, shaving off anywhere from 25 to 30 innings off of their full-season total.

(Last season, Spencer Strider made 32 starts, pitching 186.2 innings, Bryce Elder made 31 starts, pitching 174.2 innings, and Charlie Morton made 30 starts, pitching 163.1 innings.)

For a rotation that saw Elder falter in the second half under his career-high workload and had ace Max Fried pitch only 77 innings owing to three separate injured list stints, saving regular season innings should conceivably allow them to reallocate them for the postseason, keeping them fresher for October and better able to take larger workloads in the playoffs.

Additionally, Sale and Morton presumably could use the additional rest, as Sale's 102.2 innings were his highest total since 2019 and Morton's now forty years old. 

It comes down to routine and roster flexibility. 

Most pitchers, by the time they hit the major leagues, have acclimated to the routine of pitching every five days. Baseball players are creatures of habit, and changing to pitching every six days (with extra rest, off days, and rain postponements pushing that to seven on occasion) could be detrimental to existing player routines. 

Additionally, there's this idea that sinkerballers like Bryce Elder actually pitch slightly better when fatigued, an idea often discussed by Braves radio announcer Joe Simpson. When the goal is to keep the ball down in the zone, as a sinker/slider pitcher tries to do, it's often easier to miss "up" when there's more life and energy behind the sinker than if you're a bit fatigued. 

This is mostly anecdotal - there's very little empirical work done on pitch movement and locations correlated with days of rest, but in a small (and possibly not statistically significant sample) from last season, Elder performed best on regular rest, and significantly worse on six (or more) days of rest. 

Additionally, adding a starter takes one pitcher away from your bullpen, so you're distributing that additional relief workload amongst one fewer arms. For an Atlanta pen that arguably overused AJ Minter early in the season, that could be an issue. 

But Atlanta has multiple relief options that can go multiple innings, and there could be a setup where Reynaldo López is your multi-inning option with a lead and Jackson Stephens is your multi-inning option with deficits and/or mop-up duty. Additionally, that sixth starter option could potentially be designated as a probable starter unless they're needed in long relief, as we saw Darius Vines and Michael Soroka used late last season.    

Not much would change at the top, with Anthopoulos calling Strider, Fried, Morton, and Sale "locks" last Saturday. 

Behind them would presumably be Bryce Elder, and then the best way to manage it would be to rotate depth pitchers through that #6 spot (unless someone seized it and excelled, and even then, full-season workloads would be a concern for most of those options.) 

Due to the limitations on the number of times a player could be optioned to the minors in one season, giving each arm multiple starts before sending him back down would be the preferred method. 

Behind Elder, Atlanta could rotate starts through the following pitchers:  

RHP AJ Smith-Shawver
LHP Dylan Dodd
RHP Darius Vines
RHP Allan Winans
RHP Huascar Ynoa
RHP Hurston Waldrep (not on 40-man roster)

Additionally, RHP Ian Anderson (Tommy John surgery) is expected to begin rehab assignments over the summer (as of now) and could eventually slot into the rotation, as well, if he's prepared and his "stuff" is back.