Opening week at the minor league level continues to roll on, and the Stripers rotation rolled out another name to watch this season with Dylan Dodd making his debut. Offensively JP Martinez has been everything for Gwinnett over the first two games, and has started the season out proving why the Atlanta Braves went out and traded for him this winter.
(1-1) Gwinnett Stripers 4, (1-1) Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp
- JP Martinez, CF: 1-4, HR, 2 RBI
- Luke Waddell, SS: 0-4
- Eli White, LF: 2-4, 2B, 2 SB
- Dylan Dodd, SP: 5 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 5 BB, 7 K, 0.00 ERA
- Daysbel Hernandez, RP: 1.2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 5 K, 0.00 ERA
JP Martinez is off to a stellar start for Gwinnett, and his second home run in as many nights launched them to a win over the Jumbo Shrimp. On the mound Dylan Dodd made his season debut, and it was a funky outing for the lefty looking to put a rough 2023 behind him. Jonathan Davis led off for Jacksonville and hit a hard single off of him into left field, and it skipped up and off of the wrist of Eli White and towards the wall allowing the speedy Davis to advance all the way to third base. A ground out would score Davis for the first run, but following that first inning Dodd managed to limit hard contact which was good as he couldn’t find the zone much all night. Dodd only threw 44% of his pitches in the strike zone and ended up issuing an alarming five walks. Four of those would come in the final two innings, and during that stretch he struck out five batters and allowed only one ball in play which kept him and the Stripers safe.
Offensively Gwinnett had no answer in the early going for Braves legend Yonny Chirinos, as the only runner to reach base through the first five innings was via a dropped third strike that the catcher bounced into right field. There was little quality contact to be seen, but Sebastian Rivero led off the fifth inning by lining a double down the right field line and the game was finally on. JP Martinez smacked a 427 foot home run off of Chirinos, putting the Stripers on top where they would remain. A walk to David Fletcher and double off of the bat of White had the Stripers threatening further damage, with the middle of the order set to come up. Luis Liberato brought home a run with a single that just snuck past the third baseman who was playing in, and that ended the day for Chirinos. Reliever Calvin Faucher came in and shut Gwinnett down, getting a critical strikeout of Luke Waddell and then a pop out from Phillip Evans to escape further damage and keep Jacksonville in the game. Later on in the ninth inning Evans would add the final run to Gwinnett’s board, ripping a liner over the left center field wall for his first tater of 2024.
Gwinnett’s bullpen put together a sparkling performance, with two of the big names contributing to the game. Jake Walsh was the first reliever out of the bullpen, Walsh a free agent signing who spent last year with the Cardinals organization, and he put in solid work. Walsh retired the first four batters he faced, though in the seventh inning he got into some trouble as a couple of singles snuck in and put two runners on with one out. Daysbel Hernandez came in and put out the fire, getting a called strike out on a 3-2 pitch for the second out, then a ground ball over to Luke Waddell ended the inning. Hernandez struck out two more batters in a perfect eighth inning, adding on to a dominant debut appearance. While Hernandez got the results he wanted his command clearly not what he wanted but he managed to battle to get the outs. Ken Giles came in for the ninth and struck out the first batter of the inning, but then allowed a walk to give Jacksonville a flicker of life. Griffin Conine smacked a 109 mph line drive, but it was straight to Martinez in center field for the second out and Giles would get a weak ground out to close out his first save.
