Was it a good day on the Atlanta Braves farm system on Thursday? Well the teams combined to go 3-2, so that’s certainly nice. Was it a fun day on the system? Well, do you like starting pitching? If yes, that’s great! Please read on and revel in the brilliance of Darius Vines, Spencer Schwellenbach, and Davis Polo. Do you like when the Braves score runs? If yes, also please read on but make sure to keep an item of comfort close by. We wouldn’t want you to have nightmares.
(17-18) Gwinnett Stripers 2, (14-21) Charlotte Knights 1
- JP Martinez, CF: 1-4, HR, .292/.375/.458
- Darius Vines, SP: 6 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 4 K, 3.52 ERA
- Brooks Wilson, RP: 2 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 2 K, 2.92 ERA
- Jimmy Herget, RP: 1 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 2 K, 0.00 ERA
It was an extremely low-scoring evening all across the system, with a grand total of seven runs being scored in five games. Still, with the help of outstanding pitching the system went 3-2, and Gwinnett was one of those teams to put up a great pitching performance. Darius Vines got the start for Gwinnett, and he had one of his best games this season in regards to his fastball location. He lived on the edges of the zone and didn’t make mistakes with his fastball, and Knights hitters struggled to make any hard contact. It was an interesting night for Vines because even against a lefty-heavy offense he struggled to lang his changeup and get whiffs with it more than usual, and had to rely on his fastball much more often than usual. The Knights managed a single hard hit ball off of Vines’s fastball in the game, mostly doing what little damage they could off of the changeups he was leaving in the zone. Fortunately for Vines the mistakes he did with the changeup went unpunished, with the Knights mostly only weakly making contact.
Gwinnett took an early lead in the game thanks to JP Martinez, who managed to reach out and yank an outside pitch for a home run onto the right field berm. Martinez snapped a long homerless streak with that swing, as after going deep in the first two Stripers games of the season he had failed to do so in 29 games since. Gwinnett held the lead for most of the game, but it only took two batters post Vines for the Knights to tie it up. Brooks Wilson has been fantastic this season with his splitter, and really he was again this game. Overall this season Wilson has produced a 50.7% whiff rate on his splitter, and that number ballooned this game thanks to the Knights missing on seven of their swings against the pitch. Unfortunately, that one swing was important as Angelo Castellanos took it deep for a solo home run to tie the game. Gwinnett answered in the 8th with an RBI single from David Fletcher, and the game was closed by Jimmy Herget who has yet to allow a run since being picked up by Atlanta.
(10-20) Mississippi Braves 1, (15-14) Rocket City Trash Pandas 7
- Nacho Alvarez, SS: 1-4, .289/.405/.340
- Drake Baldwin, C: 1-4, .219/.283/.281
- JJ Niekro, SP: 6 IP, 6 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 6 K, 3.98 ERA
- Jorge Juan, RP: 1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 2 K
It’s been a slog for Mississippi this season on offense, as the whole team continues to make little impact contact and had zero extra base hits in this game. After a brief mid-April swell in strikeouts Nacho Alvarez has gotten back to his old ways, and over his past 15 games he has more walks than strikeouts and an 11% strikeout rate. He had the first of Mississippi’s five hits today, but it wasn’t much an earned hit as he popped one up weakly to the right side that the defense just misplayed in shallow right field, with the ball falling between the second baseman and right fielder. Nothing came of this rally, with Cal Conley driving in the only run of the game for Mississippi in the seventh inning. Conley has had an interesting season, as every season he’s been able to cut down on strikeouts and improve swing decisions. This season he is running a 19.3% strikeout rate and 11% walk rate, but as a result his power production has bottomed with him no longer selling towards pull side power. Conley overall is a player I think has improved, especially in decision-making, and defensively he is utilizing his natural athleticism now that he’s making fewer mistakes. However I still don’t think his defense is good enough to carry him to a major league role, and while I’m intrigued by the increase in contact (and recognize that Mississippi’s run environment contributes to his power woes) I think he’s somewhat overshot the balance in approach regarding strikeout avoidance vs impact contact.
JJ Niekro had to be perfect on the mound to earn a win for the Braves, and he was unfortunately not that. He was, however, quite good and utilized his brand of pitchability and strike-throwing to keep Rocket City mostly off balance. Niekro has looked more at home after he had serious regression with strike-throwing last season, and he’s now back to having a solid season with Mississippi. He gave up mostly weak contact, though Rocket City occasionally got to him and that came around in the fourth inning with a two-run home run that ultimately stuck him with the loss.
(16-12) Rome Emperors 1, (16-14) Brooklyn Cyclones 0
- Sabin Ceballos, DH: 0-1, 2 BB, HBP, .232/.351/.284
- Stephen Paolini, RF: 1-3, 2B, RBI, .186/.326/.300
- Spencer Schwellenbach, SP: 4.2 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 3 BB, 6 K, 2.53 ERA
- Elison Joseph, RP: 2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 3 K, 0.00 ERA
Rome and Brooklyn ran out two of the top starters in the South Atlantic League, so it would be no surprise to see this come down to a 1-0 finish. Spencer Schwellenbach was the man in charge for Rome, and he really pounded the zone with his pitches and Brooklyn couldn’t do much with it. The Cyclones managed only two hits off of Schwellenbach, and he struck out six batters over his 4 2⁄3 innings of work. Despite the high strike rate Schwellenbach did allow three walks in the game, two of those being deep at bats that ended with 3-2 balls. The bullpen after Schwellenbach was excellent, with Tyree Thompson and Elison Joseph combining to retire 13 of the 14 batters faced, with the only baserunner being a catcher interference call. Joseph in particular continues a hot start to the season. He hasn’t allowed a run in six appearances, and so far has struck out 38% of batters while cutting his 14.4% walk rate from last season all the way down to 8.8%.
Brandon Sproat allowed two runs in his five starts this season coming into this game, so Rome’s offense had quite the task ahead of them. They weren’t particularly up to that challenge either, as Sproat pretty much did whatever he wanted and dominated for five innings. Finally as he began to tire the Emperors waited out a couple of walks in the sixth inning and forced Brooklyn into the bullpen. Stephen Paolini then greeted the reliever by going the opposite way, one hopping the left field wall for an RBI double that proved to be the only run of the game.
(14-15) Augusta GreenJackets 2, (11-18) Myrtle Beach Pelicans 0
- Will Verdung, 1B: 1-3, 2 BB, .226/.372/.290
- Pier-Olivier Boucher, LF: 1-4, 2 BB, 2 RBI, .211/.348/.298
- Mitch Farris, SP: 5 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 6 K, 2.38 ERA
- Davis Polo, RP: 6 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 6 K, 3.54 ERA
Augusta has gotten into quite the habit of these long extra inning games, and it’s a good thing the pitching has been excellent lately because this team is not hitting at all now that Drew Compton and Jace Grady have cooled off a bit. Mitch Farris was excellent in the start for Augusta, and he showed what we expected him to do all season. Farris doesn’t throw particularly hard, but he has a good mix of secondary pitches and notably a strong changeup, and he has been able to rack up strikeouts thanks to the movement on all of his pitches. What hasn’t been there was the above average to plus command expected, however today he was dotting his pitches and it took only 56 for him to clear five scoreless innings. Farris was putting the ball right where he wanted to, and while it didn’t result in the whiffs he had been getting in prior outings the Myrtle Beach offense did nothing with it.
Despite five scoreless innings Farris wasn’t even the star of the pitching staff, as he got outdone by his reliever Davis Polo. Polo had the task of pitching six scoreless innings, all in a tied game, including two scoreless extra innings. The most dangerous of these was the 11th, when the leadoff batter reached via bunt and Polo walked the next batter intentionally to load the bases. Facing a tied game, bases loaded, and no outs Polo proceeded to dominate. Polo struck the next batter out swinging on a hard slider that he buried beautifully, made it two in a row by throwing that same slider three times in a row to get the swinging strikeout, then threw three more sliders and forced a jam shot pop out to center field to close out the inning. Polo was throwing his slider better than I’ve ever seen from him, and forced 18 whiffs and covered six innings on just 65 pitches.
This Myrtle Beach pitching staff is awful. I want to preface this game with that. Their team ERA is 0.79 higher than any other team, and they walk 7 batters per nine which is 1.8 more than the next highest. They also lead the league in hit batters. Augusta could not do a single thing for 11 innings of this game. Yes, they drew 11 walks in this game. They also struck out 23 times. Finally in the 12th inning they drew a couple of walks to load the bases and Pier-Olivier Boucher managed to find a hole with a base hit to score two runs. Four different GreenJackets batters had four strikeouts in the game,
(0-4) FCL Braves 1, (3-1) FCL Rays 6
- Mario Baez, 2B: 2-3
- Isaiah Drake, CF: 0-0, 3 BB
- Douglas Glod: DH: 0-2, BB
- Luis Arestigueta, SP: 3 IP, 6 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 1 BB, 4 K, 9.00 ERA
This FCL team has been quite awful to start the season, but Isaiah Drake is back from injury and that’s a very good thing. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Drake just stick it out with the FCL squad going forward, but for now it’s being officially called a rehab assignment and he drew walks in all three of his plate appearances. The rest of the offense is off to a terrible start this year, with the exception of John Estevez. The 17 year old Estevez has four walks to only three strikeouts, running a .429 on base percentage through four games. The third highest OPS in the lineup yesterday belongs to Mario Baez, who had two hits to bring his OPS up to .517. So, yeah it’s been rough. This team is extremely young and a lot of these players will take a lot of time to develop and may spend multiple seasons in Florida.
