We all know about the dog days of summer at this point, but do they have a spring equivalent? Like maybe the crab days of spring, because the constellation Cancer is most visible in the Northern Hemisphere in March? We’ll workshop it, I guess.
Anyway, the Braves and Rays tangled in Port Charlotte this afternoon, and things went pretty much how you’d expect for a team with little to figure out at this point playing out the string on the Grapefruit League schedule. The offense was fine, Max Fried was fine, some backups and organizational depth muddled up the score (though no one cares), yadda yadda yadda. Reading about which constellations are most visible during which months of the year might actually be more interesting than what’s going on in Spring Training for the Braves this year.
Probably the biggest takeaway in this game was that Max Fried was his usual a-ok self. His line wasn’t gaudy by any means, with just a 4/1 K/BB ratio in six innings of work, but he pretty much cruised until the BABIP got a hold of him in the sixth. He faced the minimum through three, and just two over the minimum (a walk in the fourth and a single in the fifth) through five. In the sixth, a leadoff single, a non-converted potential double play ball to Nacho Alvarez Jr. that was scored a hit, and another single plated the first Rays run. Fried got Randy Arozarena to pop out, but then Harold Ramirez hit a bouncer to the right side that A) Luke Williams, at first base, failed to snag on a dive, and B) Williams received the cutoff throw and fired wildly to third, allowing another run to score and putting Ramirez on third. A sacrifice fly and a strikeout later, Fried’s day was done, and yeah, that’s pretty much Generic Spring Training Outing by a Good Starter #47 at this point.
Offensively, the regulars got some hacks in. Ronald Acuña Jr. picked up a leadoff double and scored on an Austin Riley single in the first; Riley ended up going 2-for-2 on the day before being lifted. Andrew Velasquez, who started at DH (heh) in this one, added a homer. Eli White went 1-for-2 with a walk to continue his rise to challenge Forrest Wall for the title of “fifth outfielder with ridiculous Spring Training stats that probably won’t make the roster anyway.” A Travis d’Arnaud sacrifice fly was the third run-plater for the Braves.
After Fried departed, Zach Logue (I don’t really know who this is, though he has 68 major league innings to his name) made it a 7-3 deficit by giving up a three-run homer to Nick Meyer. To Logue’s credit, he did allow just a single in a second inning of work, but from the Braves’ perspective, they got Fried a six-inning tune-up and didn’t even have to use anyone else but Logue to make this game go away, so that’s probably a win for them.
The Rays ended up using eight different pitchers in this game, although one of them was announced and didn’t end up pitching, so hopefully Jacob “Mystery Satchel” Waguespack is alright.
There is actually somehow no Spring Training game for the Braves tomorrow, but they’ll be back in action on Wednesday as they host the Blue Jays, which will probably be yet another game like this one.
