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Anderson is throwing a harder breaker that could be a variant of a slider It’s sometimes easy to forget that Ian Anderson is only 26 years old still, given how long ago his success with the Atlanta Braves seems. It’s been a tough road for him to recovery from his shoulder injury and then Tommy John surgery, but he is back in Gwinnett and seems to be making progress each game. His velocity is slowly recovering, as is his command, and in recent games he seems to be displaying a new breaking ball — a vertical slider a few miles per hour harder than the curveball we last saw him throwing.
(49-56) Gwinnett Stripers 1, (55-49) Nashville Sounds 2
Box Score
Statcast
Nacho Alvarez Jr. SS: 0-2, BB, HBP, .330/.434/.565
Drake Baldwin, DH: 0-4, .278/.412/.466
Eli White, CF: 1-4, .286/.387/.433
Ian Anderson, SP: 5 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 3 BB, 4 K, 5.53 ERA
Brooks Wilson, RP: 2 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 4 K, 4.39 ERA
It was another start for Ian Anderson with at least some decently positive results given where he is in his recovery and a few more bits of information we can glean. Anderson’s command was largely good for most of the game, not really faltering until the fifth and final inning, and it was especially notable on his fastball and changeup. Anderson did a great job working in the upper half of the strike zone with his fastball and keeping the changeup on the edge arm side, and while neither pitch got great swing and miss results he wasn’t hit particularly hard. One interesting trend from previous outings was an increase in the amount of horizontal movement, but that seems to have reversed a bit closer to the pitch shapes he showed prior to his injury, especially in his curveball. Now, statcast is registering his curveball as a sweeper and it does have more tilt still than the one from a few years ago, but it’s less than we’ve seen in previous starts. That in particular was his problem pitch as he left quite a few over the plate and got hit hard. In his last start Anderson had a bit of trouble differentiating between this and a slider(?) but there were two really distinct pitches here. The breaking ball that did force swing and miss was that pitch that I’m going to call a slider moving forward, thrown a few mph harder than the curveball and while it was only used in limited numbers he did get three whiffs. To give more accurate data than you see on savant — based on movement profiles this pitch was thrown nine times at 10 mph less than Anderson’s fastball (his curveball was around 13-14 mph less in 2020 and 2021) and got three swinging strikes on five swings without being put into play.
As you can tell it was a tough night for the Stripers offense, but despite a hitless night Drake Baldwin had a couple of strong plate appearances that ended in hard hit balls. In his fourth and six inning at bats Baldwin got pitches to hit and make great contact, but both line drives found the center fielder’s glove. Baldwin though is facing a similar difficulty as Nacho Alvarez where he just isn’t pulling fastballs. Now in Baldwin’s case I don’t think it’s a bat speed issue, and he is hitting every pitch hard to all fields, but pull side he is tending to roll over fastballs. It’s a matter of the way his swing is geared, being conducive to hitting the ball hard up the middle and to the left center field gap though the Braves are doing some work to alleviate this. The first was the obvious dropping his hands in his setup, but he’s also not coming in as closed off in his hips on his swing likely with the idea of opening up his core more to turn on pitches. So far we haven’t seen the results and his bat path may somewhat limit his home run power despite his elite exit velocity numbers, but there is definitely noticeable work being done to try to get him hitting the ball harder pull side. Alvarez on the other hand continues to work deep counts and got on base twice with a walk and hit by pitch, grounding out to shortstop in his other at bat. It was a play where Nacho kind of slapped at a sinker down and in, and while he hit it pretty hard it wasn’t the prettiest of swings.
Swing and Misses
Ian Anderson - 7
Brooks Wilson - 7
(46-52) Mississippi Braves 3, (59-39) Tennessee Smokies 5
Box Score
Justin Dean, CF: 1-3, 2B, BB, .241/.331/.322
David McCabe, DH: 0-3, BB, .000/.250/.000
Lucas Braun, SP: 5 IP, 6 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 4 BB, 5 K, 3.15 ERA
It’s been a bit of a rough stretch for Lucas Braun as he hasn’t been commanding all of his pitches as well as he was a few weeks ago, but it seems the Braves have him making a few adjustments to his approach to try to limit some hard contact. I’ve mentioned before Braun perhaps throwing too many strikes, but one notable change beyond just focusing on working more towards the edges was Braun utilizing a more east-to-west approach against the Smokies. It centers around his slider, his best pitch, and he also flashes a couple with a more horizontal shape in this game showing the ability to vary the movement on the pitch away from batters. He worked his fastball primarily on the arm side half of the plate, though he wasn’t changing eye levels and elevating as well as he was a few weeks ago which limited the swing-and-miss from that pitch. The few changeups he flashed looked good, and I’m hoping to see a bit more of consistency on his fastball as he continues to adjust to this pitch utilization. His slider has some slips where he tended to struggle to bury the pitch down and glove side, but for the most part his command was better than the walk numbers would indicate.
It’s nice to see David McCabe back in the lineup for Mississippi, though I can’t say for the moment I’m all that excited. He has really struggled to show any feel for timing at the plate and that’s not a surprise given how long he has been shelved. My expectations for the rest of the season are low and there’s not really anything he could do to cause me to jump ship, though if he does find his timing and start to hit well I could definitely be convinced to get back on board with him being among that group of 12 or so guys that sit at the top of the system. My biggest concern is McCabe’s defense, which we obviously won’t see tested this season, and like we say with pitchers the biggest key is health and the second biggest step will be a feel for his swing mechanics. July was a tough month for Cal Conley as he could not find a way on base, and really for the team as a whole no one was hitting the ball particularly hard. Conley though looks like a much better player with his approach and his contact rates this year, and I’m eager to get a look at him against Triple-A pitching. There aren’t many prospects on this team and it’s with hesitance that I call Conley one, but his progression defensively has impressed me and I can see him taking a step forward once he escapes his current run environment.
Swing and Misses
Lucas Braun - 11
Patrick Halligan - 7
(46-49) Rome Emperors, (56-40) Bowling Green Hot Rods
POSTPONED
(36-60) Augusta GreenJackets 4, (52-45) Down East Wood Ducks 6
Box Score
Luis Guanipa, CF: 2-4, .133/.170/.156
John Gil, SS: 1-3, BB, .216/.286/.297
Junior Garcia, RF: 0-3, BB, .031/.244/.031
Adam Maier, SP: 3 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 1 K, 4.45 ERA
Adam Maier is finally back after disappearing for awhile there with presumably some sort of injury which caused the Braves to feel he needed to be shut down. He wasn’t particularly good, as it seems that a lot of the feel he had for his secondaries wasn’t there, but like I said with McCabe step one is health. Maier probably still ends up with a call to Rome to end the season and given his age he really needs one, though I think with guys like him and Fuentes the Braves are waiting to get all of the draftees in and assigned before making switches. Maier has a long way to go and I’m not nearly as confident in him as I was with Spencer Schwellenbach in a similar situation last season, though I do still believe that Maier’s secondary quality is good enough to be a major league starter.
We had the first kind of big game for Luis Guanipa as he had a couple of singles, though neither were particularly hard hit balls. Guanipa has pretty much shown that he can’t be consistently beat with fastballs at this point, but it’s been a result of him all but selling out to hit fastballs and when he does get breaking pitches he’s been unable to make hard contact. Guanipa has bat speed but he’s rotational in his hips and in starting his swing, opening up his core early in the process, so when he gets a slider or a changeup he isn’t quite right on his timing and has to reach and poke at the pitch to make contact. While this has worked to mitigate the swing and miss he had last season, Guanipa needs to be a bit more patient and confident in his bat speed, and work his body more towards the pitcher. I woudn’t be surprised given his issues to see them open up his stance a bit, forcing him to work his core towards the point of contact rather than opening up and rotating away from the ball.
None of these issues are unique to Guanipa over other 18 year olds, in fact John Gil has a similar tendency to poke at breaking balls or just swing over the top of them. Gil has been solid and a lot his statistical success is from him having the speed to beat out all of the ground balls he hits, but it seems that his timing is just a bit off at the moment and he may be guessing at the plate. He’s a bit late on fastballs, a bit early on curveballs, and hasn’t really done a great job of adjusting to handle well-located sliders. Gil tends to just dive over the plate at them and it can lead to some pretty awful misses like on his strikeout yesterday. Overall both are just inexperienced players who are facing a massive leap in talent and mostly ability to locate by moving into full season ball, and the challenge for them now is to really spend this year and most of next working on how to lay off of breaking balls they can’t hit and adjusting to drive mistakes.
Swing and Misses
Adam Maier - 4
<img alt="Atlanta Braves v New York Mets" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/9NR85wS7s3xrxo-8dUbo952txNc=/94x0:2185x1394/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73497716/1413281365.0.jpg">
Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images
Anderson is throwing a harder breaker that could be a variant of a slider It’s sometimes easy to forget that Ian Anderson is only 26 years old still, given how long ago his success with the Atlanta Braves seems. It’s been a tough road for him to recovery from his shoulder injury and then Tommy John surgery, but he is back in Gwinnett and seems to be making progress each game. His velocity is slowly recovering, as is his command, and in recent games he seems to be displaying a new breaking ball — a vertical slider a few miles per hour harder than the curveball we last saw him throwing.
(49-56) Gwinnett Stripers 1, (55-49) Nashville Sounds 2
Box Score
Statcast
Nacho Alvarez Jr. SS: 0-2, BB, HBP, .330/.434/.565
Drake Baldwin, DH: 0-4, .278/.412/.466
Eli White, CF: 1-4, .286/.387/.433
Ian Anderson, SP: 5 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 3 BB, 4 K, 5.53 ERA
Brooks Wilson, RP: 2 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 4 K, 4.39 ERA
It was another start for Ian Anderson with at least some decently positive results given where he is in his recovery and a few more bits of information we can glean. Anderson’s command was largely good for most of the game, not really faltering until the fifth and final inning, and it was especially notable on his fastball and changeup. Anderson did a great job working in the upper half of the strike zone with his fastball and keeping the changeup on the edge arm side, and while neither pitch got great swing and miss results he wasn’t hit particularly hard. One interesting trend from previous outings was an increase in the amount of horizontal movement, but that seems to have reversed a bit closer to the pitch shapes he showed prior to his injury, especially in his curveball. Now, statcast is registering his curveball as a sweeper and it does have more tilt still than the one from a few years ago, but it’s less than we’ve seen in previous starts. That in particular was his problem pitch as he left quite a few over the plate and got hit hard. In his last start Anderson had a bit of trouble differentiating between this and a slider(?) but there were two really distinct pitches here. The breaking ball that did force swing and miss was that pitch that I’m going to call a slider moving forward, thrown a few mph harder than the curveball and while it was only used in limited numbers he did get three whiffs. To give more accurate data than you see on savant — based on movement profiles this pitch was thrown nine times at 10 mph less than Anderson’s fastball (his curveball was around 13-14 mph less in 2020 and 2021) and got three swinging strikes on five swings without being put into play.
As you can tell it was a tough night for the Stripers offense, but despite a hitless night Drake Baldwin had a couple of strong plate appearances that ended in hard hit balls. In his fourth and six inning at bats Baldwin got pitches to hit and make great contact, but both line drives found the center fielder’s glove. Baldwin though is facing a similar difficulty as Nacho Alvarez where he just isn’t pulling fastballs. Now in Baldwin’s case I don’t think it’s a bat speed issue, and he is hitting every pitch hard to all fields, but pull side he is tending to roll over fastballs. It’s a matter of the way his swing is geared, being conducive to hitting the ball hard up the middle and to the left center field gap though the Braves are doing some work to alleviate this. The first was the obvious dropping his hands in his setup, but he’s also not coming in as closed off in his hips on his swing likely with the idea of opening up his core more to turn on pitches. So far we haven’t seen the results and his bat path may somewhat limit his home run power despite his elite exit velocity numbers, but there is definitely noticeable work being done to try to get him hitting the ball harder pull side. Alvarez on the other hand continues to work deep counts and got on base twice with a walk and hit by pitch, grounding out to shortstop in his other at bat. It was a play where Nacho kind of slapped at a sinker down and in, and while he hit it pretty hard it wasn’t the prettiest of swings.
Swing and Misses
Ian Anderson - 7
Brooks Wilson - 7
(46-52) Mississippi Braves 3, (59-39) Tennessee Smokies 5
Box Score
Justin Dean, CF: 1-3, 2B, BB, .241/.331/.322
David McCabe, DH: 0-3, BB, .000/.250/.000
Lucas Braun, SP: 5 IP, 6 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 4 BB, 5 K, 3.15 ERA
It’s been a bit of a rough stretch for Lucas Braun as he hasn’t been commanding all of his pitches as well as he was a few weeks ago, but it seems the Braves have him making a few adjustments to his approach to try to limit some hard contact. I’ve mentioned before Braun perhaps throwing too many strikes, but one notable change beyond just focusing on working more towards the edges was Braun utilizing a more east-to-west approach against the Smokies. It centers around his slider, his best pitch, and he also flashes a couple with a more horizontal shape in this game showing the ability to vary the movement on the pitch away from batters. He worked his fastball primarily on the arm side half of the plate, though he wasn’t changing eye levels and elevating as well as he was a few weeks ago which limited the swing-and-miss from that pitch. The few changeups he flashed looked good, and I’m hoping to see a bit more of consistency on his fastball as he continues to adjust to this pitch utilization. His slider has some slips where he tended to struggle to bury the pitch down and glove side, but for the most part his command was better than the walk numbers would indicate.
It’s nice to see David McCabe back in the lineup for Mississippi, though I can’t say for the moment I’m all that excited. He has really struggled to show any feel for timing at the plate and that’s not a surprise given how long he has been shelved. My expectations for the rest of the season are low and there’s not really anything he could do to cause me to jump ship, though if he does find his timing and start to hit well I could definitely be convinced to get back on board with him being among that group of 12 or so guys that sit at the top of the system. My biggest concern is McCabe’s defense, which we obviously won’t see tested this season, and like we say with pitchers the biggest key is health and the second biggest step will be a feel for his swing mechanics. July was a tough month for Cal Conley as he could not find a way on base, and really for the team as a whole no one was hitting the ball particularly hard. Conley though looks like a much better player with his approach and his contact rates this year, and I’m eager to get a look at him against Triple-A pitching. There aren’t many prospects on this team and it’s with hesitance that I call Conley one, but his progression defensively has impressed me and I can see him taking a step forward once he escapes his current run environment.
Swing and Misses
Lucas Braun - 11
Patrick Halligan - 7
(46-49) Rome Emperors, (56-40) Bowling Green Hot Rods
POSTPONED
(36-60) Augusta GreenJackets 4, (52-45) Down East Wood Ducks 6
Box Score
Luis Guanipa, CF: 2-4, .133/.170/.156
John Gil, SS: 1-3, BB, .216/.286/.297
Junior Garcia, RF: 0-3, BB, .031/.244/.031
Adam Maier, SP: 3 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 1 K, 4.45 ERA
Adam Maier is finally back after disappearing for awhile there with presumably some sort of injury which caused the Braves to feel he needed to be shut down. He wasn’t particularly good, as it seems that a lot of the feel he had for his secondaries wasn’t there, but like I said with McCabe step one is health. Maier probably still ends up with a call to Rome to end the season and given his age he really needs one, though I think with guys like him and Fuentes the Braves are waiting to get all of the draftees in and assigned before making switches. Maier has a long way to go and I’m not nearly as confident in him as I was with Spencer Schwellenbach in a similar situation last season, though I do still believe that Maier’s secondary quality is good enough to be a major league starter.
We had the first kind of big game for Luis Guanipa as he had a couple of singles, though neither were particularly hard hit balls. Guanipa has pretty much shown that he can’t be consistently beat with fastballs at this point, but it’s been a result of him all but selling out to hit fastballs and when he does get breaking pitches he’s been unable to make hard contact. Guanipa has bat speed but he’s rotational in his hips and in starting his swing, opening up his core early in the process, so when he gets a slider or a changeup he isn’t quite right on his timing and has to reach and poke at the pitch to make contact. While this has worked to mitigate the swing and miss he had last season, Guanipa needs to be a bit more patient and confident in his bat speed, and work his body more towards the pitcher. I woudn’t be surprised given his issues to see them open up his stance a bit, forcing him to work his core towards the point of contact rather than opening up and rotating away from the ball.
None of these issues are unique to Guanipa over other 18 year olds, in fact John Gil has a similar tendency to poke at breaking balls or just swing over the top of them. Gil has been solid and a lot his statistical success is from him having the speed to beat out all of the ground balls he hits, but it seems that his timing is just a bit off at the moment and he may be guessing at the plate. He’s a bit late on fastballs, a bit early on curveballs, and hasn’t really done a great job of adjusting to handle well-located sliders. Gil tends to just dive over the plate at them and it can lead to some pretty awful misses like on his strikeout yesterday. Overall both are just inexperienced players who are facing a massive leap in talent and mostly ability to locate by moving into full season ball, and the challenge for them now is to really spend this year and most of next working on how to lay off of breaking balls they can’t hit and adjusting to drive mistakes.
Swing and Misses
Adam Maier - 4
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