<img alt="Atlanta Braves v Chicago Cubs" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/YNticVKrgnSEHQJND9ZcVlvFRjA=/0x0:4337x2891/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73571776/2155037470.0.jpg">
Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images
Smith-Shawver got ten whiffs with his changeup while Drake Baldwin went deep in a Stripers loss It’s the final full Saturday on the farm system, and there were a few exciting pitching prospects in action in the Atlanta Braves system. AJ Smith-Shawver wielded his splitter to great effect in Triple-A, striking out 11 batters over seven innings. Lucas Braun went seven innings in Double-A as well, and on the offensive end Drake Baldwin hit his 11th home run of the season.
(68-69) Gwinnett Stripers 2, (72-63) Nashville Sounds 6
Box Score
Statcast
Nacho Alvarez Jr, 3B: 1-4, 3B, .300/.406/.502
Drake Baldwin, C: 1-4, HR, 2 RBI, .297/.414/.483
AJ Smith-Shawver, SP: 7 IP, 3 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 3 BB, 11 K, 4.92 ERA
Huascar Ynoa, RP: 0.2 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 0 K, 6.20 ERA
It was an interesting game for AJ Smith-Shawver, though ultimately a grand slam allowed in the fourth inning but a huge hole in what had been a fantastic outing to that point. Despite four walks allowed from Smith-Shawver he was generally in and around the zone in this game, throwing 51% of his pitches in the strike zone, and his splitter was once again dominant. Of the 12 whiffs Smith-Shawver forced in this game 10 came off of the splitter, and it seems the Braves may be altering his approach and pitch mix to specifically work off of what has clearly become his best pitch. Since coming off of the injured list his whiff rate on his changeup is identical to Hurston Waldrep’s dominant splitter at 46.4%, while in the same timeframe forcing better batted ball results than Waldrep’s. Today he worked far more in the bottom half of the zone with his fastball than he had early in the season, which could perhaps be an effort to tunnel that pitch with the changeup even though his fastball results have been getting him in a little trouble. Smith-Shawver has been struggling to hold his increased velocity later in the season and especially later into games now, and at lower velocities his pitch shape isn’t effective in the bottom part of the zone. Part of his maturation process will likely be holding that velocity better through a season and game next year, and getting him through a full season.
Smith-Shawver still hasn’t crossed last season’s career-high of 87 innings, though his next start will likely match last year’s number of appearances and innings. Another interesting aspect of Smith-Shawver’s pitch mix is the development of his slider. Early in the season it seemed the Braves may be dropping the pitch completely, then they went through a stretch in Triple-A where seemingly every game they were toying with a different shape on the pitch. Lately though they seem to have settled on a shape for the pitch - a short slider with a similar velocity and vertical movement to his changeup but opposite horizontal movement, and the results have largely been working. He didn’t get much swing-and-miss this game with only one whiff, but the Sounds didn’t hit him hard and over his past five games he has run the pitch out he has a 38% whiff rate on sliders and allowed an 83.5 exit velocity. He is still scattering the pitch from a command perspective, but it misses more bats when poorly located than his prior slider or current curveball do and he has largely gone away from his curveball usage though it should be said that Triple-A pitch usage doesn’t usually reflect what the Braves are actually going to do in competitive major league games.
Smith-Shawver 4sfb results
Prior to IL: 27.9% whiff, 17.6” IVB, 8.0” run, 95.4 mph, 92.8 EV
Since IL: 17.5% whiff, 17.6” IVB, 6.9” run, 94.7 mph, 94.8 EV
Last 5 games: 13.0% whiff, 17.7” IVB, 6.5” run, 94.3 mph, 96.0 EV
Gwinnett got off to a great start in this game thanks to the pair of prospects, with Nacho Alvarez doing the first damage. Alvarez got a fastball on the inner edge and did a great job of getting his hands started and getting his barrel around on the pitch, lining one down the third base line for what was called a triple. Alvarez didn’t do much in his other plate appearances with two of them ending on chases out of the zone, but I’m not going to complain about any game in which he is pulling fastballs relatively hard. After that first at bat the Sounds threw a curveball, literally, almost completely going away from the fastball-heavy pitching that Alvarez has been seeing a lot of lately. He took four pitches this game that were in the fat part of the zone, specifically in spots he has done a good job in the past at crushing hanging off-speed stuff, and those swing decisions definitely cost him.
A NACHO TRIPLE. pic.twitter.com/Zevup625yP— Gwinnett Stripers (@GoStripers) September 7, 2024
After Alvarez’s triple Drake Baldwin got in on the action, putting up Gwinnett’s only two runs of the game when he turned on a first pitch slider and smoked it for a home run. Baldwin had an unusually aggressive game at the plate where he was attacking pitches early in counts, and given some of the pitches he was given to hit it’s no surprise to see that. He still rolled over a couple for outs and got caught looking at a painted slider for a strikeout, but I’m liking the approach to look to drive pitches on the inner half to the pull side from both him and Alvarez and Baldwin in particular has made a ton of progress on being better on the inning half of the plate. Those two hits marked the end of Gwinnett’s offensive output, as they had only one more hit the rest of the game. Huascar Ynoa had a bad bullpen outing that further put Gwinnett behind in the game, but I’m not worried about his results right now. It was only 23 pitches (and he only threw 25 last game) but his fastball velocity in this game was by far the highest it has been all season. Ynoa averaged 96.2 mph on his four season fastball, 2.3 mph above his last outing, and while his command is still well off of where it needs to be to get him back in the major leagues this is a significant step forward for him.
BALDY BLAST.Drake Baldwin takes the first pitch he sees 404ft for a two-run @SoFi home run in the first! pic.twitter.com/TQQNed784l— Gwinnett Stripers (@GoStripers) September 7, 2024
Swing and Misses
AJ Smith-Shawver - 12
Huascar Ynoa - 1
(61-68) Mississippi Braves 1, (82-47) Tennessee Smokies 2
Box Score
David Fletcher, 2B: 1-3, .246/.319/.275
David McCabe, DH: 2-3, .125/.276/.177
Lucas Braun, SP: 7 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 1 ER, 4 BB, 7 K, 2.55 ERA
(61-69) Mississippi Braves 0, (83-47) Tennessee Smokies 1
Box Score
Cal Conley, SS: 1-3, .244/.308/.316
Cody Milligan, CF: 2-3, .235/.293/.348
Drew Parrish, SP: 3 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 3 K, 3.20 ERA
Rolddy Munoz, RP: 1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 3 K, 4.15 ERA
Two games and two disappointing results for the flailing Mississippi offense, who have been shut out in three of their five games this series and totaled three runs in the other two. The results from David McCabe have been brutal lately, though he finally found a couple of hits in the first game of the double header. McCabe rolled a single through the infield for the first of his hits, then in the sixth went down to get a slider and lined it into right field for a single. In his second game he went 0-3 but still hit two balls hard — a line drive that the second baseman made a terrific leaping catch on and a fly ball to the left center field gap that the left fielder did a great job tracking down. McCabe has struggled locking in on his approach and has had much more swing-and-miss than you like to see, but there are a lot of aspects of his game I’ve liked. He’s starting to hit the ball hard more and while you could argue he is too pull-happy right now, a lot of that goes back to trying to find an approach and I’d much rather see him working pull side than spraying pitches the other way like he did last year. He’s getting around on fastballs as well, so while this season is mostly a loss and it’s not great to great that he’ll be starting next year at 25 with only a couple of bad months of Double-A under his belt, if he starts cutting down on that swing-and-miss I do think the results will come more consistently.
The brilliant Mississippi pitching is the one thing keeping them in games lately, and although Lucas Braun didn’t have his best outing he managed to cover all seven innings with only one earned run allowed in the first game. Braun struggled to find his arm slot throughout the game and tended to have it drag low, where he would typically miss up and on the arm side leaving his pitches either out of the zone or across it. The quality of Braun’s slider and curveball movement meant that he tended to still miss bats or at the very least miss the barrel when he made mistakes, but he is typically much better than this at commanding those two pitches on the bottom of the zone. His fastball got hit fairly hard given its shape and velocity both being below average, but he shifted to a very heavy mix of the slider and curveball and utilized those two pitches as a way to mitigate a poor command outing.
Game two was more of a team effort for the pitching staff as they combined to go seven innings with one run, one walk, and 11 strikeouts. Yet that one run was still enough for them to take a loss. While two errors in the fourth inning by the outfield hurt the Braves in game one, the quality of the middle infield play stood out as David Fletcher and Cal Conley have combined to make a phenomenal defensive duo. There were multiple times in both games, and of course throughout the season, that those two made standout efforts in the field. Of course we knew this about Fletcher, but I’ve also mentioned in the past just how impressed I’ve been by Conley’s progression. He has gone from a player with solid defensive tools but a distinct lack of polish and seemingly instinct that I though would push him to an outfield or designated hitter role when he was in the lower minor leagues to a player who is one of the better defenders in the system. His offense has stalled out but his glove has absolutely excelled and has put him in a position to carve out some major league role in the future. Rolddy Munoz is finally finding some semblance of control again, and over the past two months has excelled in the bullpen for Mississippi. Over his past 17 innings he has a 1.59 ERA, 1.64 FIP, and 39.4% strikeout rate once again putting him in contention for Rule 5 protection this winter. His command comes and goes, but when he is on that slider is dominant like in this outing where he struck out three batters in the seventh inning. Munoz got five whiffs—four off of his slider—and finished all three at bats with a slider.
Swing and Misses
Lucas Braun - 10
Jake McSteen - 6
Drew Parrish - 6
Rolddy Munoz - 5
(63-64) Rome Emperors 6, (62-69) Hickory Crawdads 9
Box Score
Drew Compton, 1B: 1-4, BB, RBI .282/.384/.403
Ambioris Tavarez, DH: 2-5, .193/.296/.318
Mitch Farris, SP: 4.1 IP, 6 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 3 BB, 4 K, 2.95 ERA
Jared Johnson, RP: 1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 2 K, 2.60 ERA
Rome ran out some of their best arms this game, but still fell short in extra innings thanks to a couple of poorly-pitched innings. Offensively, however, Rome answered early with a couple of multi-run innings to match the Crawdads through the regulation nine innings. They had some batted ball luck in the fifth along with a wild pitch that brought home two runs to score, but needing three runs to tie in the sixth inning they got them thanks to some good hitting and yet another dose of batted ball luck. EJ Exposito got a hanging slider and nearly left the yard to right center field, hitting a fly ball off of the wall that allowed him to round the bases for a triple. Colby Jones had an infield single to keep the inning alive with two outs, then a walk to Joe Olsavsky set the stage for the biggest hit of the day for Rome. Ninth place hitter Jacob Godman got a 3-1 slider and didn’t miss, hooking one into the left field corner to score Jones and Olsavsky and tie the game at 5-5. Neither side was able to score over the final 3 1⁄2 innings, giving Rome the first opportunity at offense in extra innings.
Drew Compton led off, and he floated a line drive into center field, giving Georgia Tech fans one thing to celebrate on Saturday as it cleared the infield and brought home Jace Grady to score a run. Rome failed to score more, though a hit from Ambioris Tavarez gave them a chance before two strikeouts ended the inning. Tavarez has struggled since coming off of the injured list and did so with three strikeouts in this game, with some of it being old problems and some new. Tavarez has, whether this is an intentional effort from the Braves or not, fallen into a habit of almost always taking until he gets a strike. Typically, that leaves Tavarez in an 0-1 count and gets him a whole load of breaking balls after which he has struggled to do anything with. Tavarez isn’t seeing breaking balls as well as before his hand injury and is both chasing and whiffing far too often, but in that tenth inning at bat showed a great adjustment. After being beat on a couple of sliders he slowly dialed in, raking one into left field when it was left over the plate for that hit.
Mitch Farris cruised through four innings, as although he didn’t have his best command he threw plenty of strikes and got enough weak contact to go four scoreless innings and hold the Crawdads in check. It all fell apart quickly in the fifth though when he walked the first two batters, and it started to unravel for him and his replacement Riley Frey. The first pitch to the next hitter was a fat fastball that split the gap and bounced over the wall for a double, and he left another over the plate that the fourth batter of the inning slapped through the right side for a game-tying single. Farris’s day ended on a strikeout, and Frey kept the trouble brewing by allowing a hit to the first batter he faced, giving Hickory their first lead of the game. Frey then gave up a bloop double for the fifth run of the inning before he escaped. Following this temporary explosion the Rome pitching staff settled back in nicely, with yet more impressive pitching from Jared Johnson. Johnson went one scoreless inning with two strikeouts, lowering his ERA to 2.60 on the season. He had a three game stretch where he allowed runs in the middle of August, but has otherwise been lights out since early July wiht a 1.89 ERA, 3.29 FIP, and 28.9% strikeout rate over his past 19 innings. Early in the season his strikeout numbers lagged a bit as he struggled with his command, but throughout the year he has stayed on top of the system’s leaderboard on swinging strike percentage, and his strikeout rates are starting to rise to match that just a bit. Cory Wall was just plain bad in the tenth inning, facing three batters and allowing a walk-off three run home run to finish the game.
Swing and Misses
Mitch Farris - 7
(48-80) Augusta GreenJackets 5, (65-62) Down East Wood Ducks 3
Box Score
Junior Garcia, RF: 1-5, BB, .176/.312/.183
Luis Guanipa, DH: 1-5, BB, .183/.252/.200
Ethan Bagwell, SP: 2.2 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 3 K, 6.75 ERA
Kadon Morton, RP: 2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 3 K, 6.88 ERA
It’s a little annoying to not have MiLB tv for the final week of the season for Augusta, especially when we get interesting stuff like the professional debut for 6th round overslot selection Ethan Bagwell. Bagwell is a highly talented arm with a feel for spin and a high ceiling, but coming out of high school seems to need a lot of work. Like with the other draftees he was limited to 50 pitches, but threw a lot of those for strikes and got solid swing-and-miss numbers along with three strikeouts. Bagwell had a tough first inning where he allowed two runs on three hits, but retired six of the last eight batters with the only hit coming on a bunt.
I’ve kind of backed off of talking about Kadon Morton as his command when he started out was so awful it really was hard to judge anything he was doing out there, but he has shown quite a lot of improvement this season. His slider is solid and can miss some bats, and since moving out of a starting role and only pitching in short stints he has been much more effective. He allowed five runs in out outing and five unearned runs in another for Augusta, but his overall numbers since the end of July have been good. Over his past 12 innings he has a 3.75 ERA and 13 strikeouts to only three walks allowed.
I’m very happy we’re seeing Junior Garcia have some success to finish out the season after how bad (and somewhat unlucky) he was to start out his time in Single-A. Garcia has had hits in 10 of his past 12 games, hitting .333 with a .434 on base percentage in that time. He isn’t hitting many fly balls and is striking out a ton, but he deserves a little batted ball luck after absolutely nothing was falling for him early in August. I didn’t talk about Titus Dumitru in my Augusta report last week and a lot of it is the swing-and-miss from him. There is far too much and even in A ball he is running a strikeout rate over 20%, but when he hits the ball he tends to hit it hard. He’s limited to a corner athletically so he will have to hit for a lot of power to be a fourth outfielder type, but he has some oomph in the bat and will just need to hit more fly balls to start to tap into it.
Swing and Misses
David Rodriguez - 9
Ethan Bagwell - 7
Kadon Morton - 7
<img alt="Atlanta Braves v Chicago Cubs" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/YNticVKrgnSEHQJND9ZcVlvFRjA=/0x0:4337x2891/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73571776/2155037470.0.jpg">
Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images
Smith-Shawver got ten whiffs with his changeup while Drake Baldwin went deep in a Stripers loss It’s the final full Saturday on the farm system, and there were a few exciting pitching prospects in action in the Atlanta Braves system. AJ Smith-Shawver wielded his splitter to great effect in Triple-A, striking out 11 batters over seven innings. Lucas Braun went seven innings in Double-A as well, and on the offensive end Drake Baldwin hit his 11th home run of the season.
(68-69) Gwinnett Stripers 2, (72-63) Nashville Sounds 6
Box Score
Statcast
Nacho Alvarez Jr, 3B: 1-4, 3B, .300/.406/.502
Drake Baldwin, C: 1-4, HR, 2 RBI, .297/.414/.483
AJ Smith-Shawver, SP: 7 IP, 3 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 3 BB, 11 K, 4.92 ERA
Huascar Ynoa, RP: 0.2 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 0 K, 6.20 ERA
It was an interesting game for AJ Smith-Shawver, though ultimately a grand slam allowed in the fourth inning but a huge hole in what had been a fantastic outing to that point. Despite four walks allowed from Smith-Shawver he was generally in and around the zone in this game, throwing 51% of his pitches in the strike zone, and his splitter was once again dominant. Of the 12 whiffs Smith-Shawver forced in this game 10 came off of the splitter, and it seems the Braves may be altering his approach and pitch mix to specifically work off of what has clearly become his best pitch. Since coming off of the injured list his whiff rate on his changeup is identical to Hurston Waldrep’s dominant splitter at 46.4%, while in the same timeframe forcing better batted ball results than Waldrep’s. Today he worked far more in the bottom half of the zone with his fastball than he had early in the season, which could perhaps be an effort to tunnel that pitch with the changeup even though his fastball results have been getting him in a little trouble. Smith-Shawver has been struggling to hold his increased velocity later in the season and especially later into games now, and at lower velocities his pitch shape isn’t effective in the bottom part of the zone. Part of his maturation process will likely be holding that velocity better through a season and game next year, and getting him through a full season.
Smith-Shawver still hasn’t crossed last season’s career-high of 87 innings, though his next start will likely match last year’s number of appearances and innings. Another interesting aspect of Smith-Shawver’s pitch mix is the development of his slider. Early in the season it seemed the Braves may be dropping the pitch completely, then they went through a stretch in Triple-A where seemingly every game they were toying with a different shape on the pitch. Lately though they seem to have settled on a shape for the pitch - a short slider with a similar velocity and vertical movement to his changeup but opposite horizontal movement, and the results have largely been working. He didn’t get much swing-and-miss this game with only one whiff, but the Sounds didn’t hit him hard and over his past five games he has run the pitch out he has a 38% whiff rate on sliders and allowed an 83.5 exit velocity. He is still scattering the pitch from a command perspective, but it misses more bats when poorly located than his prior slider or current curveball do and he has largely gone away from his curveball usage though it should be said that Triple-A pitch usage doesn’t usually reflect what the Braves are actually going to do in competitive major league games.
Smith-Shawver 4sfb results
Prior to IL: 27.9% whiff, 17.6” IVB, 8.0” run, 95.4 mph, 92.8 EV
Since IL: 17.5% whiff, 17.6” IVB, 6.9” run, 94.7 mph, 94.8 EV
Last 5 games: 13.0% whiff, 17.7” IVB, 6.5” run, 94.3 mph, 96.0 EV
Gwinnett got off to a great start in this game thanks to the pair of prospects, with Nacho Alvarez doing the first damage. Alvarez got a fastball on the inner edge and did a great job of getting his hands started and getting his barrel around on the pitch, lining one down the third base line for what was called a triple. Alvarez didn’t do much in his other plate appearances with two of them ending on chases out of the zone, but I’m not going to complain about any game in which he is pulling fastballs relatively hard. After that first at bat the Sounds threw a curveball, literally, almost completely going away from the fastball-heavy pitching that Alvarez has been seeing a lot of lately. He took four pitches this game that were in the fat part of the zone, specifically in spots he has done a good job in the past at crushing hanging off-speed stuff, and those swing decisions definitely cost him.
A NACHO TRIPLE. pic.twitter.com/Zevup625yP— Gwinnett Stripers (@GoStripers) September 7, 2024
After Alvarez’s triple Drake Baldwin got in on the action, putting up Gwinnett’s only two runs of the game when he turned on a first pitch slider and smoked it for a home run. Baldwin had an unusually aggressive game at the plate where he was attacking pitches early in counts, and given some of the pitches he was given to hit it’s no surprise to see that. He still rolled over a couple for outs and got caught looking at a painted slider for a strikeout, but I’m liking the approach to look to drive pitches on the inner half to the pull side from both him and Alvarez and Baldwin in particular has made a ton of progress on being better on the inning half of the plate. Those two hits marked the end of Gwinnett’s offensive output, as they had only one more hit the rest of the game. Huascar Ynoa had a bad bullpen outing that further put Gwinnett behind in the game, but I’m not worried about his results right now. It was only 23 pitches (and he only threw 25 last game) but his fastball velocity in this game was by far the highest it has been all season. Ynoa averaged 96.2 mph on his four season fastball, 2.3 mph above his last outing, and while his command is still well off of where it needs to be to get him back in the major leagues this is a significant step forward for him.
BALDY BLAST.Drake Baldwin takes the first pitch he sees 404ft for a two-run @SoFi home run in the first! pic.twitter.com/TQQNed784l— Gwinnett Stripers (@GoStripers) September 7, 2024
Swing and Misses
AJ Smith-Shawver - 12
Huascar Ynoa - 1
(61-68) Mississippi Braves 1, (82-47) Tennessee Smokies 2
Box Score
David Fletcher, 2B: 1-3, .246/.319/.275
David McCabe, DH: 2-3, .125/.276/.177
Lucas Braun, SP: 7 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 1 ER, 4 BB, 7 K, 2.55 ERA
(61-69) Mississippi Braves 0, (83-47) Tennessee Smokies 1
Box Score
Cal Conley, SS: 1-3, .244/.308/.316
Cody Milligan, CF: 2-3, .235/.293/.348
Drew Parrish, SP: 3 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 3 K, 3.20 ERA
Rolddy Munoz, RP: 1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 3 K, 4.15 ERA
Two games and two disappointing results for the flailing Mississippi offense, who have been shut out in three of their five games this series and totaled three runs in the other two. The results from David McCabe have been brutal lately, though he finally found a couple of hits in the first game of the double header. McCabe rolled a single through the infield for the first of his hits, then in the sixth went down to get a slider and lined it into right field for a single. In his second game he went 0-3 but still hit two balls hard — a line drive that the second baseman made a terrific leaping catch on and a fly ball to the left center field gap that the left fielder did a great job tracking down. McCabe has struggled locking in on his approach and has had much more swing-and-miss than you like to see, but there are a lot of aspects of his game I’ve liked. He’s starting to hit the ball hard more and while you could argue he is too pull-happy right now, a lot of that goes back to trying to find an approach and I’d much rather see him working pull side than spraying pitches the other way like he did last year. He’s getting around on fastballs as well, so while this season is mostly a loss and it’s not great to great that he’ll be starting next year at 25 with only a couple of bad months of Double-A under his belt, if he starts cutting down on that swing-and-miss I do think the results will come more consistently.
The brilliant Mississippi pitching is the one thing keeping them in games lately, and although Lucas Braun didn’t have his best outing he managed to cover all seven innings with only one earned run allowed in the first game. Braun struggled to find his arm slot throughout the game and tended to have it drag low, where he would typically miss up and on the arm side leaving his pitches either out of the zone or across it. The quality of Braun’s slider and curveball movement meant that he tended to still miss bats or at the very least miss the barrel when he made mistakes, but he is typically much better than this at commanding those two pitches on the bottom of the zone. His fastball got hit fairly hard given its shape and velocity both being below average, but he shifted to a very heavy mix of the slider and curveball and utilized those two pitches as a way to mitigate a poor command outing.
Game two was more of a team effort for the pitching staff as they combined to go seven innings with one run, one walk, and 11 strikeouts. Yet that one run was still enough for them to take a loss. While two errors in the fourth inning by the outfield hurt the Braves in game one, the quality of the middle infield play stood out as David Fletcher and Cal Conley have combined to make a phenomenal defensive duo. There were multiple times in both games, and of course throughout the season, that those two made standout efforts in the field. Of course we knew this about Fletcher, but I’ve also mentioned in the past just how impressed I’ve been by Conley’s progression. He has gone from a player with solid defensive tools but a distinct lack of polish and seemingly instinct that I though would push him to an outfield or designated hitter role when he was in the lower minor leagues to a player who is one of the better defenders in the system. His offense has stalled out but his glove has absolutely excelled and has put him in a position to carve out some major league role in the future. Rolddy Munoz is finally finding some semblance of control again, and over the past two months has excelled in the bullpen for Mississippi. Over his past 17 innings he has a 1.59 ERA, 1.64 FIP, and 39.4% strikeout rate once again putting him in contention for Rule 5 protection this winter. His command comes and goes, but when he is on that slider is dominant like in this outing where he struck out three batters in the seventh inning. Munoz got five whiffs—four off of his slider—and finished all three at bats with a slider.
Swing and Misses
Lucas Braun - 10
Jake McSteen - 6
Drew Parrish - 6
Rolddy Munoz - 5
(63-64) Rome Emperors 6, (62-69) Hickory Crawdads 9
Box Score
Drew Compton, 1B: 1-4, BB, RBI .282/.384/.403
Ambioris Tavarez, DH: 2-5, .193/.296/.318
Mitch Farris, SP: 4.1 IP, 6 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 3 BB, 4 K, 2.95 ERA
Jared Johnson, RP: 1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 2 K, 2.60 ERA
Rome ran out some of their best arms this game, but still fell short in extra innings thanks to a couple of poorly-pitched innings. Offensively, however, Rome answered early with a couple of multi-run innings to match the Crawdads through the regulation nine innings. They had some batted ball luck in the fifth along with a wild pitch that brought home two runs to score, but needing three runs to tie in the sixth inning they got them thanks to some good hitting and yet another dose of batted ball luck. EJ Exposito got a hanging slider and nearly left the yard to right center field, hitting a fly ball off of the wall that allowed him to round the bases for a triple. Colby Jones had an infield single to keep the inning alive with two outs, then a walk to Joe Olsavsky set the stage for the biggest hit of the day for Rome. Ninth place hitter Jacob Godman got a 3-1 slider and didn’t miss, hooking one into the left field corner to score Jones and Olsavsky and tie the game at 5-5. Neither side was able to score over the final 3 1⁄2 innings, giving Rome the first opportunity at offense in extra innings.
Drew Compton led off, and he floated a line drive into center field, giving Georgia Tech fans one thing to celebrate on Saturday as it cleared the infield and brought home Jace Grady to score a run. Rome failed to score more, though a hit from Ambioris Tavarez gave them a chance before two strikeouts ended the inning. Tavarez has struggled since coming off of the injured list and did so with three strikeouts in this game, with some of it being old problems and some new. Tavarez has, whether this is an intentional effort from the Braves or not, fallen into a habit of almost always taking until he gets a strike. Typically, that leaves Tavarez in an 0-1 count and gets him a whole load of breaking balls after which he has struggled to do anything with. Tavarez isn’t seeing breaking balls as well as before his hand injury and is both chasing and whiffing far too often, but in that tenth inning at bat showed a great adjustment. After being beat on a couple of sliders he slowly dialed in, raking one into left field when it was left over the plate for that hit.
Mitch Farris cruised through four innings, as although he didn’t have his best command he threw plenty of strikes and got enough weak contact to go four scoreless innings and hold the Crawdads in check. It all fell apart quickly in the fifth though when he walked the first two batters, and it started to unravel for him and his replacement Riley Frey. The first pitch to the next hitter was a fat fastball that split the gap and bounced over the wall for a double, and he left another over the plate that the fourth batter of the inning slapped through the right side for a game-tying single. Farris’s day ended on a strikeout, and Frey kept the trouble brewing by allowing a hit to the first batter he faced, giving Hickory their first lead of the game. Frey then gave up a bloop double for the fifth run of the inning before he escaped. Following this temporary explosion the Rome pitching staff settled back in nicely, with yet more impressive pitching from Jared Johnson. Johnson went one scoreless inning with two strikeouts, lowering his ERA to 2.60 on the season. He had a three game stretch where he allowed runs in the middle of August, but has otherwise been lights out since early July wiht a 1.89 ERA, 3.29 FIP, and 28.9% strikeout rate over his past 19 innings. Early in the season his strikeout numbers lagged a bit as he struggled with his command, but throughout the year he has stayed on top of the system’s leaderboard on swinging strike percentage, and his strikeout rates are starting to rise to match that just a bit. Cory Wall was just plain bad in the tenth inning, facing three batters and allowing a walk-off three run home run to finish the game.
Swing and Misses
Mitch Farris - 7
(48-80) Augusta GreenJackets 5, (65-62) Down East Wood Ducks 3
Box Score
Junior Garcia, RF: 1-5, BB, .176/.312/.183
Luis Guanipa, DH: 1-5, BB, .183/.252/.200
Ethan Bagwell, SP: 2.2 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 3 K, 6.75 ERA
Kadon Morton, RP: 2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 3 K, 6.88 ERA
It’s a little annoying to not have MiLB tv for the final week of the season for Augusta, especially when we get interesting stuff like the professional debut for 6th round overslot selection Ethan Bagwell. Bagwell is a highly talented arm with a feel for spin and a high ceiling, but coming out of high school seems to need a lot of work. Like with the other draftees he was limited to 50 pitches, but threw a lot of those for strikes and got solid swing-and-miss numbers along with three strikeouts. Bagwell had a tough first inning where he allowed two runs on three hits, but retired six of the last eight batters with the only hit coming on a bunt.
I’ve kind of backed off of talking about Kadon Morton as his command when he started out was so awful it really was hard to judge anything he was doing out there, but he has shown quite a lot of improvement this season. His slider is solid and can miss some bats, and since moving out of a starting role and only pitching in short stints he has been much more effective. He allowed five runs in out outing and five unearned runs in another for Augusta, but his overall numbers since the end of July have been good. Over his past 12 innings he has a 3.75 ERA and 13 strikeouts to only three walks allowed.
I’m very happy we’re seeing Junior Garcia have some success to finish out the season after how bad (and somewhat unlucky) he was to start out his time in Single-A. Garcia has had hits in 10 of his past 12 games, hitting .333 with a .434 on base percentage in that time. He isn’t hitting many fly balls and is striking out a ton, but he deserves a little batted ball luck after absolutely nothing was falling for him early in August. I didn’t talk about Titus Dumitru in my Augusta report last week and a lot of it is the swing-and-miss from him. There is far too much and even in A ball he is running a strikeout rate over 20%, but when he hits the ball he tends to hit it hard. He’s limited to a corner athletically so he will have to hit for a lot of power to be a fourth outfielder type, but he has some oomph in the bat and will just need to hit more fly balls to start to tap into it.
Swing and Misses
David Rodriguez - 9
Ethan Bagwell - 7
Kadon Morton - 7
Link to original article
