Pneumonia, new me? Alvarez has turned up the power since coming back to the Stripers lineup
The Gwinnett Stripers are the hottest team in the International League, with a five game win streak and the league’s best run differential in the second half. Nacho Alvarez and Drake Baldwin have been a huge part of that, with Alvarez carrying Gwinnett’s offense in a close win. JR Ritchie keeps doing good things for Augusta, as although he allowed three runs all were unearned and he pitched into the sixth inning.
(63-62) Gwinnett Stripers 5, (57-66) Louisville Bats 4
- Nacho Alvarez Jr, 3B: 3-5, HR, .311/.422/.521
- Drake Baldwin, DH: 0-4, BB, .309/.425/.490
- Allan Winans, SP: 7 IP, 6 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 1 BB, 7 K, 3.23 ERA
- Hayden Harris, RP: 1 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 1 K, 8.36 ERA
Gwinnett has won another game, their fifth straight, and with the league’s best run differential in the second half they have started to close in on the first place Columbus Clippers heading into their series next week. Every game has been a close match, but Gwinnett will have a chance to sweep this series tomorrow. Nacho Alvarez had been in a bit of a slump for awhile but broke out in the last two games, getting three hits and a home run in each of them. Nacho got a hanging slider and had a chance to extend his arms on it, driving a 408 foot home run to center field that extended the Stripers lead early. Alvarez’s struggles against fastballs in both Triple-A and the major leagues has certainly caused concern, and he hasn’t done a whole lot in his short time back at Gwinnett to ease those, but it’s easy to forget how consistently he hits secondaries hard and how good his plate coverage and plate discipline is. When pitchers make mistakes he can make them pay like he did here, and if he can find a way to do more damage on velocity he can quickly make himself into a high on base guy at the major league level. As much as I was expecting the power to jump significantly upon him moving out of Rome and Mississippi’s parks and leagues I wasn’t expecting what he’s done in Triple-A with nine home runs in 42 games after eight in his prior 194 professional games.
Drake Baldwin had a rare game where he didn’t make his impact felt though he still hit the ball hard on a few occasions. Especially in the ninth inning when he hit a fastball over the plate at 108.6 mph, but he hit it to straight away center field where it fell just short of a home run. He also had a long at bat in the third inning where he fouled off a handful of two-strike pitches in a row, ultimately drawing a walk on pitch number 10. When Baldwin gets into two strike counts he does have a tendency to fall back into an older approach he has shown where he more tries to slap pitches in the zone the other way and protect the plate, which has led to his drastic decrease in whiff and strikeout rates of late (he has 11 walks to two strikeouts in his past 13 games) though it also has come with some decrease in his power output. Baldwin is clearly trying to make an effort to get around and pull fastballs more as we’ve seen an increase in his fastball pull rates in the past few weeks, though he has games like today where he tends to get on top of them too often and roll them over on the ground. Baldwin had 105 mph and 95 mph batted balls that both came on sinkers over the plate that he got on top of, but I still think him developing as a hitter to get more line drives and fly balls pull side both will come and is a necessary step to him unlocking his potential as a first division starting catcher.
Allan Winans pitched very well for the Stripers, covering a full seven innings in a win, and even when he had a bad inning in that seventh it wasn’t a matter of the Bats making great contact. Winans forced Bats hitters to roll over his changeup consistently throughout the game, and the only batter who gave him any real trouble was Tony Kemp who hit a home run in the second inning for the only run Winans allowed through six then had a hard hit single in the seventh. Otherwise Winans did a fantastic job, with two of the hits he allowed in the final inning to force home those two runs coming in right at around 90 mph off of the bat.
Swing and Misses
Allan Winans – 14
Hayden Harris – 2
(56-62) Mississippi Braves 0, (39-79) Chattanooga Lookouts 3
- Yolbert Sanchez, 2B: 2-4, .289/.313/.352
- David McCabe, DH: 1-4, .167/.348/.241
- Ian Mejia, SP: 6.1 IP, 4 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 3 BB, 7 K, 3.53 ERA
- Rolddy Munoz, RP: 2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 3 K, 4.54 ERA
It was a great start for Ian Mejia until it wasn’t anymore, as he got left in the game a bit too long and got hurt in the seventh inning, but looked dominant through the first six. Mejia had his best command out of the past few games, locating all of his pitches consistently especially early in the game. Chattanooga ran out a lot of left-handed batters in this game, which is a challenge for Mejia who has struggled to find consistency on his splitter this season. That’s been a big point of focus for the Braves and Mejia, who can have much of his recent struggles attributed to the increased usage of the splitter in an effort to improve the pitch’s quality. Mejia’s splitter hasn’t progressed quite as quickly as it has for some of the guys ahead of him in the system, but it’s getting slowly to the point he utilizes it and the vertical variant of his slider much more effectively than he was early in the season. He was getting quite a lot of swing and miss the first time through the lineup, though that faded throughout the game as the Lookouts got more at bats against him. Finally through those later innings the command of all of his pitches faltered and he left the game with the bases loaded, where Jorge Juan allowed all three inherited runners to score.
Rolddy Munoz had a dominant appearance out of the bullpen as he struck out three batters and got eight swinging strikes, but his command still hasn’t made much progress since his Double-A debut. Munoz seems to have hit a wall where his command is really preventing him from taking the next step, though still that slider looks as good as always when he does snap one off. Mississippi’s problem in this game is while Chattanooga managed to string all of their good offense together in the seventh inning to score three runs Mississippi scattered their hits, and only got two at bats in this game with runners in scoring position. Chattanooga’s starter Jose Acuna did to the Braves what he has done to everyone else this season with four scoreless innings that lowered his ERA to 0.81. The strength of him was no excuse though, as even once he left the game Mississippi’s offense fell flat. In the ninth inning the Braves managed two hits off of our old pal Patrick Weigel before a double play ended the game with Mississippi being shut out.
Swing and Misses
Ian Mejia – 12
Rolddy Munoz – 8
(57-58) Rome Emperors 3, (58-61) Greenville Drive 7
- Jace Grady, RF: 2-5, .194/.302/.285
- Drew Compton, 1B: 2-5, 2 RBI, .273/.366/.381
- Adam Maier, SP: 4 IP, 6 H, 7 R, 4 ER, 2 BB, 1 K, 4.02 ERA
- Giomar Diaz, RP: 2 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 2 K, 5.14 ERA
Much of the progress Adam Maier seemed to be making as he closed out his time in Augusta has regressed following his injured list stint as none of his pitches have been very sharp of late and he has been unable to force swing-and-misses. Maier is trying to feed everything his throws into the bottom of the zone, and while he has done a good job of putting his sinker there to keep hitters from really bombing that pitch neither of his secondary offerings have been located well enough to take advantage of their quality. It’s been a difficult season for Maier, who will probably be repeating High-A next season, and it’s going to be hard for him to fit into a rotation without both his command and velocity taking a pretty significant step forward moving into next season. Rome was never able to come back from the six runs Maier allowed in the first inning, and though he did settle down to complete four innings and was a bit better at avoiding hard contact in the later innings he still wasn’t doing anything as well as he was doing prior to hitting the injured list in June. If he can get back to that quality of command as the season draws to a close he should be fine and be able to build confidence heading into 2025.
Drew Compton continues to be the Emperors consistent offense contributor, getting two hits in this game to extend his hitting streak now to six games. Compton had a hit from the right side of the plate in this game and in limited action this season has gotten on base fairly well, but his swing from the right side isn’t as good as from the left. In general Compton doesn’t have an explosive swing, but that backs up even more from the right side and with a flatter bat path from that side of the plate he’s pretty much all mediocre line drive contact from the right side. Typically the GreenJackets/Emperors have avoiding even giving him at bats from the right side of the plate and unless we see some swing improvements to unlock power there he may be better served going full time to batting left-handed and trying to get to more home runs there. Jace Grady had a couple of hits for Rome as well, and has been somewhat of a conundrum to evaluate this season. He goes through short stretches where he swings it well, showing off the ability to get to at least decent contact quality along with always being a guy who can draw walks and get on base. He can also get into lulls where it’s pretty much all weak contact, and even though he hits line drives at a decent clip he often isn’t driving them enough. Like Compton he is better from the left side of the plate, where he rotates with more force and can find more loft to his pull side.
Swing and Misses
Samuel Strickland – 3
Giomar Diaz – 3
(42-73) Augusta GreenJackets 5, (70-47) Carolina Mudcats 3
- Titus Dumitru, LF: 2-5, 2B, 2 RBI, .229/.315/.271
- Colby Jones, SS: 2-4, 2B, HBP, RBI, .326/.367/.391
- JR Ritchie, SP: 5.2 IP, 4 H, 3 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 4 K, 1.95 ERA
- David Rodriguez, RP: 3.1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 3 K, 6.00 ERA
It wasn’t the same level of dominance for JR Ritchie as we’ve seen in the past few starts, but it still went fairly well for him and were it not for a string of poor batted ball luck in the fourth inning he likely comes away from this game with no runs allowed. To start with the negative for Ritchie he wasn’t commanding the ball as crisply as he normally does, as mechanically he was pulling his upper half a bit to the glove side and as a result pulling a lot of his pitches that direction as well. He did have solid command vertically, placing the fastball on the upper part of the zone and burying his secondaries, and even with some less-than-ideal placements his pitch quality was good enough to get outs at this level. He hurt himself with two bad throws, including one in the three run fourth inning that led to a run, but none of the balls hit in that inning were hit hard. The inning started with a check swing roller for a hit, had two singles that just rolled through the infield, and another one right back at Ritchie that he made a poor throw to second on, but despite not having his crispest mechanics and command he still found a way to pitch a relatively good game.
The GreenJackets went with a youth-free lineup and they had a solid day with the top of the lineup led by Colby Jones putting in work. Jones, Patrick Clohisy, and Titus Dimutru combined to reach back six times in this game, with Jones accounting for three of Augusta’s runs on his own. Jones had a key two-run double in the seventh inning where he turned on a pitch down and in and drove a hard line drive down the line for a double. Jones is a guy who can get to hard line drive contact consistently, though the one issue I’m seeing is his ability to get to pitches up in the zone. He stands and loads upright, so his entire swing path is moving down towards contact. When pitches are thrown in the upper half of the zone he struggles to get his bat to that part of the zone and make consistent contact, and on a couple of occasions this game we saw whiffs or weak ground balls in the upper third of the zone. Overall Jones has been my favorite player so far from this position player draft class though we haven’t seen many. Clohisy has looked solid as well, though his swing can get long and circuitous when he goes after pitches in the bottom of the zone and his contact suffers as a result. Clohisy makes great swing decision though and looks to be one who could get on base at a high rate and could have more strength to add power if the Braves can get his core more involved in his swing.
Swing and Misses
JR Ritchie – 10
David Rodriguez – 3