Alvarez is off to a dream start with Gwinnett as he reached base five times on Saturday to extend a dominant week
The top hitters in the Atlanta Braves system are waking up in June, with the three top guys currently in action all delivering on their promise Saturday. Nacho Alvarez, as you can see in the title, was phenomenal for Gwinnett, but perhaps a bit outshined by teammate Drake Baldwin and his home run and walk off. Then in the Complex League Luis Guanipa went deep for the first time, putting his stamp on the system and announcing his arrival to the United States.
(33-35) Gwinnett Stripers 4, (35-33) Nashville Sounds 3
- Nacho Alvarez, SS: 4-4, 2B, BB, .500/.526/.944
- Drake Baldwin, DH: 1-4, HR, BB, .438/.526/.813
- Dylan Dodd, SP: 5 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 0 BB, 5 K, 4.90 ERA
- Daysbel Hernandez, RP: 2 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 1 K, 2.35 ERA
It has been a sudden injection of life into this Gwinnett Stripers lineup, as in just one short week Nacho Alvarez and Drake Baldwin have given the team some of their most impressive and exciting performances of the season. Alvarez failed to come up with a third straight game with a home run, but was nonetheless by far Gwinnett’s best contributor as he reached base five times in the game. First was his lone well-struck ball, a first inning double into left field that showed off the swing changes the Braves have been working on. With his stance a little more open and his body more upright he has been able to more effectively engage his strong core, and he turned on this off speed pitch with ferocity to line it to the wall. Alvarez found a bit of luck with his other hits, managing to squeeze them into gaps for singles, and he has yet to strike out in Triple-A. Even with Alvarez’s fantastic performance providing opportunity Gwinnett found themselves trailing after five innings, having not managed to work in a run yet. Here Drake Baldwin made his presence known, getting an off speed pitch away from his body and showing off his impressive all-fields raw power. Baldwin cleared the left field fence into the Stripers bullpen, bringing home Alvarez to tie the game at two. Baldwin would provide both the first and the final critical plate appearance, drawing a walk in the tenth inning that forced home the winning run. If you will allow me to be a bit arbitrary with my end points, over his past 23 games Drake Baldwin has a 147 wRC+, a 14.9% strikeout rate, and a .170 isolated power. His progression at being able to make contact has been incredible, and if the power of the past few weeks becomes a more regular part of his game along with that then suddenly the likelihood of him being an every day catcher increases significantly.
Dylan Dodd’s brief foray into the bullpen seems to be over, whether by choice or by force is unclear, and he had one of his better overall starts as he was able to consistently find the strike zone with his fastball. Dodd did well to pepper the edges, seeing a high in-zone rate on his fastball yet leaving few in the middle where the Sounds could do damage. His lack of a swing-and-miss secondary still looms large over his performance however, as he found himself lacking the ability to finish at bats at a good rate. We’ve seen Daysbel Hernandez step forward with his stuff this season, and on Saturday he averaged over 98 on his fastball and over 2800 rpm on his slider. While he had the slider spinning it didn’t miss many bats, primarily because he left the pitch in the upper half of the zone too often where even metrics as impressive as his couldn’t save it. Fortunately the Sounds didn’t hit Hernandez hard and he was able to give the Stripers two scoreless innings.
Swing and Misses
Dylan Dodd – 10
(27-33) Mississippi Braves 3, (32-28) Rocket City Trash Pandas 6
- Cody Milligan, CF: 1-4, 2B, .214/.273/.318
- Tyler Tolve, C: 1-2, HR, BB, .188/.240/.315
- David Fletcher, SP: 6 IP, 6 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 2 BB, 2 K, 4.67 ERA
(28-33) Mississippi Braves 9, (32-29) Rocket City Trash Pandas 0
- Keshawn Ogans, 3B: 2-4, RBI, .222/.276/.269
- Brandon Parker, RF: 1-2, HR, BB, 3 RBI, .224/.298/.467
- Luis De Avila, SP: 7 IP, 6 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 6 K, 4.40 ERA
It was a double-header for Mississippi, with the knuckleball of David Fletcher catching the most attention from this pair of games. For most of the game Fletcher managed to befuddle the Trash Pandas with the pitch, forcing only weak contact with occasional baserunners to be found and holding the game scoreless through five innings. Behind him the offense had enough time to scrape together a couple of runs and take a two run lead into the sixth inning. Facing Fletcher a third time Rocket City had much more opportunity to do damage, and a three run home run in the sixth inning sunk the start from good to a potential, and eventual, loss. Rocket City would put up four total runs in the inning, and a late Tyler Tolve home run was not enough to prevent the result of the game.
Game two gave us a much more pleasing result for the Mississippi Braves, as they had an early lead and never let up, taking down the Trash Pandas by a 9-0 score. Luis De Avila has been battling all season and came into this game 0-8 (lol, pitcher win-loss records) with his performances representing both a regression in command and ability to miss bats. June had been a bit better for De Avila, and finally on Saturday he had a bit of feel for the zone and managed to get a complete game shutout in the second game of the double header. De Avila doesn’t miss many bats, his lack of both top end raw stuff and command being a detriment to his potential, but he is better than he has been most of the season and I’m happy to see him back on track.
As for the offense, they seem to be happy not playing their home games at Trustmark Park as they added two more home runs to their week’s totals. Brandon Parker has been at home in Mississippi with this team, and he hit his sixth home run of the season in just his 36th game. Parker’s strikeouts are clearly a problem as his strikeout rate sits over 30%, but he has been in his somewhat limited playing time the most consistent contributor for extra base power with an isolated power of .243. Mississippi’s success was also helped by the struggles of Rocket City’s starter Victor Mederos, who found no feel for his command and ended up being chased in the first inning. Mississippi came up with four runs then, and facing the bulk parts of the Trash Panda’s bullpen had some less-than-stellar talent to feast off of.
Swing and Misses
David Fletcher – 7
Luis De Avila – 8
(33-27) Rome Emperors 4, (34-28) Bowling Green Hot Rods 6
- Ethan Workinger, DH: 2-4, RBI, .283/.369/.426
- Sabin Ceballos, 3B: 1-4, 2B, .266/.352/.357
- EJ Exposito, SS: 2-4, HR, 2 RBI, .289/.352/.537
- Jhancarlos Lara, SP: 4 IP, 6 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 1 BB, 7 K, 5.47 ERA
The numbers are once again not great for Jhancarlos Lara, and it seems he’s drifting a bit further away from the heights he showed last season, but let’s keep the performance in the context of his development when we look at it here. Firstly, Lara was missing bats at an exciting rate with 19 whiffs and seven strikeouts in four innings, and this was also one of his better strike-throwing outings from the season. 12 of his whiffs (at a 52% rate) came in his first trip through the lineup, where after the Hot Rods got a second look at him and started to square him up. With Lara still operating with only two pitches I’m inclined to project him into a bullpen role, where those later inning performances act as more of an opportunity to develop than an opportunity to evaluate. If looking at him through this lens of a player unlikely to face a major league lineup multiple times he did exceedingly well, striking out four of his first nine batters.
Unfortunately for results though, this didn’t end so well for the Emperors who slid from their brief trip to the top of the division alone. This sets up a critical matchup in Sunday’s game, where the Emperors will have a chance to take a road split of the series and maintain the one game lead in the division they held coming in. Next week is the final week of the first half, with this race likely to be influenced heavily by how today’s game goes. Anyways, back to the action at hand, the recently strong offense didn’t give huge support to Lara, waiting until he had left the game to score any runs. They fought for runs behind who else but EJ Exposito, Sabin Ceballos, and Ethan Workinger, and managed to cut that deficit in half heading into the later innings. Unfortunately in the eighth inning Ceballos made a critical error, seeing a grounder roll up into his body and skitter away from his for his twelfth error of the season. A two run single followed, undoing the recent work of Ceballos and his colleagues at the plate. Ceballos has potential at third base to stick there, from a look at his arm, footwork, and actions, but he has been far too prone to mistakes this season with a fielding percentage below .900. These mistakes have often come on routine plays of late, and Ceballos made need a mental reset as much as anything else. EJ Exposito brought it close in the ninth, as he got a low off speed pitch and took it with easy power over the left field wall for his 11th home run. It’s no surprise to see Exposito’s numbers dipping lately as his power production was unsustainable for any player, but even with that his numbers have remained steadily good in recent weeks and it seems more and more like he truly has mastered this level.
Swing and Misses
Jhancarlos Lara – 19
Rob Griswold – 6
(25-36) Augusta GreenJackets 4, (35-27) Lynchburg Hillcats 7
- Isaiah Drake, CF: 0-5, RBI, .152/.245/.250
- Will Verdung, 1B: 2-3, BB, RBI, .224/.344/.269
- Garrett Baumann, SP: 4.1 IP, 7 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 0 BB, 0 K, 3.33 ERA
- William Silva, RP: 2 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 1 K, 2.81 ERA
Some regression was to be expected from Garrett Baumann, it was never going to be possible for him to sustain a sub-2 ERA, and unfortunately said regression has come all at once in June. Baumann’s struggles to miss bats at a high rate, lending itself heavily to his lack of an effective breaking ball, have started to become an issue as hitters can hit his sinker well enough to put up runs against him. Baumann wasn’t awful I wouldn’t say and he has had a couple of cases of bad batted ball luck to outweigh the good fortunes early in the season, but he has reached an important crossroads in his career. Every player will face these stretches where their previous strategy is no longer good enough, and Baumann is in need of adjustments to continue to grow as a player. Notably, I think until and unless we see an improvement to or the development of a breaking ball it will likely be more mediocre results for Baumann as we move deeper into the season and hitters develop along with him. Still, I don’t want to be too negative towards Baumann here. This is a 19 year old with advanced body control especially for a player his size, and a changeup years ahead of most high school arms. He has done a ton to impress and his successes should be celebrated, I just feel he is now at a point where the lack of a breaking ball has really served as a detriment to him.
Offensively the GreenJackets have had their awfulness masked by Isaiah Drake going nuclear, and he didn’t have one of his days on Saturday. Even with the 0-5 on his line I didn’t see it as a bad afternoon for Drake. He first faced off against a lefty and hit a couple of sinking line drives to center field, with the Hillcats star prospect Jaison Chourio made nice reads and catches on. His third plate appearance was again a line drive, though a bit of a slap swing that I think the Braves would like to get him out of the habit of doing, and his fourth a sharp grounder up the middle that should it not have caught the foot of the pitcher would have rolled into center field for an important base hit. If that is what a bad Isaiah Drake day looks like now I am more than pleased, they were good at bats and good approaches that just didn’t lead to the results we wanted.
The GreenJackets offense took advantage of both wildness and defensive mishaps to put up their four runs, though it was an impressive day for Will Verdung. Verdung reached base five times, and it’s nice to finally see him stringing together good games. For much of the year he’s been one of the more disappointing guys in the system, a fringe prospect that we at least thought advanced enough to hit in A ball. Coming into this week he had a .554 OPS, but he has hit in all four games he has played this week and has three walks and no strikeouts. Overall he has been quite good in June, posting an on base percentage of .426 with more walks than strikeouts. This is the Verdung we expected and one that should hopefully now be a leader for the team.
Swing and Misses
Garrett Baumann – 7
(7-20) FCL Braves 3, (18-10) FCL Rays 11
- Luis Guanipa, CF: 2-5, HR, RBI, .385/.385/.615
- Douglas Glod, LF: 1-3, 2B, 2 BB, RBI, .203/.366/.359
- Jhonly Taveras, SP: 4.1 IP, 2 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 4 BB, 4 K, 4.95 ERA
For a team that has been so bad the FCL Braves are one of the most talented collection of guys the Braves have, and the brightest of that talent has returned with fury from his earlier injury. I could not care less about the final score when Luis Guanipa hit his first stateside home run, and has been nothing short of fantastic in the limited time he has been back on the field. Guanipa isn’t striking out as much as he did in the Dominican Summer League at least in a small sample, and hopefully he can finish out strong. The staggered ending of the complex league and full season schedules has me believing we will see Guanipa later this year in an at least brief stint in Augusta, and these early results have that confidence growing. Junior Garcia has been stellar for the Complex League Braves as well, and notched his second three-hit game out of his last three, though the rains have spread that across eight days of the calendar. Garcia has been a bit too strikeout-prone early in the season, but in 24 June plate appearances has only struck out four times with three of those coming in the June 8th game alone.
(3-5) DSL Braves 13, (2-6) DSL Orioles Black 10
- Carlos Monteverde, RF: 1-3, 2 BB, 2 RBI, .346/.471/.500
- Juan Espinal, DH: 1-2, 2B, 2 BB, 3 RBI, .185/.343/.222
- Juan Mateo, 2B: 3-4, 2B, BB, 2 RBI, .300/.417/.400
- Jose Pineda, SP: 2.2 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 4 K, 5.40 ERA
Like the FCL Braves this DSL team is talented though quite young, and the offensive firepower was on display Saturday morning. Juan Mateo is the player I’m really “watching” from this crop of guys, and a 3-4 day boosted his numbers quite well. He and Carlos Monteverde, a major signing from last season, have been very good though really an equal number of walks and strikeouts is kind of the expectation from the top talent in the circuit. Juan Espinal is an exciting, fast twitch sort of athlete that I would love to see develop into one of those top level guys. Unfortunately though he has been striking out a ton, with his 1-2 with two walks being one of his better showings of the year. Still, a very talented guy and another to box score follow as the season goes forward.