It’s been a dream of a past week for Owen Carey, who is showing power we’ve never seen from him before while maintaining an lengthening hitting streak. The pitching on the minor league side also had much intrigue, with Garrett Baumann pitching in Gwinnett and Lucas Braun posting his best start of the season for Columbus. Add in yet another home run from Alex Lodise and the day was full of exciting moments and big performances.
(42-41) Gwinnett Stripers 3, (35-49) Durham Bulls 6
- DaShawn Kiersey Jr., RF: 3-5, 2B, .262/.311/.373
- Garrett Baumann, SP: 5 IP, 5 H, 6 R, 5 ER, 2 BB, 8 K, 11.49 ERA
Even with a rough start from Garrett Baumann and a lackluster
performance by the offense the Stripers still had a sniff of a chance to steal this game late, but always came up just short with two-out RBI chances. The Stripers left 11 men on base in this game, but that doesn’t fully encapsulate that eight of those came in just the final three innings of this game. With the bases loaded in the eighth inning the Stripers, by some miracle, had a chance to tie the game, but Jair Camargo flew out lazily to end that opportunity. An error in the ninth inning put Adam Zebrowski on base, kicking off a rally that saw the Stripers fall tantalizingly short. DaShawn Kiersey hit a bouncer off of the back of the pitcher that would go for a single, but as the ball trickled into left field Zebrowski tried to score from second and a combination of his sub-20 speed and an admittedly impressive play from Carson Williams to get to the ball in shallow left field saw Zebrowski cut down trying to score. It probably wasn’t smart to send him, and after a single, a hit batter, and a walk scored Kiersey and left the bases loaded with two outs it seemed even worse in retrospect. Jose Azocar finished off the game with a grounder straight at Williams that would have been a routine double play if there were only one out, stranding the bases loaded for the second straight inning.
All six of the runs Garrett Baumann allowed in this game were driven in via home runs, which is an issue that has exploded over the past three outings for him. Baumann allowed seven home runs in his first 12 starts this season (11 COL, 1 GWN) but in the past three outings has allowed eight of them. While the Bulls hitters took advantage of the mistakes Baumann made and he left a few too many pitches over the plate, he didn’t really pitch that poorly. He made good pitches with his splitter, located his fastball at the top of strike zone fairly consistently, and mixed his pitches well. He ran out of steam a bit in the final inning which contributed to the middle-middle fastball that got hit for his third home run, but overall he wasn’t glaringly bad in any particular way. He got beat a few times by hitters making good swings, but this was not nearly on the level of his prior two starts when he was making too many mistakes with his command. He looked better in this outing even if the results weren’t there, and if he comes out in future outings and pitches like that the results should follow.
Swing and Misses
Garrett Baumann – 16
Connor Thomas – 5
(33-40) Columbus Clingstones 0, (45-33) Knoxville Smokies 1
- Patrick Clohisy, CF: 0-3, BB, .264/.337/.448
- Lucas Braun, SP: 8 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 7 K, 3.30 ERA
With the run environment up across minor league baseball there haven’t been too many of these true pitchers’ duels, but we got one in Tennessee on Thursday night and it was a masterpiece from Lucas Braun. It didn’t immediately look like it was going to be one of those nights for Braun. He struggled with his command to the first couple of hitters and gave up hard contact, including throwing a sinker middle-middle in a 2-0 count that got hit off of the wall in the deepest part of the park for a double. He fell behind 3-1 to the next guy before getting him to pop out and then got a ground out on a slider he hung, but after catching a series of breaks he locked in and started putting in good work. He dialed the slider in with a swinging strikeout to end the second inning, then started to dot the fastball up, slider down sequence to great success. That was the formula for the rest of the game, and his combination of being on with his command and the Smokies being willing to chase on sliders below the zone gave him the tools to get through eight scoreless innings.
The Smokies managed to match Braun with zeroes, and the Clingstones running up strikeouts undid the advantage they had with getting runners on base. Heading into the bottom of the ninth inning Columbus had gotten ten runners on base to the Smokies two, but thanks to strikeouts in key moments with runners in scoring position and a couple of outs on the basepaths they never managed to push anyone home. Shay Schanaman had an unfortunate bit of luck when he jammed the leadoff hitter but gave up a single on a slow roller to third base, but he also struggled to throw strikes. He walked two hitters to load the bases up with only one out in the inning, then gave up a walkoff single on a hard hit ball that went off of the glove of Jordan Groshans at third base.
Swing and Misses
Lucas Braun – 16
Shay Schanaman – 3
(38-38) Rome Emperors 8, (28-49) Jersey Shore BlueClaws 4
- Tate Southisene, SS: 1-4, 2B, BB, .205/.340/.361
- John Gil, 2B: 1-4, BB, .263/.357/.418
- Eric Hartman, LF: 0-3, 2 BB, .291/.361/.557
- Owen Carey, DH: 1-4, HR, BB, .269/.336/.471
- Zach Royse, SP: 5.2 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 5 K, 4.96 ERA
The Owen Carey fan club is eating well these days. Carey only had one hit in this game to extend his hitting streak to nine games, but he did it in a big way with a missile for a home run in the fifth inning. Carey has three home runs in his past four games with that hit, and already has beaten his total for home runs last season in just 37 games. Carey is really making solid contact in the air on the pull side early in this season, which was the biggest criticism you could have of him last season. He is maintaining his ability to hit hard line drives all over the field and make contact at a high rate while adding to his power output, and the Emperors have yet another breakout candidate making waves for them. Overall this offensive performance was mostly not driven by the elite-tier prospects for the Braves, though they’ll certainly be happy to see Dixon Williams add another to his total. Williams had a no-doubt shot in the first inning to put Rome up 3-0, banging the ball off of a billboard well past the fence in left field. Williams has homered in two straight games, and after that nasty slump he has really been crushing the ball over his past 15 games. He has five home runs and a .321/.415/.661 slash line during that timeframe, though his poor contact rates do remain a red flag.
Zach Royse had a couple of poor games in his adjustment to High-A, where he was not missing bats at the rate he was in Single-A, but this game was a quick reversal of trends as he looked strong once again. Royse’s slider was on full display as he kept going back to it until each individual hitter proved they could hit it, and some of the guys in the lineup never showed that they could. Royse’s only issue in the game is that he had a whole lot more trouble commanding his fastball, but he was able to work around that the first time through the order. The next time through the BlueClaws had a better feel for him and his velocity really started to drop off, so the earlier success he had at getting whiffs didn’t carry over. Royse did enough and his slider was good enough that Jersey Shore never got comfortable in the game, but the velocity dip and the command of his fastball are more fuel to the opinion that Royse’s future is likely in the bullpen. The quality of that slider is good enough to carry a major league middle relief pitcher’s career, but there’s certainly no reason to move him out of the starting role just yet even if it’s just to give him extra reps.
Swing and Misses
Zach Royse – 15
Jacob Kroeger – 5
(44-34) Augusta GreenJackets 10, (30-47) Salem RidgeYaks
- Luis Guanipa, CF: 2-5, 2B, 5 RBI, .320/.378/.483
- Conor Essenburg, RF: 0-5, .253/.385/.442
- Alex Lodise, SS: 2-5, 2B, HR, 2 RBI, .254/.342/.369
- Jeremy Reyes, SP: 4.2 IP, 5 H, 6 R, 6 ER, 2 BB, 6 K, 3.25 ERA
It was a disappointing outcome for the GreenJackets on Thursday night, but they still received big contributions from the top prospects in the lineup, especially from Alex Lodise. Lodise has yet again hit a spell where the strikeouts are piling up — he has nine over the past six games — but it hasn’t slowed down his power production one bit. He hit his 16th home run of the season and eighth over the past 14 games while adding in a double. Most of the damage Lodise has done during this hot streak has come with him lighting up the lower half of the strike zone, but this time he took a fastball in the upper half and hit it the other way. Early in this game Augusta went on a run at the plate that allowed them to open up a 6-1 lead, and a big part of that came courtesy of the Carolina League batting leader Luis Guanipa. With the bases loaded in the second inning Guanipa shot an inside sinker into the opposite gap for a bases-clearing double, netting him the first three of five RBI on the day. In another bases-loaded chance in the fifth inning Guanipa again came through with an opposite field single, helping Augusta open up a lead of 9-6 that would also eventually get blown by the pitching staff. While Guanipa has maintained his contact numbers throughout this season he hasn’t seen the home run power that he showed earlier in the season and that double in the first inning is an example of a pitch we were seeing him drive to the pull side in April and May. Guanipa’s bat speed makes it so he tends to never get beaten on the inner half, but he has shown a tendency to drift back towards getting his front foot down a bit late and shooting pitches the opposite way, which has robbed him of some of the impact he showed in the early months. Conor Essenburg added an 0-5 performance to his recent struggles, and has been locked in his worst stretch of the season for the past couple of series.
With his recent demotion you would hope for better results from Jeremy Reyes, but right now what Reyes is putting on the field is concerning for his future. His velocity is down significantly and he just doesn’t have the command to overcome that limitation, and even though his slider has had success generating whiffs at the Single-A level there just isn’t much indication of growth from him. Should the velocity return to his baseline there is a chance for him to fit in as a relief arm, but the electric potential he showed last season has not been there at all in 2026. He’s getting hit hard right now in addition to not being able to throw strikes consistently, and it’s hard to see that changing anytime soon when his sweeper is the only thing showing anything right now and that’s a pitch he can’t land near the strike zone consistently.
Swing and Misses
Jeremy Reyes – 13
Kendy Richard – 6
