Well it has rapidly turned into prospect week for the Braves’ rotation, as a 1.0 inning Reynaldo Lopez start on Tuesday in the middle of a stretch of 10 games straight sent the Braves’ pitching into a scramble to cover innings. An up and down 3.0 inning start from Didier Fuentes resulted in Thursday’s scheduled starter Martin Perez being burnt to cover another 3.0 innings. Fuentes was probably better than his line would indicate, as he got a bit unlucky with some BABIP, while striking out 7 batters
across 3.0 innings and generated 15 whiffs on 74 pitches. That said, he was not as his best, particularly in the first inning. So that leaves us with JR Ritchie making his MLB debut on Thursday as a consensus top 100 prospect and top 2 prospect in the organization. Ritchie made a real push for a rotation spot in Spring Training and has been largely effective in AAA so far. Ritchie has a deep pitch mix and will be fun to watch on Thursday, as he can hopefully can provide some depth for a Braves team that desperately needs it.
Braves News
The Braves are calling up top prospect JR Ritchie to start Thursday’s series finale against the Nationals. Cookie Carrasco will also join the roster in the place of Dylan Dodd, as the Braves are really scraping the bottom of the organizational barrel to cover innings in this 10 game stretch, no disrespect to Carrasco’s impressive career.
Atlanta DFA’d Ian Hamilton after a rough Tuesday outing, making space to bring up Didier Fuentes to start Wednesday’s game.
Didier Fuentes showed some promise and some flaws in a 3.0 inning outing to start what ended up being an 8-6 Atlanta victory in Washington DC.
MLB News
The Mets won their first game after a 12 game losing streak, beating the Twins in a tight 3-2 game.
The A’s are placing exciting centerfielder Denzel Clarke on the IL with a bone bruise.
The Rangers are placing the young outfielder Wyatt Langford on the IL with a flexor strain, an odd injury for a position player.
The struggling Phillies placed catcher JT Realmuto on the IL with back spasms.
Lucas Giolito finally signed and it was with the Padres, where he got a pretty small deal.
