It was an impressive offensive showing at most levels of the Atlanta Braves farm system, with plenty of home runs and contributions from recent draftees. In addition to the offense Landon Beidelschies made his professional debut with three innings in Augusta’s win, while Owen Murphy continued his return from Tommy John surgery in Rome.
(58-72) Gwinnett Stripers 8, (55-72) Norfolk Tides 3
- David McCabe, 1B: 0-4, BB, RBI, .211/.302/.395
- Luke Waddell, SS: 2-4, BB, RBI, .282/.379/.361
- Jonathan Ornelas, LF: 3-4, 2 HR, 4 RBI, .200/.299/.353
- Dane Dunning, SP: 5 IP, 8 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 3 BB, 2 K, 4.05 ERA
- Blake Burkhalter, RP: 1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 0 K, 3.70 ERA
- Hayden Harris, RP: 1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 1 K, 0.36 ERA
It was a big day for the offense, led by an explosive performance from Jonathan Ornelas, and the Gwinnett Stripers are on a winning streak with five
victories in a row over Norfolk. They were playing from behind early in this one after Dane Dunning had a bit of a blow up in the second inning. The inning was not entirely his fault — it got off to a bad start thanks to a weakly hit bloop single and a bunt single, but from there the Tides were able to hit him hard and keep the line moving. They scored three runs in the inning and were only slowed up by baserunning mistakes as they were thrown out at third base for both of the first two outs. Dunning was able to keep damage under control outside of that inning, though it was not a great start for him. His stuff and his command didn’t look great and he wasn’t able to miss any bats, getting only two strikeouts that were both called strike threes. Norfolk had 11 hard hit balls off of Dunning, but weren’t able to extend their lead and a big inning in response from Gwinnett’s offense erased their advantage.
Ornelas’s first impact in this game came in the bottom of the fourth inning, when with one swing of the bat he was able to make up the distance to the Tides. With two runners on base Ornelas got a slider that hung up and on the inner half of the plate and his swung with might, hitting a line drive rocket off of the wall behind the Gwinnett dugout for a game-tying three run home run. It didn’t take long for the Stripers to take the lead. Matthew Batten followed up the Ornelas home run with a long ball of his own, giving Gwinnett a lead that they would not relinquish. Ornelas would add on in the next inning with the third home run of the game for the Stripers, blasting one out to the deepest part of the ballpark to double the lead. Ornelas has tended to perform in bunches for Gwinnett this season, and he is certainly on a burst of success right now. He has four home runs in his past five games, raising his slugging percentage by 39 points in that time, and while the numbers haven’t followed he is making more contact this month than he has at any other point this season. David McCabe had a rough day at the plate, actually one of his worst in a long time, as he didn’t make great contact and had a couple of strikeouts. He did show his normal great plate discipline to not chase and none of his at bats were bad at-bats. He worked a few deep counts and just got beat a couple of times after it got to two strikes, but given where he got some fastballs in the fat part of the zone along with a couple of sliders that hung up he had an opportunity to put out a great game and just wasn’t able to find the barrel at all. Hayden Harris closed out the game, extending his 15 2/3 inning scoreless streak that dates back to the middle of July. Perhaps even more impressively, after he struggled with walks early in his return to Gwinnett this season and was just able to work around them, right now it is pure dominance. This month he hasn’t walked a single batter, has only allowed two hits, and has maintained a high strikeout rate by getting 16 of 51 batters faced to strike out.
Swing and Misses
Anderson Pilar – 3
Hayden Harris – 2
(54-68) Columbus Clingstones 0, (43-81) Rocket City Trash Pandas 4
- Patrick Clohisy, CF: 1-4, .296/.347/.426
- Brett Sears, SP: 6 IP, 5 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 3 BB, 3 K, 3.98 ERA
- Blayne Abeyta, RP: 1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 2 K, 2.17 ERA
The Clingstones prevented the minor league teams from landing the sweep on Saturday, and it was an all-around poor performance from the team. The offense was paltry with only four hits and no big rallies, as they combined to have only one at bat with a runner in scoring position the entire game. The offense has been inconsistent the past couple of weeks, with a mix of great and absolutely horrible games, and this one fell into the latter category. Even with a perfectly-pitched game they would have struggled to have a chance to win, but it wasn’t a great day for Brett Sears and the Clingstones trailed from the bottom of the first inning to the end.
Brett Sears was able to settle into this game and start locating his fastball and slider across the later innings, but early on it was a struggle for him to throw good strikes. He fell behind in most of his counts in the first two innings, giving the Trash Pandas the opportunity to hunt his fastball in the zone. They were able to hit him hard and string together two rallies early, scoring a run in the first inning and then three runs in the second inning. Sears didn’t have his best stuff, but was able to live on the edges over the final few innings, moving the ball in and out effectively, and his secondary offerings became a factor when he was throwing early strikes. With that he retired 12 of the final 13 batters he faced in a row, a feat that made his line respectable after such a poor start and was able to protect the bullpen from having to cover a ton of innings. Sears has had an up-and-down last few months, primarily because he hasn’t been able to rely on his command and sequencing to get whiffs like he did at the lower levels. The Braves have been working on his approach and pitch shapes at the upper levels, and that’s been enough for him to mostly overcome his velocity limitations at Double-A, though it remains to be seen how well that will translate into Triple-A and beyond. His command outside of the first couple of innings of this game has been serving him well for the past two months and his pitchability gives him a decent floor, but he gets hit hard in the zone even in Double-A and is going to have to be basically perfect to be effective against major league guys.
Swing and Misses
Brett Sears – 10
Blayne Abeyta – 4
(54-67) Rome Emperors 7, (52-71) Winston-Salem Dash 6
- Alex Lodise, 2B: 4-5, 2B, RBI, .256/.299/.378
- Cody Miller, SS: 1-5, 3B, RBI, .316/.333/.474
- Owen Murphy, SP: 2.2 IP, 3 H, 5 R, 3 ER, 2 BB, 2 K, 1.66 ERA
The impossible run for Owen Murphy finally came to an end, as he had his first bad game since returning to Rome. However, a strong offensive attack led by Alex Lodise was able to overcome a five run deficit to win in extra innings. The beginning of the outing went as normal as could be for Murphy’s standards, as he retired the first seven batters in order without breaking much of a sweat. The problem for Murphy was that he didn’t have a feel for locating anything other than his fastball, and eventually the Dash keyed in and started attacking it early in counts. As the game got later he started letting the pitch drift down in the zone where it didn’t carry above the barrels of Dash hitters, though there were still only a couple of batted balls that were great quality contact. His command just wasn’t great and a couple of misplays in the field didn’t help either. His fastball looked as good as it has this entire season so far, so there wasn’t much regression compared to other outings, he just completely lacked feel for secondary offerings.
Down 5-0 the offense needed to get moving, and two one-out hits in the bottom of the third inning helped to get them on the right track. Alex Lodise hit a ball hard into right field that bounded over the wall, ending up as a ground-rule double that would break the tie. A strikeout from Cody Miller kept the inning from being a major cut into the deficit, but the Emperors kept putting hits on the board with 13 total, and eventually a few of those came in clutch spots. First, Tyler Tolve pulled the game close with a two run double in the sixth inning. In the seventh Lodise led off with a single, and then immediately came in to score when Miller burned one into the gap. The center fielder couldn’t make the play and overcommitted, allowing the ball to roll to the wall for a triple that put the tying run 90 feet away with no one out. Miller made an aggressive baserunning decision to come home on a Justin Janas grounder to second base with the infield in, but he forced a throw that couldn’t beat him to tie the game up. Winston-Salem couldn’t score on the Rome bullpen, with David Rodriguez covering five innings of scoreless relief, though in the 10th they finally pulled home a run to put pressure on the Rome offense.
Rome would immediately take the advantage in the inning when a shallow pop from Janas fell barely out of the reach of the left fielder sprinting in. Janas was lifted for a pinch runner who the Dash let take second on defensive indifference, the Emperors offense who had already recorded 13 hits in the game was staring down three chances to get the win. Despite this, they didn’t have another hit in the game. Mason Guerra whiffed on a cutter in the strike zone for the first out, though the Dash made the odd decision to not intentionally walk someone (who wouldn’t be an important runner anyways) to set up a force play at home or potentially game-ending double play. This may have been a critical mistake. Keshawn Ogans chopped one softly to third base that could have been a routine throw home, but the third baseman was pressured by the speed of Isaiah Drake and spiked the throw giving his catcher no chance at making the tag. Now with the winning run 90 feet away and Ogans on second due to indifference they still didn’t walk anyone. Cooper McMurray hit a solid ground ball that the second baseman scooped up, but due to his momentum taking him to second base he couldn’t get the throw anywhere close to home plate and Rome walked the game off despite their best hit in the inning being a pop up that landed 20 yards beyond the infield.
Swing and Misses
David Rodriguez – 6
Justin Long – 6
(64-58) Augusta GreenJackets 9, (66-58) Charleston RiverDogs 8
- John Gil, SS: 3-5, 2B, RBI, .253/.344/.368
- Owen Carey, RF: 1-4, HR, 2 RBI, .255/.326/.339
- Dixon Williams, 2B: 2-5, 3B, 2 RBI, .265/.370/.485
- Landon Beidelschies, SP: 3 IP, 6 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 0 BB, 3 K, 12.00 ERA
Landon Beidelschies made his professional debut on Saturday, and it was not a great one, though he was rescued by a terrific offensive performance from the Augusta lineup. Despite allowing four runs I didn’t think that Beidelschies looked all that terrible, as his fastball was lively and he threw it for plenty of strikes, and the few curveballs he did throw were nasty. He worked his fastball well on the edges in and out, and the two-run home run he gave up was a left-on-left matchup where the batter turned on a fastball that looked to be inside off of the plate. The one criticism of his fastball location was that he didn’t elevate it consistently and hitters were able to hit line drives off of him, though there was not really any great, hard contact until the first two batters of the third inning. He didn’t utilize his secondaries much and the RiverDogs were sitting on fastballs from the first pitch of the game, and these factors all led to a game that was much worse than the quality of his pitching. It wasn’t a terrific performance from him but he was definitely limited on the pitches he used and this shouldn’t be used as a gauge of expectations for coming games. The important points – the shape of his pitches and his ability to throw strikes – were there and gives something to build with across the rest of the season.
Augusta had a huge early output in runs, though that advantage nearly dwindled to nothing in a scary bottom of the ninth inning. John Gil had a great game with three more hits, his sixth three-hit game this month, and had a key double in the ninth inning to lead off. He would advance on a passed ball and then score on a sacrifice fly for what would turn out to be an important ninth run. Owen Carey has been going through a bad spell at the plate, but the long wait to see some home run power from him is finally over. The Braves have been working on getting him to pull balls in the air with more authority to no great success as he hasn’t had a home run since May 8th. That is until the third inning of this game, when he was able to get his hands inside a slider that stayed up in the zone and on the inside corner of the strike zone, and he turned and launched a no-doubt go-ahead home run into right field.
After Charleston retook the lead the Augusta offense had their big inning, putting out a five run fourth inning that put them on top for the rest of the game. Gil had a hand in this inning, using his speed to beat out a slow chopper for an infield single, which kept the inning alive and gave Dixon Williams a chance to do damage with runners on. Williams turned and hit a deep drive into right field, and though the defender almost made a terrific leaping play over his shoulder it wasn’t a good enough effort and the ball bounced off of his glove and rolled a few feet to the wall. Williams was able to hustles around the bases and get in safely with a triple, while two runners scored to double the lead and put the GreenJackets up 8-4. Charleston put a bit of fear in the air with a three-run home run in the ninth inning, but Jackson Dannelley was able to close out the game to seal a win.
Swing and Misses
Jaylen Paden – 6
Jackson Dannelley – 5
Albert Rivas – 3
