Atlanta Review | 4/14

Review for the week of Apr. 8th, 2019. 4/8: Strong performance from Yeralf Torres in his first Major League start, three runs over 5.2 IP while striking out six, and feeling the HR ball from Coors Field by giving up two. Jose Peraza had himself a three-hit game as the game’s lead-off hitter and in all the Braves put 21 men on base and managed to move 11 around the diamond to help drive them to their ninth win of the youth season; 9-1. 4/9: Tom Windle felt the hurt of Coors Field today just as Torres did, as he gave up two home runs that accounted for four of the five runs against us for our second loss of the season. Tapia was the only player who was able to hit some runs across the plate. Other than that, our offense was shut down by Tadashi Samurakami as he pulled himself to 3-0 for the season. The bullpen continued their dominance after Windle was pulled. With the loss we moved to 9-2. 4/10: Wisler has himself another tough start and suffered the same fate as Windle and Torres did with Coors Field; the coaching staff has stressed to keep the ball down there. We outhit the Rockies today with Gregorius having a four-hit day. Peraza, Lamb, and Norton had a multi-hit game as well. The bullpen also had a setback in this game allowing a HR and now dropped to the second best bullpen in the NL. The home runs and errors helped bring the Braves to 9-3. Series recap: 1-2. Our starting pitching felt the impact of what Coors Field can do to pitching and that’s the long ball. As a staff, we gave up eight long balls to the powerful Rockies hitters. In total, the Rockies scored 18 runs against us and 13 were from home runs. A plus to the series (even though it was in Colorado) was how our hitting is looking. We are still staying hot with our bats as we had 35 hits compared to the Rockies having only 33, and we outscored them 20 to 18 but still ended up losing the series. New series against the Mets at home tomorrow. Time to keep the separation from us and the other contenders in the NL East! 4/11: Winner! As predicted by statistical evidence, Matt Harvey had a very tough time with our lefty-heavy lineup. Ender Inciarte started off the Braves bats with a solo home run in the bottom of the first; that was his first of the year. A whopping 14 hits on the day by the Braves hitters with Inciarte, Gregorius, Freeman, Nortan, and Verdugo all having a multi-hit game. On the other side, Graveman gave up one run in the top of the first by means of issuing a walk while the bases where loaded; after that, the Mets were silent. Graveman continued to pitch five innings before getting pulled due to having a high pitch count and with him issuing five free passes.  After Krueger gave the nod to the bullpen to take over, they continued to dominate and close out the game leaving Graveman in the winners circle making him 2-0 on the season. With the win we moved to 10-3. 4/12: Very solid day overall for the Braves. Taylor Jordan continues the hot tear he has been on to start the season. He held the Mets to four hits and gave up one via a home run en route to winning his second game of the year. The entire bullpen had a very solid day. Vizcaino gave up a home run, the first run he has given up in five appearances. Evan Marshall earned himself the save and that is his second of the year. At the plate, it was all business. On eight hits and one walk, the Braves put six across the plate. Tapia had a solid day by putting up his third home run and pushing two steaks across on his two hits. Freeman also had two RBIs in today’s performance. I am seeing a cold streak with Jake Lamb and might look to drop him in the order with how he has been performing. Still, there are two more games against the Mets and looks to be against their more successful early year arms, Montero and Johnson. 4/13: I thought we might lose this game but not in the manner that we did. I thought Montero would really take it to us with his R/L splits. But instead, we were able to hit him, with 11 base runners in five innings, including Jake Lamb getting his 3rd home run of the year in the process. But the big disappointment is that Smoal still has not found his groove. Going 5.1 and giving up five runs is pretty disappointing. Not only that, but even the bullpen was hit today and gave up two runs. Just not a satisfying day on the bump for the Braves. Our hitting continues to outperform our pitching. We are 11-4 after today’s loss. 4/14: Looks like we split the series, we really needed to win this one. Johnson just padded those ‘vs. LH’ stats today. He absolutely shut down our team by allowing five base runners over seven innings. There wasn’t much action on the offensive side of the ball because of the effective pitching of the Mets. Jose Peraza and Raimel Tapia had two hit games that accounted for all but one of the hits on the day. Good news is that we only struck out four times and walked three. On the bump today Windle went six strong innings, giving up three runs. He is seeing more home run numbers as of recently and currently his GO/PO is 10 points lower since last season with the Angels. We hope he turns that around. Series recap: had solid hitting contributions from three of the four games against the Mets. But being at home, I really would have liked to have a series win against an in division rival. The back end of our rotation needs to start pulling their weight some more. The season is young but both players are showing non-productive tendencies at the present moment. The bullpen did struggle some in this series but hopefully they can get back on track to shutting down the opposition. Next series is against the 4-12 Diamondbacks. I have my fingers crossed for a sweep. In the future, I will be incorporating weekly minor league performers.