Braves Minor League Recap: Toussaint and Wright Dominate

Gwinnett Stripers 5, Lehigh Valley Ironpigs 0

Box Score

Austin Riley, 3B: 2-4, BB, 2 R

Luis Marte, SS: 2-5, HR, RBI, R

Dustin Peterson, LF: 0-4, BB, RBI

Touki Toussaint, SP: 8IN, 2H, 0ER, 4BB, 8K

Jacob Webb, RP: 1IN, 0H, 0ER, 0BB, 1K

Today was all about Touki Toussaint and his masterful game. He was practically unhittable in this game. His final stat line doesn’t even really do him justice. 3 of his walks happened in the final couple of innings as he was tiring. Touki is just about all grown up. Jacob Webb came in and got the save. Webb hasn’t allowed a run in his last 7 appearances in which he has given up just 2 hits and struck out 9 batters. He’s really settling into things at AAA.

The offense didn’t let Touki down either. 5 players had multi hit games and there were even a couple of home runs hit (Luis Marte and Carlos Franco). Austin Riley continues to shake off rust, and with his 2 hits he pushed his batting average back over .300. While Alex Jackson went hitless, he showed some value catching a great game and throwing out a would be base stealer.

Mississippi Braves 0, Mobile BayBears 1

Box Score

Daniel Lockhart, 3B: 1-3, BB, 2K

Ray Patrick Didder, SS: 1-3, K

Kyle Wright, SP: 8IN, 4H, 1ER, 2BB, 4K

Thomas Burrows, RP: 1IN, 0H, 0ER, 0BB, 1K

This was an amazing pitcher’s duel that the MayBears came out victorious. Kyle Wright made one mistake pitch, looked like a fastball around the heart of the plate, and Brendon Sanger clocked it over the wall for a home run. Outside of that, Wright was getting ground ball out after ground ball out. His overall stuff wasn’t that great today and all he did was go 8 innings giving up 1 run. He probably could have pitched the 9th too as he was only at 93 pitches. You’d like to see more strikeouts but that’s just nit picking.

Braves offense was completely shut down. Not much of a surprise when you look at the lineup. Brett Cumberland was just called up and went 0-3 with a strikeout. He ripped a shot that would have gone for an easy double but the first baseman was perfectly positioned and stole a hit. There were a lot of weak pop ups. Ray Patrick Didder broke up the no hitter in the 6th inning with an infield hit. He later made it to 3rd, but no one could drive him home.

On the MayBears side, Matt Custred came in to close the game, striking out Didder and getting 2 easy ground ball outs. He threw almost all change-ups and curves. His curves were really good too. Obviously there is likely something wrong with him since he wasn’t throwing fastballs (velo likely down), but his change and curve were very effective. I still don’t get the Braves released this guy.

Florida Fire Frogs - Game 1 & 2 Postponed

Rome Braves 7, Columbia Fireflies 2

Box Score

Drew Waters, CF: 0-4, 2 K

Greyson Jenista, RF: 2-4, 2B, BB, RBI

William Contreras, C: 2-4, 2B

Jean Carlos Encarnacion, 3B: 1-4, 2B, RBI (2 errors)

Drew Lugbauer, DH: 1-4, 2B, 2 RBI, K

Alan Rangel, SP: 5.2IN, 5H, 0ER(1R), 1BB, 6K

Cutter Dyals, RP: 2IN, 1H, 1ER, 1BB, 2K

Rome Braves are back scoring runs and winning. The big inning was the 8th, the Braves scored 5 runs in which they hit 3 doubles coming off the bats of Jenista, JCE and Slugbear. The other three that got extra base hits in the game included Derian Cruz, Brendan Venter and William Contreras. The only negative was JCE committing 2 errors in the game (30 errors on the season), one of which allowed a runner to score.

Alan Rangel has struggled in his first full season of pitching, but this was definitely one of his best pitching performances on the year. He’s pitchability over stuff, but that usually plays at the lower levels, so to see him struggle so much is concerning. This was also Troy Bacon’s first game of the year in Rome. He was demoted despite pitching rather well at Florida. Hopefully this won’t be a long stay for the former 4th round pick. Bacon had a nice inning of work and Cutter Dyals also came in and did a nice job for his 2 innings.

Danville Braves 7, Kingsport Mets 6 in 10 innings

Box Score

Andrew Moritz, RF: 1-4, 2 BB

Greg Cullen, 2B: 2-4, BB, K, RBI

Griffin Benson, 1B: 3-4, BB, K, HR, 3 RBI

Nicholas Shumpert, SS: 1-5, HR, RBI, 2 K

Tanner Lawson, SP: 2IP, 3H, 2ER, 0BB, 0K

Danville with the come back win! They were down heading into the 8th inning and the Braves ended up scoring in the 8th, 9th and 10th inning to come out on top.

Griffin Benson got things started by hitting a 3 run home run in the 4th inning. They wouldn’t score again until that 8th inning. However, every kids dream is to win it in the bottom of the 9th. The Braves were down a run in the 9th and Nicholas Shumpert steps up to the plate. Shumpert was a J1 signing back in 2016 and hasn’t really done much to date and only had 1 career home run. But Shumpert did the unthinkable by hitting a home run to tie the game, his 2nd career home run. The Braves would go on to score 2 in the 10th to just edge the Mets.

Tanner Lawson got the start but only went 2 innings. There were a total of 5 pitchers that threw in this game. Zach Seipel was really the only one that stood out as he struck out 3 batters in 2 innings of work.

GCL Braves 9, GCL Phillies East 4

Box Score

Trey Harris, CF: 3-4, 2 2B, 2 BB, 2 R, RBI

Michael Mateja, DH: 2-3, 2 BB, RBI

Logan Brown, C: 2-6, 2B, 2 RBI

Albinson Volquez, SP: 5IP, 8H, 4ER, 1BB, 1K

GCL Braves followed up yesterday’s 18 run performance with another big game. Today it was a trio of recent draft picks that did a lot of the damage. Harris, Mateja and Brown, the 1-3 hitters, combined to reach base 11 times and drove in 5 runs. All were picked between 25th and 35th rounds. Logan Brown, the son of long time MLB pitcher Kevin Brown, also threw out the only runner trying to steal (32% CS% in 18 games). Fan favorites in Christian Zamora and Braulio Vasquez both got a hit a piece, but overall have struggled on the year.

The pitching wasn’t great, but one of the bright spots was only allowing 1 walk all night. Not much else to say as the hitters stole the show.