Braves News: Roster moves, series sweep, more

Two trades, two torn achilles, and a few years after Michael Soroka and Kolby Allard were right at the top of Atlanta’s top prospects list, we appear likely to be able to see them start in the same turn of the rotation this week. Allard was extremely impressive in an admittedly good matchup against the Twins on Wednesday, far exceeding expectations and striking out eight over 4.2 scoreless innings. Soroka seems like the likely starter for Friday’s game against Miami, although this hasn’t been announced yet. Each of these pitchers has overcome some significant adversity to get to this point. Allard was traded away by the Braves at the 2019 trade deadline for a rental reliever in Chris Martin and re-acquired for very little this offseason by Atlanta. Soroka, as we all know, tore his achilles twice. While this isn’t the journey that we as fans envisioned for them, or even what they likely envisioned for themselves, it is pretty cool to see this as a real possibility on a very good Atlanta team, even as their careers thus far and current perceptions as players are quite different than we might have hoped three years ago.

Braves News

With Shuster never really having inspired much confidence at the major league level, it was Shuster who was optioned down at the end of the day.

At the beginning of the day, the Braves optioned Derek Rodriguez to make room for the day’s starter Kolby Allard.

Allard showed some of the promise from way back when he was Atlanta’s top prospect, striking out eight over 4.2 scoreless innings to help the Braves complete the sweep.

MLB News

Steve Cohen held a press conference to discuss the Mets’ extremely disappointing first half of the season.

Young Reds’ flamethrower Hunter Greene will be out for another month at least.

Ke’Bryan Hayes is hitting the IL with back inflammation.