Many of Atlanta’s top prospects pitched on the farm, with mixed results, while Chris Sale took charge at the highest level and dominated his old team, helping to secure the two game sweep. Owen Murphy was one of those prospects and he continued his absolutely dominant level this season, striking out 8 batters over 5.0 innings of work. Hurston Waldrep and AJ Smith-Shawver have each had shakier starts to the year, but have each flashed some promise in their development.
Back to the major league level, while the Braves did “sweep” the Red Sox over two games, it was still fairly pitching reliant. The offense was better than it had been against what is a fairly good Boston staff, but two homers from Marcell Ozuna, a wall-scraper from Orlando Arcia, and Jarred Kelenic’s first homer the season produced most of those runs, so it’s not quite time to say the offense is back yet. Kelenic has been a bit lucky at the plate to get average production, which isn’t great, but what has been great has been his defense. Jarred has quite directly saved a handful of runs on defense and has overall been really good out there, with pretty good range and a spectacular arm that might be the best left-field arm in baseball. He showed out once again on Wednesday with a leaping catch to rob Boston of a homer. Hopefully Jarred can put it together at the plate and become a truly all-around impact player.
Braves News
AJ Smith-Shawver did not have his finest outing on Tuesday, while Riley Frey stole the show on the farm with a stellar start in Augusta.
Sean Murphy is now hitting in the batting cage, in another important step in his recovery from his oblique injury early this season.
Marcell Ozuna and Chris Sale led the way to beat the Red Sox 5-0 on Wednesday, completing the mini-sweep. Ozuna continued his ridiculous offensive season with two homers, while Sale hit his season-high 10 strikeouts over 6.0 shutout innings.
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MLB News
Shohei Ohtani’s former interpreter Ippei Mizuhara is pleading guilty to bank fraud after allegedly stealing money from Ohtani to pay off illegal gambling debts.
The San Francisco Giants put Braves’ legend Jorge Soler on the 10-day IL with a shoulder strain. Soler has been quite bad this season, so hopefully some time off can see him figure things out.
The Pirates are calling up top pitching prospect and last year’s number 1 pick Paul Skenes to make his major league debut, starting Saturday’s game. This will be one of the most anticipated pitching prospect debuts in a long time.
The Rays put Ryan Pepiot on the IL after a comebacker hit him in the leg (although medical images were negative). They activated former top prospect Taj Bradley to take his place.
