The first home Spring Training game started very promising for Atlanta, with the Braves’ stars looking good.
Chris Sale struck out his first two batters and ended up with three strikeouts over 2.0 innings, no walks, and only one hard-hit ball in the form of a 95.9 MPH grounder. Chris Sale looked like Chris Sale and exited healthy, which is everything you want to see as a Braves fan.
One of Atlanta’s top prospects relieved Sale in JR Ritchie. Ritchie looked good, sitting in the mid-90s with his fastballs and striking out one batter across 2.0 scoreless innings, with no hard-hit balls but only 2 whiffs. We didn’t really see any other notable names pitching out of the bullpen.
Ronald Acuna led off the Atlanta offense with a 112.4 MPH 22 degree batted ball that must have been exceptionally soggy from the rain, because it landed as a single instead of a monster homer, to the surprise of seemingly everyone except the left fielder. Ronald struck out in his other plate appearance, but that first batted ball was all we needed to see from him.
Drake Baldwin had a hard-hit single at 102.6 MPH and hit a picture-perfect homer at 107.6 MPH and 27 degrees, picking up right where he dropped off with his scalding hot end to last season.
Elsewhere on offense, Matt Olson doubled and Jurickson Profar and Austin Riley each collected a single in their two plate appearances per player. On the prospect side, John Gil and Alex Lodise each made appearances, with Lodise putting one of the uglier plate appearances I’ve seen out there, losing his bat on a whiff for the strikeout, but did have a nice play on defense at shortstop. Gil flied out in one plate appearance and put together a nice walk in another.
Overall a nice day for the Braves’ roster, despite a fairly ugly 8-1 scoreline. We’ll be back on Monday against the Orioles, with the huge lefty prospect Garrett Baumann getting the start on the mound.
