Marcell Ozuna made his presence felt at the plate for the second time so far here in spring training, as his no-doubter of a home run was the biggest highlight on a bright and sunny day of spring training action for the Atlanta Braves at CoolToday Park.
Ozuna’s homer came in the fourth inning in his second at-bat of the game after he struck out to start things off in the first inning. While Jackson Rutledge may have gotten the better of Ozuna in the first inning, Orlando Ribalta had no such luck. Ribalta gave up a single to Olson to lead off the inning and then Ozuna got one right down the middle that he made absolutely no mistakes with. The ball kept flying until it hit the batters’ eye and Ozuna’s majestic two-run dinger put the Braves on the board in this one.
Atlanta wasn’t done scoring in the fourth inning. Michael Harris II immediately followed up Ozuna’s homer by smacking a double out to left. While the next two batters went down in order, Braves top prospect (and noted allergy sufferer) Drake Baldwin proceeded to deposit Money Mike’s run with an RBI single that floated into center field to give the Braves the lead at that point in the contest.
The other big story of the day was Austin Riley getting hit with another pitch. The pitch hit him just about in the same area that caused him to miss the final stretch run of the 2024 regular season. While Riley certainly seemed extremely upset about getting hit like that (and Rutledge would have another scary moment where he threw one that ended up buzzing behind Orlando Arcia), he also didn’t look to be in too much pain. With that being said, it’s always better to be safe than sorry during spring training so Riley was done for the day once the top of the second inning rolled around.
They gave him a X-ray at the ballpark and it was negative but they also did a CT scan just to be sure. Again, it seems like this is all just precautionary and if I’m being honest, I expect something closer to Jurickson Profar’s outcome rather than Sean Murphy’s outcome, even though Riley got hit with a pitch like Murphy did. Shortly after the game ended, Mark Bowman reported that Riley is day-to-day as the CT scan showed that he avoided fracturing his wrist, so he’s more-than-likely going to be just fine.
Meanwhile, Spencer Schwellenbach got the start for today’s game and while he gave up a pair of runs, that didn’t appear to be his main focus on the day. Instead, it seemed like Schwellenbach was going to the mound and rearing back in order to ramp up in terms of velocity. As a result, Schwellenbach ended up with a whopping seven strikeouts over 4.2 IP on the day. This included multiple occasions where he hit 97-mph on the radar gun. For reference’s sake, Baseball Savant has Scwhellenbach’s fastball sitting at 96-mph in 2024, so he was definitely putting a little extra on it during today’s outing.
Angel Perdomo followed Schwellenbach and he had himself a very good outing where he went 1.1 innings without giving up a hit while striking out two batters. Pierce Johnson came in after that and he ended up with just one hit given up during his scoreless inning. Chasen Shreve was tasked with polishing off the final two innings of the game and while he did strike out three batters, this was when Washington’s organizational depth made a comeback by scoring three runs off of three hits — including a home run from Jared McKenzie that ended up giving the Nationals the incredibly crucial Grapefruit League victory.
Other than that, it was definitely encouraging to see guys like Spencer Schwellenbach, Marcell Ozuna and Drake Baldwin have themselves a solid day, with Matt Olson and Michael Harris II adding hits to their spring tally as well. While the game was a loss, you can’t really complain about the action that was on display at the ballpark today. Hopefully Austin Riley ends up being A-OK as well as the Braves move on to split squad action tomorrow afternoon in Florida.
