Saturday seeds: A change at closer, more mock drafts, and Chipper's beef

Here's some of the news and notes you might have missed from this week

Our Saturday Seeds news roundup is presented by Chinook Seedery - for bigger and better sunflower seeds in both regular and unique flavors, check out Chinook Seedery and use promo code “Braves” for 10% off your order!

A change at closer?

The Braves called up veteran Craig Kimbrel out of Gwinnett on Friday in response to the Thursday bullpen collapse that gave Arizona a sweep.

That’s not the only change being made in the backend.

Per the beat that traveled to San Francisco for Friday night’s series opener versus the Giants, Raisel Iglesias and Kimbrel will both work in save situations, based on matchups and other factors. Per MLB.com’s Mark Bowman, Iglesias “may close games, but he won't necessarily be the Braves' primary closer. Snit said Kimbrel will be used at any point after the fifth. There isn't an obvious closer option.”

This will be interesting to watch for Atlanta. There’s not really a lot of proven options in the backend for the Braves, with Iglesias and Kimbrel combining for 672 saves and the rest of the bullpen combined having just 52. The best way to get around this is, obviously, just score a bunch of runs so that the save situations are more of the “last three innings” variety than “final outs with a lead less than four runs”, but that feels like a large lift with this current iteration of the offense.

I’ll be curious to see how Kimbrel’s diminished stuff translates to the majors in his reunion with Atlanta. After sitting in the upper-90s in the first half of his career and roughly 95 in the back half, Kimbrel’s fastball averaged just 93 mph while in Gwinnett this season.

Blewett instead of Montero?

Another repercussion of that bullpen blowup on Thursday was Scott Blewett being designated for assignment and then traded (back) to the Orioles for cash considerations.

It’s honestly a weird move to me.

Blewett wasn’t bad with Atlanta and before the three homers on Thursday, was actually pretty good. He had an ERA of exactly 3.00 entering Thursday and a lot of the inputs were pretty decent. Even after the three homers and five earned runs raised his Braves ERA to 5.51, his expected ERA per Statcast is still just 3.42 and he has a lot of red on the card - a 32.4% whiff rate that’s 90th percentile in the sport and a 55.4% ground ball rate that’s 91st percentile.

Also, Blewett has multiple years of team control remaining and is making roughly the minimum.

Rafael Montero, by comparison, has a 5.14 ERA/4.21 xERA and a 1st percentile walk rate of 16%. The decision was obvious to me, but the Braves front office had other ideas.

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Another mock, another college arm

This one’s from our friends over at The Sporting News, led by the ever-awesome Taylor Blake Ward. And he’s nothing if not consistent.

Ward has the Braves going to the “college arm” well for a seventh consecutive season, taking Alabama righty Riley Quick. This season was his first back from Tommy John and while the high-90s velocity came back almost immediately, he took some time to build endurance.

It’s a “kitchen sink” profile, with Quick throwing all three fastballs (four-seamer, sinker, cutter) as well as a work-in-progress slider and a very good changeup. I had the chance to see Quick in person in Auburn this year and while there’s some mechanical things to work on - his release point varies almost six inches at times between the fastballs and the slider, providing hitters a visual cue, for instance - it’s an intriguing package that I’d love to see the Braves get in the organization and work on refining.

As much as I’ve been asking for a high-level hitter, I’d pull the trigger on Quick in a heartbeat and get to work refining the slider, evening out the release points, and tweaking the two-seamer grip to get more drop on the sinker.

Chipper’s got beef with college baseball

If there’s one thing that Bobby Cox-led teams seemed to do well, it’s play the game the ‘right way’.

Hall of Famer Chipper Jones wishes that sentiment extended to the college game.

In a series of tweets this week, he complained about the showboating, taunting, and general

Wrote Chipper on Tuesday:

“Spent quite a bit of time watching college baseball this weekend. I will only watch a select few teams from here on out. Reason? They have coaches that respect the game and their opponents and demand the same of their players. Any team that doesn’t wear the uni correctly, taunts the other team, and has a coach that condones this behavior, is a disgrace to the game. Big fan of coach Schnall at Coastal Carolina! Him and his team represent what college baseball should be like. Well done, sir! U stand for proper behavior.”

After getting some heat in the replies, he confirmed later in the week that he was talking about UGA, Florida State, and Florida, all who gained attention for different antics (and losing in Regionals, in the case of UGA and Florida).

And honestly, he’s got a point. Maybe I’m a bit biased because I also cover the Auburn Tigers and they don’t do this stuff (Butch Thompson is one of my favorite coaches I’ve ever talked to or interacted with and his teams follow his example), but it has seemed to reach a new level at times this postseason and crossed the line from “confident” to “cocky”.

While it’s true that Bobby Cox was thrown out of exactly one season worth of games during his managerial career, he also expected a level of professionalism in his clubhouse and on his roster that still carries over to this day for anyone that dons the tomahawk on their chest.