The North Port Report: This Is Pretty Close to the Opening Day Lineup, Right?
Here's everything you need to know from Braves Spring Training in North Port, FL from Sunday
Welcome to The North Port Report, your nightly notebook from Braves spring training. Each evening, we’ll run through the biggest developments from camp: roster battles, injury updates, standout performances, and the small details that matter more than they seem in February. The games may not count yet, but the information does.
Here’s what stood out today
The Braves ran the following lineup for today’s home opener, with the only potential depth player being designated hitter Aaron Schunk batting 8th.
RF Ronald Acuña Jr.
C Drake Baldwin
1B Matt Olson
LF Jurickson Profar
3B Austin Riley
2B Ozzie Albies
CF Michael Harris II
DH Aaron Schunk
SS Mauricio Dubón
Feels like that’s 8/9ths of the starting lineup on Opening Day, right? (More on the decision of who bats 2nd tomorrow.)
Drake Baldwin hit a homer, Atlanta’s lone run of the game. Ronald Acuña Jr. looked to have one to open the game, but it ended up being an incredibly long single off the wall in left field.
The highlights came on the pitching side. Chris Sale, getting the start, allowed two singles but struck out two in his two innings, averaging 95.1 on his fastball and touching 96.3.
More fun for me was the two innings from Sale’s successor, prospect JR Ritchie. The youngster made it through his two innings unscathed, walking one and striking out Trevor Larnach looking, but otherwise allowing no hits.
Ritchie threw all six pitches, getting a total of two whiffs on fourteen swings (one each on the changeup and cutter). Stuff+ liked everything but the changeup (a known weakness of stuff models) and the sinker. Four total balls were put into play, but none were hard-hit, with an average exit velocity of 78.8.
And that’s the trick for Ritchie. All of his pitches moved well laterally, running off the barrel and being driven into the ground (three groundouts). While he wasn’t really getting a lot of chase on his stuff, it’s clear he has the pitchability to ‘take the sting out of the swing’, if you will, and could likely survive as a spot starter right now.
Also, being able to touch 97.2, as he did in the 3rd inning to Byron Buxton, definitely helps.
Quick Hits
Pitching prospect Garrett Baumann will get the start on the road against Baltimore on Monday, so it’s the first time the public will have Statcast data on the 6’8 youngster. Spencer Strider, as we discussed yesterday, will appear on a backfield in lieu of making the 45-minute bus trip to Sarasota.
Walt Weiss confirmed that Ronald Acuña Jr. will, in fact, leadoff this season. We assumed as much when doing our offseason lineup projections, but narrowing that down makes it easier to run through the remaining permutations to figure out the optimal lineup.
Not that it matters much - in the above-linked piece, my model’s most optimized and least optimized lineups had a difference across 162 games of 31 total runs. Not nothing, but that was between two extremes. Minor tweaks like Profar second versus fourth would result, off the top of my head, in probably less than five runs a season.
Weiss’ quote was a lot of fun if you’re still excited about the potential of this lineup instead of dooming and glooming about the pitching. “When that lineup turns over, man, I want it to be a gauntlet. It starts with Ronald and it’s tough to catch your breath. That’s the plan.”
The real evaluation decision for Weiss will be the second spot in the order. More on that in tomorrow morning’s deep dive.
A little bit of news I missed from a few days ago: Mark DeRosa, appearing remotely on 680 The Fan, confirmed that he reached out as manager of Team USA’s World Baseball Classic team to see if they could get Braves starter Chris Sale on the team. Sale reportedly declined, per DeRosa, when DeRosa approached him last spring in North Port, saying it was not the “right timing” for him to join the WBC squad.
Roster Battle Tracker
Stock UP
JR Ritchie. Based on both the comments from the players in camp plus today’s performance, it’s clear that the youngster is perhaps more advanced than his 98.1 upper minors innings might let on. Look for him to debut sometime in 2026.
Stock DOWN
Anderson Pilar. Atlanta’s Rule 5 pick from 2025 was returned to the Miami Marlins last spring training and was subsequently cut mid-season, signing with the Braves in August. He’s seemingly never recovered from the moves. The righthander allowed three runs on two hits (one being a homer) and a walk in his partial inning of work, being lifted for Adam Maier before finding a third out out of his four pitch arsenal.
From a Rule 5 pick to not being invited to spring training (he was elevated from minor league camp for today’s game), it’s been a rough 365 days for Pilar.
Observation of the Day
Alex Lodise’s defense is legit. The prospect covered the final four innings at short, subbing in for Mauricio Dubón, and looked fantastic while doing it.
Once his plate approach catches up, he’s going to be one of baseball’s top prospects.
Tomorrow’s watch list
We get statcast data on a top pitching prospect, so it’s a good day.
I'd really like for Taylor to look at 6 potential draftees for our 2nd round pick.
Number 48 i believe.