Today's Three Things: Braves Prospects Win Spring Breakout over Yankees

The Atlanta Braves offense jumped all over Yankees starter Kyle Carr in a much-needed Spring Breakout win

(For those of you who are new here, “Today’s Three Things” is our game recap series where we discuss three significant things: The turning point of the game, the player of the game, and what you’ll be talking about tomorrow. We try to do these for every single regular season game, schedule permitting.)

The Atlanta Braves prospects got Atlanta’s first-ever Spring Breakout win, taking down the Yankees prospects squad 8-3 in Tampa Bay’s Steinbrenner Field on Saturday night.

Here is Today’s Three Things from the contest.

The Turning Point

Mired in a 2-2 tie, Atlanta’s prospects broke it open in the 4th inning.

With starter Kyle Carr in for his fourth inning of work, Braves prospects strung together two walks and two singles to put a run on the board before the first out was recorded. After a third single (and a defensive error in centerfield), Atlanta had pushed the lead to three. Tate Southisene drew a walk-off of reliever Harrison Cohen, in for Carr, before a series of plays at the plate. The Braves didn’t get the first runner in on a ground ball off the bat of Conor Essenburg to first, but then the runner got in on a Diego Tornes single to third to push the lead to 6-2.

Other than the Southisene and Dixon Williams walks, which were five out-of-zone pitches, several of the at-bats in this inning were fantastic. John Gil battled for an eight-pitch walk to lead off the inning, with Lodise taking an 0-1 inside cutter the other way for his single, and Jose Perdomo turned on a 0-1 inside changeup for his single to center. It was clear that Yankees prospects were attempting to get ahead in the count early and then come inside, and a lot of Braves prospects did a good job of adjusting to that their second time through the order.

Today’s Player of the Game

For the hitters, John Gil gets the honor here.

While he picked up only one hit, it was a home run, with the infielder turning on a slider from Yankees righty Jack Cebert and pulling it 369 feet down the line.

But outside of the homer, Gil also got on base via RBI force out in the 1st and the aforementioned inning-opening walk in the 4th. He finished with 2 RBI and 2 runs scored, putting

Honorable mention to Tate Southisene, who only picked up one hit but also walked, scored a run, and had two batted balls over 100 mph. Really impressive at-bats for the youngster who struggled in his first look at professional pitching last summer.

What You’ll Be Talking About

Atlanta’s pitchers tonight. Let’s start with Owen Murphy.

While the youngster couldn’t keep the Yankees prospects off the board, allowing one earned run on three hits and walking four, you could see why his fastball was called the best in the system by Baseball America.

Yes, even better than Didier Fuentes’ heater.

Murphy threw 26 of them, averaging just 91.6 mph, but with an absurd twenty-one inches of induced vertical break. He’s flashed better velocity than this in spring, averaging 92.1 and touching 95, but it’s the movement of the pitch that makes it elite. The Stuff+ grade from today was 111, even at that velocity.

Here’s a strikeout on an elevated heater against top Yankees prospect George Lombard Jr.

When he’s locating it up, it’s practically untouchable, but he was spraying today (especially against lefties) and had only 50% of his heaters in the zone. That lack of control meant that Yankees prospects were able to sit on in-zone fastballs, putting four of them in play with three of them being hard-hit.

Still, you can see the promise here, especially if he can add a few MPH to this existing package.

Rolddy Muñoz finished the third and took the entire fourth, striking out three of the four batters he faced. He was much more in the zone with his 96 mph four-seamer than he flashed earlier in spring, getting four total whiffs and a 67% CSW on the heater.

Garrett Baumann took three innings, flashing high-end stuff while dominating. The certified big boi™ struck out five with no walks or hits allowed, absolutely ripping two and four seamers all over the zone for called strikes and whiffs. He averaged 95.0 with his fastballs and broke 96 multiple times, then switched to a slider-heavy approach the second time through.

I’m beginning to love the idea of elevated same-side two-seamers.

Herick Hernandez pitched the final two innings and struck out four, allowing one run on two hits and a walk. He flashed 21 inches of induced vertical break on a mid-90s fastball, but also gave up two hard-hit balls on it (one of which was a double). I think the sinker is new, breaking from the ‘Spencer Strider Starter Kit’ profile, but he did also flash a curveball in this one so he’s not exactly beating the accusations.

Looking for more discussion about this game?

For a regular season game, this section will hold a link to the Locked On Sports Atlanta Postcast with me and Locked On Braves host Jake Mastroianni. Here’s a link to the playlist; if you subscribe and hit the notification bell, you’ll get an alert on your phone when Jake and I go live postgame to break it all down.

Here’s a sample episode, from last year’s season finale:

What’s Next for the Braves?

The Braves have just three spring training games remaining before Opening Day. Tomorrow’s contest is scheduled for 1:05 PM in Ft. Myers against the Twins, with Reynaldo López taking on Taj Bradley.