Atlanta Braves GM John Coppolella Q & A
By Fred Owens
Apparently GM John Coppolella held a mini Ask Coppy for A-list members a little over week ago, Fortunately for those of us who aren’t A-listers, Ivanski over at Braves Reddit posted a summary. The report isn’t as detailed as we get from Twitter but it addressed some of the thing’s we’ve been discussing.
Herewith that summary with some editorial comments by yours truly.
Prospects
The prospect questions were about what you would expect from any fans, they wanted to know about the big names with Acuna and Gohara at the top of their list.
Coppy considers Ronald Acuna the best prospect in baseball. Lots of teams inquired about him but the calls stopped when the Braves made it clear he wasn’t available. Whether Acuna will spend September in Atlanta is still under discussion but he said fans should expect him soon.
He appears to be saying they haven’t decided anything and at the same time we’ll see him soon? The news that he’s going to play in the AZL (Max Fried, Austin Riley, Touki Toussaint, Corbin Clouse, Josh Graham, Alex Jackson, and Anfernee Seymour will go as well) leads me to believe we won’t see him in Atlanta until next year.
Coppy was more definitive about Luiz Gohara; barring unforeseen circumstances he will pitch in Atlanta this year. For those who don’t recall, the Braves acquired the Brazilian righty last January along with left reliever Thomas Burrows in exchange for Cody Martin, Shae Simmons and Mallex Smith.
We know how Gohara progressed and but not much about Burrows. The 6’1″ lefty was drafted in 2016 after working as a reliever in College. Burrows spent this year with Rome in that role. So far he’s thrown 62 1/3 innings in 36 games, striking out 85 and walking 21 while pitching to a 2.01 ERA.
Burrows’ 56% ground ball rate and 14% line drive rate held opposing hitters to a .197 average and allowed only four extra base hits; two doubles a triple and one home run. That trade seems to have worked out well.
Coppy said that he expects both Austin Riley and Alex Jackson to debut sometime in 2018. While Riley’s made a good case for that, it’s a fast turn around for Jackson given that the Braves had to move him back to catching from exile in the outfield.