Atlanta Braves Spring Chop: notes from Orlando for Feb 17

Looks like many – if not most – of the position players have now arrived at Disney, and cage/BP work has been going on with some vigor.

It’s a bit eyebrow raising, but the battle for the Atlanta Braves‘ third base job may be over even before it begins.

Yesterday, this tweet suggested to me that Rio Ruiz wasn’t intending to give up without a fight:

I had never seen Ruiz ‘chunky’, but he’s been ‘thicker’ than you might normally expect for a ball player.  That’s probably due to lingering effects of his high school football career: one that had him talking about the possibility of playing two sports at Southern Cal once his high school days had ended.

However, once the Astros drafted him, the football career went by the wayside, and he’s been getting himself into better and better baseball shape since.

This winter, it seems, he saw the handwriting on the wall, and opted to step up his preparations significantly.

Ruiz has always had some pop in his bat.  Fangraphs has his raw power graded at 55, but in-game power at just 40.  He has never hit more than 12 homers in a season – that was in 2013 in A-ball – and knocked 4 in 173 plate appearances with the Braves in 2017.

So what has he ‘fixed’ in his swing?  Hopefully the tendency to hit balls into the ground.

In 2017, Ruiz’ rate of ground balls for those with 150 or more plate appearances was 17th highest in baseball at over 56%.

Turns out that it wasn’t the highest on the Braves’ team:  that dubious honor went to Jace Peterson… 8th overall at 57.7%.

But Peterson is now gone and Ruiz… apparently will need to impress some people with his changes in order to even make the club:

Frankly, I’m not sure that 1st base is his best opportunity to show ‘versatility’, but it would be a start.  He’s not a middle infielder, though could probably take a few innings in left field on occasion (as in ‘in case of emergency, break glass’ kind of occasions).

But that little note seems to say one thing:  that it will be an uphill climb for Ruiz, with othersgetting the nod if he can’t demonstrate that the team can’t live without him.

There’s already talk of carrying three catchers to start the year, and there is already competition for the 4th-to-5th outfielder slots (before Acuna arrives).  With Charlie Culberson in as the de facto infield utility man, that really doesn’t leave Ruiz with a spot – assuming a likely mix of 12 position players to go with 13 pitchers.

But I’ll give him credit for recognizing that the math is against him.

Notes from Alex Anthopoulos

Here’s video of a visit on MLB Network TV with host Chris Russo, who is generally loud.

Paraphrasing a couple of highlights:

• ‘How long does it take to get up to speed on the organization?’ It’s still all about the major league club right now… most of his time is spend talking with and researching them.
• Sounds like being in LA was the plan for AA and his family for the long-term, but as the people at the top of the organization kept emphasizing to him that they wanted to win… which he called the ‘most important thing’ along with the upside of the players coming in.
• AA turned around a question on the loss of the young international players and instead praised those who built the farm system – back to Frank Wren.
• ‘Loaded with a wave of players’ coming in… hopefully we’re in the hunt and get to add in July.

Next: Ever think about doing live radio?

More from the video at the link.