Atlanta Braves: Young pitchers have a promising week
By Seth Carter
Atlanta Braves: Young pitchers had a promising week as Braves take first place with five straight wins.
Atlanta Braves starter Kyle Wright continued to show promise in his in 75 pitches today and built on the solid two innings he had in his last outing against Tampa Bay. Despite getting himself into jams he was consistently able to get out of them.
He has conspicuously struggled against lefties in his small sample size this season but he is a work in progress who has a history of attacking the strike zone. Someone needs to step up in the rotation and I like what I’ve seen from Wright so far. I look forward to watching his progress.
Touki Toussaint was absolutely painting the edges of the strike zone on Saturday night. He really didn’t put anything in the middle of the plate until his final inning. It was quite evident that he was toast the moment he came out in the fourth. He definitely no confidence in his fastball last night. They even had a team meeting in a critical moment and appeared to agree to abandon the fastball at that point. His off-speed stuff was deadly though. If he can get control of his four-seam fastball then he may give himself a chance at making an impact in the rotation.
Tyler Matzek has had two clutch outings in a row. On Friday night he shut the Mets down and put an end to their momentum, allowing the Braves to make a thrilling comeback in an 11-10 victory. Matzek entered the game in the sixth inning after the Mets scored 10 runs off of Sean Newcomb and Jhoulys Chacin. Matzek shut the Mets down for 1.1 innings and stopped the momentum dead.
Today, Matzek took over for Kyle Wright in the fourth inning and he put in two full innings of solid work, allowing two hits, no walks, no runs, and striking out four. He earned his first major-league win in the outing.
A.J. Minter has looked like his old spectacular self this season. If he can maintain his dominance then he’ll be an unexpected and very welcome addition to a loaded bullpen.
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The quality bullpen can allow the rotation time to get their footing. There are certainly a lot of reasons to be positive for the 7-3, first-place Braves.