Welcome to Philly: The Braves' rookie pitchers had to start somewhere
PHILADELPHIA — The Atlanta Braves’ first-year pitching coach, Rick Kranitz, didn’t realize that his rookie pitcher, Kyle Wright, would be making his first major league start on ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball.”
“But that’s OK,” he told Yahoo Sports before the Braves’ 5-1 loss to the Philadelphia Phillies on a very blustery night under the bright lights of a nationally televised game. “Hey, you gotta start someplace.”
The reigning NL East champions turned to two rookies in their first three games against a new and improved Phillies lineup. After acting ace Julio Teheran took the loss in a bullpen implosion on opening day, the Braves started 21-year-old Bryse Wilson on Saturday and 23-year-old Wright on Sunday.
How’d that work out?
Hey, you gotta start someplace.
The Braves’ bevy of young pitching talent spent spring training competing for what looked to be a single spot on the rotation. But injuries to Mike Foltynewicz and Kevin Gausman necessitated a couple more rookies, who all saw a handful of innings down the stretch last season, breaking camp with the big league team. Touki Toussaint, who posted a 4.03 ERA over five starts and two relief appearances is 2018, appeared to be the favorite at the start of spring, until he pitched himself back to Triple-A Gwinnett with an 8.62 ERA in six spring appearances.
“That’s a tough one,” Kranitz said, “because he was so disappointed. But I know that he’ll be back and know that sometimes we have to do things to help them and to better their careers. Not everybody can make the team.”
Max Fried, who had cups of coffee in the majors in the past two seasons, pitched out of the bullpen Sunday and will make a start against the Cubs later this week. Which left Wilson and Wright to start two of the three opening series’ games.
Wilson, who only found out he made the team a week before his start (“Honestly, going in there I was thinking that I was going to get sent down to the minor league camp,” he said of that meeting with manager Brian Snitker), admitted he was anxious about such a big stage.
“You can ask Wes [Parsons, another rookie slated to pitch out of then pen],” Wilson told Yahoo Sports, to which Parsons nodded emphatically. “I was struggling, extremely nervous. More the anxiety of everything, just wanting to get it started. Just thinking about the atmosphere and how it was going to be.”
It was going to be loud. Citizens Bank Park was rollicking all weekend. From Andrew McCutchen’s leadoff home run on Thursday through the Phillies’ eventual sweep of the Braves, Philly fans cheered and jeered as the lineup lit up the Braves pitching for 23 runs in three games, 15 of which came on the longball.
With his parents watching from the stands, Wilson gave up four runs on five hits and four walks in 3 1/3 innings Saturday. “But that’s OK,” Krantiz said afterward, “I just want him to learn from this. This is all learning. He needs to walk out, keep his head high, and keep moving forward. Cause a lot of really good pitchers have had days like that.”
And then it was Wright’s turn.
“I talked to him a little bit yesterday,” Wilson said before Wright’s start, “and he said he was starting to feel it a little bit. But I think it’s normal to be nervous in situations like he and I are in, being so young, being rookies.”
Wright denied nerves day of. “They’re yelling stuff at you, so you hear it,” he said. “But it’s just another game. I didn’t really think too much of it. Once I started throwing my bullpen, it didn’t really feel that different.”
To be honest, Wright looked nervous. Or maybe that was just the weather. (“It was hard to throw strikes, with the conditions like that,” Wright’s veteran catcher, Brian McCann, said after the loss, and Jake Arrieta struggled similarly to hit his spots.) Regardless, it was ugly at times. Only two hits but five walks, one hit batter (one of three on the night), and a wild pitch in 4 1/3 innings. Of his 85 pitches, only 45 were thrown for strikes.
“But I still really, really, really like this kid,” Snitker said after the game. “The sky’s the limit. This guy’s the stuff. … And I like the fact that he stayed up there long enough to get his pitch count up a little bit because the next time he’ll be even more ready.”
Snitker got some help on that last point by Arrieta, who worked an 11-pitch at-bat in the fifth. In a way, what should have been a routine out against the opposing pitcher proved to be emblematic of Wright’s difficult outing — and his potential. As Arrieta fouled off pitch after pitch, six in total, the wind whipped concession debris around the field and the fans grew increasingly animated, ending up on their feet roaring at every foul ball. In the end, Wright got Arrieta to line out to center.
“That was fun,” he said after the game, cracking a smile that made the 23-year-old look like a teen. “A few too many pitches than I’d like to have thrown, but at the time it was fun.”
Fun is good, until you consider that the Braves are baseball’s only winless team. With the NL East among baseball’s gnarliest divisions, Wright and the other rookies only get so long to figure it out.
Ideally, injuries will heal (Foltynewicz and Gausman) and kinks will be worked out (Toussaint) and the generosity with which the Braves are evaluating this particular pair of young guys will give way to needing to win now.
The Braves are confident — confident enough to have let Anibal Sanchez go in free agency this winter, and to pass on the still available Dallas Keuchel — that opportunity and optimism (and a touch of inherent competition between all the rookies) will coax star performances out of at least some of the young arms. It’s a gamble for a team looking to repeat a 90-win division first-place finish, but it has the potential for long-term gains.
“I just want them to be themselves, you know what I mean,” Krantiz said. “And trust themselves, because I think once they learn how to trust, then all things start to fall into place.”
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