The Atlanta Braves and Phillies don’t tangle much in Spring Training due to their relative locations of their home bases. The Braves were routed in Clearwater earlier this month, and returned the favor in North Port today, winning by a 7-0 score.
Offensively, the Braves had a fun time with a lineup of mostly regulars. Jurickson Profar, Marcell Ozuna, Ozzie Albies, and Michael Harris II all reached base multiple times, including via extra-base hit. They scored three in the fourth (single, walk, double, single), and then tacked on four more in the fifth thanks to a two-run, two-out bomb by Ozuna, and then a walk-double-single sequence afterwards.
The Phillies didn’t really bring any pitchers of note with them, so this offensive outburst wasn’t really surprising. The runs scored with Kyle Tyler (cup of coffee replacement level reliever) and Gunner Mayer (fringy prospect reliever) on the hill. But, on the flip side, even Orlando Arcia managed to get a hit in this game, so that’s something. Speaking of Arcia, he continued his it-has-to-be-funny-because-what-else-can-it-be Spring Training, where saw all of four pitches in three PAs. Look, the guy has a walk rate higher than his strikeout rate because he’s been over it since it started.
On the pitching end, the Braves were clearly content to give tune-ups to a few of their relievers and leave it at that. Hector Neris had a meh inning to start (0/1 K/BB ratio), and then Daysbel Hernandez had pretty much the generic Daysbel Hernandez experience, striking out four, walking one, hitting a guy, and having a hit mixed in there as well across seven batters. Aaron Bummer also had a meh appearance (two outs, one walk, zero strikeouts), and then Raisel Iglesias got some work in and struck out a batter in a perfect frame.
Then, it was apparently Zach Thompson time, and this guy shut down the random Phillies fill-ins for five innings, mostly just letting his defense do the work with a 3/1 K/BB ratio. To be clear, the Phillies had 34 PAs in this game, and over half of them came against Thompson. Ah, Spring Training, what a time to be alive.
The Braves will head to Port Charlotte tomorrow to give Chris Sale another tune-up outing.
