August 5, 2020 - All Mississippi Baseball

all the young dudes

Mike Soroka is done for the year, and the loss of their ace is another blow to the Atlanta Braves’ starting pitching. Cole Hamels is down, Felix Hernandez is out and Mike Foltynewicz is dazed and confused in the Gwinnett camp. But it’s not necessarily panic time. It’s more like step-up time. The Braves have spent several years acquiring and grooming young arms. Let the kids pitch. Their prospect charts are filled with them, five ranking in the current top 10, per MLB Pipeline. Mississippi Braves fans have seen their work. Soroka came through Trustmark Park in 2017 and was outstanding. Max Fried (2017-18) and Sean Newcomb (2016) flashed their potential in Pearl, as well, and have had success on the big stage. Fried looks capable of being a No. 1. Newcomb had that look, too, as a starter in 2018. It’s time for some others to get their shot, meet the moment and pump up the Atlanta rotation, which appears to be the club’s only possible weak link. Touki Toussaint, the presumptive No. 3 starter now, was frequently dominant in his two stints (2017-18) with the M-Braves. No reason he can’t recapture that stuff. Kyle Wright, who filled the fifth starter spot last week, is the team’s No. 4 prospect, and he looked the part in Pearl in 2018. There is also Bryse Wilson, the No. 6 prospect and a 2018 M-Braves standout, and lefty Tucker Davidson, the No. 10 prospect who posted a 2.03 ERA for the Double-A club in 2019. Kyle Muller, another lefty and the No. 8 prospect, put up a 3.14 ERA for the M-Braves last season. And then there’s Ian Anderson, the much-ballyhooed No. 3 prospect who went 7-5, 2.68 in Pearl last summer. Anderson and Muller aren’t on the 40-man roster but are in the alternate camp in Gwinnett. Surely there are some breakout warriors among that group of young dudes.

buffalo hunting

Buffalo, N.Y., where the Toronto Blue Jays plan to play home games at Sahlen Field this season, has a rich baseball history, and a native Mississippian occupies a prominent place in it. The city actually hosted a major league club, the Bisons, from 1879-85 and has had a minor league team of the same name practically ever since. It has been Toronto’s Triple-A affiliate since 2013. From 1924-60, the Bisons played at Offermann Stadium, which was torn down in 1962. At the site now is a commemorative plaque that makes particular mention of a home run hit at the ballpark by Luke Easter, the Jonestown native and onetime big leaguer. “Luke Easter … did on July 14, 1957, what no other player, major, minor, semipro or Negro League, had been able to do. He hit a low, outside pitch delivered by Bob Kuzava of the Columbus Jets 550 feet over the scoreboard in center field,” wrote Joseph Overfield in a SABR article. Easter, who became in 1949 the first black Mississippian to play in the major leagues, was in his 40s when he played in Buffalo from 1956-58. A fan favorite, he hit 113 home runs during those three seasons. Overfield writes that Easter’s scoreboard-clearing homer wasn’t even the longest one he hit at Offermann: “That blow came during the same 1957 season when he caught a high, inside fast ball from Jerry Lane of the Havana Sugar Kings and pulled it directly to rightfield, across Woodlawn Avenue, over the houses and into the alley of a house on Emerson Place, the next street south.” Easter is one of only three former Bisons to have his number – 25 – retired.