blast from past

It was an attention-grabber as the words crawled along the bottom of the TV screen on Wednesday night. “The Los Angeles Angels have selected the contract of Jo-Jo Reyes from Triple-A Salt Lake … .” Jo-Jo Reyes? Where’s he been? Left-hander Reyes, Mississippi Braves fans may recall, was an ace for the M-Braves in 2007, going 8-1 with a 3.56 ERA as the team won the first-half championship in the Southern League South. He made his MLB debut with Atlanta that same year and rattled around the big leagues for much of the next four years without great success (12-26, 6.05 ERA in 70 games). He spent all of 2012 in the minors, went to Korea for a time in 2013 and ’14 and began this year in Mexico. The Angels signed him in June and, still only 30 years old, he went 4-5, 4.76 at Salt Lake. Then came Wednesday’s call from the big league club, which is embroiled in a battle to make the postseason. “We need arms,” Angels manager Mike Scioscia told the Los Angeles Times. P.S. Reyes did not pitch on Wednesday, but seven other former M-Braves did, with Williams Perez getting a win and Arodys Vizcaino a save for Atlanta and Randall Delgado a win (his eighth) for Arizona. Charlie Morton, who was on that ’07 M-Braves club with Reyes, started for Pittsburgh in Game 2 of a twinbill and got knocked around by St. Louis in its National League Central Division-clinching victory.