Tag Archives: M-Braves

09 Aug

just stuff

There is a Mississippian on the roster of one of the two Iowa-based teams slated to play tonight in the minor league Field of Dreams Game in Dyersville, Iowa. Former Pascagoula High star Willie Joe Garry is an outfielder for the Cedar Rapids Kernels, Minnesota’s High-Class A affiliate. Garry, who recently came off the injured list, is batting .179 with 10 steals in his fourth pro season. Drafted out of ‘Goula in 2018, Garry is a .199 career hitter who stole 24 bases in 2021. (Listed on Quad Cities’ roster but on the season-long IL is ex-Mississippi State pitcher Eric Cerantola, drafted by Kansas City in 2021.) Tonight’s game will be televised by MLB Network at 6:30 CDT. … Ex-State standout Logan Tanner, the second-highest drafted Mississippi product this summer, made his pro debut on Monday with Cincinnati’s Arizona Complex League team. The Hattiesburg native, a second-round pick by the Reds, went 0-for-3. … The Mississippi Braves are at Tennessee this week for a six-game Southern League series in which they could encounter a couple of Magnolia State products. Ex-Southern Miss star Walker Powell is 2-2 with a 2.88 ERA in six games (three starts) for the Smokies, a Chicago Cubs affiliate. The 6-foot-8 Powell has nine wins over three levels in the Cubs’ system in 2022, his second pro season. Infielder Delvin Zinn, a Pontotoc native and Itawamba Community College alum, has played sparingly this season and is batting .095. He is a .237 career hitter. … The big league Cubs have announced that former M-Braves star Jason Heyward will be released after this season with a year left on his eight-year, $184 million contract. He is batting .174 with seven homers and is on the IL, probably for the remainder of this season. Heyward, 32, a key figure for the Cubs on their historic World Series winner in 2016, arrived in Mississippi as one of the top prospects in baseball in 2009. He hit .352 with seven homers and 30 RBIs in 47 Double-A games. He famously homered in his first MLB at-bat with Atlanta the next year. The Cubs also have released former M-Braves shortstop Andrelton Simmons, a defensive whiz who was hitting just .173. Simmons, 32, hit .293 for the M-Braves in 2012 and carries a .263 career average in the big leagues. … In Atlanta’s deflating series against the New York Mets last weekend, there were good signs from ex-M-Braves star Ronald Acuna, who went 8-for-19 with two doubles and a home run. He also won the Chevrolet Electric Play of the Week award for a home run-robbing catch in right field in Friday’s game, the only one the Braves won. Acuna is batting .267 with nine homers, 28 RBIs and 23 steals. Atlanta, playing at Boston tonight, needs more from him.

08 Aug

staggered

While the Atlanta Braves — and all those Mississippi Braves alumni on their roster — were getting steamrolled in New York by Buck Showalter’s Mets, the current M-Braves were getting trucked in Pearl by the rival Biloxi Shuckers. The Double-A M-Braves dropped Sunday’s series finale 6-5 at Trustmark Park, their fifth loss in the six games against Biloxi. They fell from 17-10 and first place in the Southern League South at the start of the homestand to 18-15 and second behind Montgomery. Biloxi bolted to 17-16, third place. There was an ominous sign early in Sunday’s game. With the bases full and two outs in the top of the first inning, a pop fly into left field off the bat of Biloxi’s Thomas Dillard was lost in the sun by Justyn-Henry Malloy. Two runs scored. A wild pitch made it 3-0. The M-Braves later lost another ball in the sun and had some adventurous catches in the outfield, as well. Down 6-1 in the seventh, the home club battled back but wound up with their second one-run loss in the series. They also lost two two-run games. Dillard, the former Ole Miss star, had a big series for the Shuckers, going 7-for-23 with two walks, a homer, five RBIs and four runs. He had three hits Sunday and is batting .229 (.365 on-base percentage) with nine homers and 60 RBIs on the season, his first full year in Double-A. Immediately after the game, the wounded M-Braves boarded a bus for a seven-hour trip to Kodak, Tennessee. That’s a lot of time to sit and think about what just hit them.

04 Aug

look who’s no. 1

The flurry of recent trades that involved a ton of minor league prospects made for a major reshuffling of the organizational Top 30 charts by MLB Pipeline. Mississippi Braves shortstop Vaughn Grissom jumped up to the No. 1 spot in Atlanta’s list. He is raking at a .362 clip in 17 Double-A games. Nine other current M-Braves, including some on the injured list, are in the Top 30. No. 10 is Darius Vines, a right-handed starter slated to go tonight against Biloxi at Trustmark Park. Former Smithville High star Jared Johnson is No. 23 on the Braves’ list. The right-hander is on the IL (Tommy John surgery) at Low-Class A Augusta. … There are 18 other Mississippi products in the various Top 30s. (The lists will be redone again at some point to filter in the 2022 draft picks.) Former Mississippi State stars Will Bednar (No. 4, San Francisco) and Justin Foscue (No. 4, Texas) are the highest-rated. Others of note: MSU product Jordan Westburg is Baltimore’s fifth-rated prospect; ex-DeSoto Central High standout Blaze Jordan is Boston’s No. 6; Ole Miss alum Ryan Rolison is Colorado’s No. 7; Southern Miss product Matt Wallner is Minnesota’s No. 7; and former MSU star J.T. Ginn is Oakland’s No. 8. Wallner, who homered in last month’s All-Star Futures Game, has reached Triple-A. MSU product Ethan Small, Milwaukee’s No. 10, has made two big league pitching appearances this season. P.S. Lance Lynn, the veteran right-hander from Ole Miss, delivered a shot in the arm for the Chicago White Sox on Wednesday. In what broadcaster Steve Stone described as a “wonderful” performance, Lynn threw six innings of one-run ball to beat Kansas City 4-1. It might have been the best of his 10 starts since coming off the injured list. Pitching around a rain delay, he allowed four hits and struck out eight. Lynn is 2-4 with a 5.87 ERA, not the numbers Chicago was hoping for from him. But Wednesday’s outing surely was encouraging. … Ex-UM star Thomas Dillard hit his ninth homer of the season, helping Biloxi complete a twinbill sweep of the M-Braves at the TeePee. … Mississippi College alum Blaine Crim, at Double-A Frisco in the Texas system, went 4-for-5 and hit a pair of homers. He is batting .277 with 15 bombs and 57 RBIs.

02 Aug

coming down

For the first time in 16 days, the Mississippi Braves will take the field tonight at Trustmark Park in Pearl with a team that’ll look a little different. Most notably, staff ace Jared Shuster has moved up to Triple-A Gwinnett and veteran outfielder Trey Harris has been traded. What hasn’t changed is the M-Braves’ position in the Southern League South second-half standings. They are still in first place at 17-10, 5 games north of the last-place Biloxi Shuckers, who visit for a six-game series that begins tonight. Vaughn Grissom, Atlanta’s No. 4 prospect, is still around and still hitting a ton. In 15 games for the Double-A M-Braves, shortstop Grissom is batting .387 with two homers, 10 RBIs and six stolen bases. Outfielder Justyn-Henry Malloy, who came up from A-ball at the same time as Grissom, is batting .268 with two homers and 10 RBIs. And slugger Drew Lugbauer is still around, as well, leading the club with 21 homers. That trio forms a pretty stout middle of the order. The team’s player of the week for last week was outfielder Justin Dean, who hit .304 with seven RBIs. He leads the team with 16 steals. The reigning pitcher of the week is Darius Vines, a rated prospect who is 6-4 with a 4.14 ERA after going 3-0, 1.17, in July. He is scheduled to start Thursday night. P.S. On Wednesday, the Hattiesburg Black Sox, champions of the Mississippi Baseball Congress State Tournament (a.k.a. the semi-pro tourney), will play an Indiana team in the opener of the 16-team NABF World Series at Battle Creek, Mich. The Black Sox’s roster includes Marcus Ragan (MVP of the state tournament) and Hinds Community College’s Vantrel Reed (tourney batting champ) plus four other all-tournament selections: ex-Mississippi College star Casey Echols, ex-Delta State standout Layne Todder, Hinds CC and Purdue alum Pablo Lanzarote and Northwest Rankin High’s Brady Thomas.

19 Jul

all-star nuggets

The last time Dodger Stadium hosted an All-Star Game, Grenada native Dave Parker started in right field for the National League, which won 4-2 to take a 32-18-1 lead in the series. That was 1980 — and, my, how things have changed. The American League takes a 46-43-2 lead into tonight’s game. … Tim Anderson (East Central Community College) will start at shortstop for the AL and Austin Riley (DeSoto Central High) will come off the bench for the Nationals in tonight’s game, but they won’t be the only Mississippians to take the field in Los Angeles. Brookhaven native Lance Barksdale, a veteran MLB umpire, will work first base in his second All-Star Game assignment. … Riley is one of five former Mississippi Braves on the NL’s active roster, joining Ronald Acuna, William Contreras, Dansby Swanson (all with Atlanta) and Freddie Freeman (now the Dodgers). Max Fried was named to the team but will not pitch. Brian Snitker, the M-Braves’ first manager in 2005, will run the NL squad. Former Biloxi Shuckers star Devin Williams of Milwaukee also is on the NL roster. … Acuna, who will start in right field and bat leadoff, hit a 472-foot bomb completely out of Dodger Stadium — a very rare feat — during Monday’s Home Run Derby. … Venerable Dodger Stadium, which formally opened in 1962, underwent a $100 million renovation in 2019-20 under the direction of Jackson native Janet Marie Smith, the club’s Senior Vice President of Planning and Development. The All-Star Game was to have been played there in 2020 but was rescheduled to this year. Smith, a Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer, called her work “less of a renovation … than it is a reimagining of how these buildings come together.” A new plaza beyond center field makes it a more fan-friendly, fan-accessible facility. … Thirty years ago, in the 1992 All-Star Game at San Diego, former Mississippi State star Will Clark hit his only home run in six All-Star appearances. Clark, then with San Francisco, took former Jackson Mets pitcher Rick Aguilera deep for a three-run homer in the eighth inning of the AL’s 13-6 victory. Clark went 5-for-13 in All-Star Games. … Twenty years ago, in the 2002 Midsummer Classic at Milwaukee, Jackson Generals alum Freddy Garcia, then with Seattle, got the last six outs for the AL (in innings 10 and 11) in the infamous 7-7 tie that created such an inexplicable uproar. Former Gens star Lance Berkman, with Houston at the time, drove in two runs for the NL. … William and Willson Contreras are the latest brother act in the All-Star Game, a list that includes Pascagoula native Harry Walker and brother Dixie (born in Alabama) in 1947. Harry Walker started in center field and led off for the NL, with Dixie playing right and hitting second. Harry, who won a World Series with St. Louis in 1946, was traded to Philadelphia early in ’47, made the All-Star Game for the second time and went on to win the NL batting title. … Trivia time: Who was the first Mississippi native to make an All-Star Game? Ellisville’s Buddy Myer of the Washington Senators was on the AL roster for the 1935 game — the third one played — but he didn’t get on the field.

17 Jul

saturday in the park

At Trustmark Park in Pearl, Vaughn Grissom kept raking and Drew Lugbauer slugged another home run for the red-hot Double-A Mississippi Braves. Grissom, Atlanta’s No. 4 prospect, hit a two-run triple to the gap in right-center and Lugbauer added his 20th homer — high off the batter’s eye in dead center field — to help the M-Braves (13-4) to a 6-2 win over Rocket City. In five games in Pearl, Grissom is batting .500 (11-for-22) with a homer and five RBIs. He hit .312 with 11 homers at High-A Rome before being promoted.
At Nationals Park in Washington, newly minted All-Star Austin Riley hit his 27th homer for Atlanta and fellow All-Star and M-Braves alum Max Fried won his 10th game as the Braves beat the Nats 6-3. Ex-DeSoto Central High standout Riley is batting .284, slugging .577 and has 61 RBIs and 54 runs in 91 games. Fried went seven innings to move to 10-3 with a 2.84 ERA.
At Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, Matt Wallner, the ex-Southern Miss star, hit a two-run homer in the All-Star Futures Game. M-Braves pitcher Jared Shuster yielded a home run in to his former M-Braves batterymate Shea Langeliers, now in Oakland’s system. Langeliers was named the game’s MVP. Wallner, recently promoted to Triple-A in the Minnesota system, hit 21 homers in Double-A this season.
At SRP Park in North Augusta, S.C., Brandon Parker, the Saucier native and Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College product, hit his seventh homer for Low-A Augusta in Atlanta’s system and boosted his average to .282 (.333 in July) with a two-hit game. Parker hit .185 at Augusta in 2021.
P.S. Kudos to Team USA and Ole Miss coach Mike Bianco for a bronze medal finish in an international tournament in The Netherlands. Ole Miss’ Jacob Gonzalez hit .250 with a homer and four RBIs, Rebels teammate Hunter Elliott posted a 1.31 ERA in two games and Southern Miss’ Tanner Hall won his lone start. … Former Biloxi Shuckers standout Devin Williams, now a set-up reliever in Milwaukee, reportedly has been added to the National League All-Star team. Fellow Shuckers alum Josh Hader, the Brewers’ closer, was picked but elected not to participate.

13 Jul

name-dropping

Jared Shuster, a highly rated Atlanta prospect and an All-Star Futures Game selection, threw seven shutout innings with 12 strikeouts in the Mississippi Braves’ 6-0 win Tuesday night against Rocket City at Trustmark Park. Left-hander Shuster, 23, a first-round pick in 2020, is 6-7 with a 2.87 ERA and 98 K’s in 84 2/3 innings. … Vaughn Grissom, the Braves’ No. 4 prospect, made his Double-A debut (see previous post) and went 3-for-5 with two RBIs and a steal for the M-Braves. … Former M-Braves pitcher A.J. Minter, filling in as closer, worked a clean ninth inning for his fourth save in Atlanta’s 4-1 win vs. the New York Mets. Minter has a 1.66 ERA in 41 appearances this season. … If anyone was wondering: Andy Fletcher, an Ole Miss alum who lives in Mississippi, was behind the plate for the Mets-Braves game at Truist Park; he graded out on ball-strike calls at 95.4 percent accuracy (seventh-best among the 15 umps who worked Tuesday) and 92 consistency (second-lowest), according to umpscorecards.com. … Ole Miss’ Jacob Gonzalez went 2-for-4 with a homer and three RBIs in Team USA’s 10-0 win against The Netherlands. Gonzalez is batting .286 in the tournament for the Collegiate National Team (3-1). … McComb native Corey Dickerson, in his fourth game off the injured list, banged out two more hits in St. Louis’ win over the Los Angeles Dodgers and raised his average over .200 (.207). … Hunter Renfroe, the ex-Mississippi State standout from Crystal Springs, returned from the IL for Milwaukee and went 0-for-4 in the Brewers’ win against Minnesota in a clash of first-place teams. … MSU product Konnor Pilkington, called up to start Game 2 of a twinbill for Cleveland, worked five innings and allowed three earned runs in a 7-0 loss to the Chicago White Sox. Pilkington is 1-2, 4.24, in 11 games in his rookie campaign. … Former State star Chris Stratton made his first start since 2019 and pitched 2 1/3 innings for Pittsburgh in a victory against Miami. Stratton, with a 5.06 ERA in 37 games this season, allowed two hits and one run. He left the game after yielding a double to Ole Miss alum Nick Fortes. … Brent Rooker, 0-for-7 in two games with San Diego, was optioned back to Triple-A El Paso, the third time in 2022 the MSU product has been up-and-down. … Northwest Mississippi Community College alum Cody Reed pitched a scoreless inning for Tampa Bay’s team in the Florida Complex League, his first appearance this season. Reed, a six-year MLB vet, pitched in 12 games for the Rays last season before an injury sidelined him. He was hurt again in the spring. … Ex-Southern Miss star Kirk McCarty, claimed off waivers by Baltimore last week and sent to Triple-A, was designated for assignment by the Orioles. … Tanner Allen, the 2021 Ferriss Trophy winner at State, went 2-for-4 in his first game for Low-Class A Jupiter in Miami’s system. Allen was sent down from High-A Beloit with a .209 average.

12 Jul

new kid in town

The Mississippi Braves said good-bye to one of their top performers on Monday when third baseman C.J. Alexander was included in the package Atlanta traded to Kansas City for a draft pick. Today, the M-Braves welcome a notable new player and a more highly regarded prospect, Vaughn Grissom. Grissom, rated No. 4 on the Braves’ prospect chart by MLB Pipeline, is in the lineup, batting second and playing shortstop, for tonight’s game against Rocket City at Trustmark Park. Grissom, 21, 6 feet 3, 210 pounds, was batting .312 with 11 homers, 55 RBIs and 20 steals at High-Class A Rome. Grissom was drafted in the 11th round in 2019 out of a Florida high school. He is batting .310 over his three pro seasons. The scouting report is high on his hitting skills, though there may be a question as to what position he is best-suited to play. … The M-Braves are off to an 8-4 start in the second half of the Double-A Southern League season. They’ll start lefty Jared Shuster (5-7, 3.13), the Braves’ seventh-ranked prospect, tonight against the Trash Pandas, a Los Angeles Angels affiliate. The M-Braves went 2-4 at Rocket City (Madison, Ala.) in June. The Trash Pandas’ roster includes Preston Palmeiro, son of former Mississippi State star Rafael, and Torii Hunter, Jr., son of the ex-big leaguer.

11 Jul

it’s on: mets-braves

New York Mets vs. Atlanta Braves. Three-game series at Truist Park. Mets lead the Braves by 1 1/2 games in the National League East. This is going to be so much fun to watch, especially for Mississippi baseball aficionados. The Mets, after a late collapse in 2021, have been reinvigorated by manager Buck Showalter, the former Mississippi State star from the 1970s. The Braves, world champs in 2021, are back in championship form, led by former Mississippi Braves manager Brian Snitker and an armada of ex-M-Braves stars. All three of Atlanta’s scheduled starting pitchers for the series cut their teeth in Pearl. All-Star Max Fried (9-2, 2.52 ERA), who goes tonight, pitched for the M-Braves in 2017 and briefly in 2018. Flame-throwing Spencer Strider (4-2, 2.60, 102 strikeouts in 65 2/3 innings) pitched at Trustmark Park just last season, going 3-7, 4.71, but fanning 94 in 63 innings. And veteran Charlie Morton (5-3, 4.21) helped the 2007 M-Braves reach the postseason in the Southern League. Atlanta has five players picked for the All-Star Game, including M-Braves alums Ronald Acuna, William Contreras and Dansby Swanson. Former Braves star Mark DeRosa said on MLB Central today that it’s “a sin” that Austin Riley didn’t make the Midsummer Classic. The third baseman out of DeSoto Central High, also a former M-Braves standout, is batting .282 with 23 homers and 56 RBIs. DeRosa marveled over Riley’s at-bats in Sunday’s win against Washington; Riley went 3-for-6 with a homer and three RBIs, including the game-winner. The Braves, whose Double-A club has been in Pearl since 2005, have plenty of followers in the Jackson metro. But there are some Mets fans around, too, holdovers from the Jackson Mets era (1975-90) that produced so many big league stars and three Texas League pennants at Smith-Wills Stadium. P.S. The Braves have traded M-Braves alums Drew Waters, C.J. Alexander and Andrew Hoffman (who just joined the team on July 8) to Kansas City for the 35th pick in the upcoming draft. Waters, who was at Triple-A Gwinnett, won the Southern League batting title in 2019. Alexander was one of the best players on the current M-Braves club.

09 Jul

represent

One imagines that Tim Anderson did a virtual bat flip when he got the official word. The demonstrative (and occasionally controversial) Anderson won the fan voting for American League All-Star shortstop. “It’s a blessing,” the East Central Community College product told mlb.com after his Chicago White Sox lost to Detroit on Friday night. “I’m very thankful to be selected to start.” Despite a recent slump, Anderson is batting .316 with five homers, 20 RBIs and 10 steals in 56 games as the White Sox’s leadoff batter. The former AL batting champ was picked for last year’s game as a replacement for an injured player. The last ChiSox shortstop to start an All-Star Game was Luis Aparicio in 1970. … At least one Mississippi college product has made the All-Star Game every year since 2015, starting with Brian Dozier and Jonathan Papelbon that year, followed by Drew Pomeranz (2016), Zack Cozart and Corey Dickerson (2017), Mitch Moreland (2018), Brandon Woodruff (2019) and Anderson, Woodruff, Lance Lynn and Adam Frazier (2021). (There was no game in 2020.) P.S. An actual bat flip was in order for the Mississippi Braves’ Drew Lugbauer, who hit a walk-off three-run homer in a 6-3 win Friday night against Pensacola at Trustmark Park. “Slugbauer” now has 17 homers on the year for the Double-A M-Braves, off to a 7-3 start in the second half of the Southern League season. Other notable bombs from Friday: Former M-Braves Ronald Acuna (an All-Star starter), William Contreras and Michael Harris II for Atlanta; Mississippi State alum Jordan Westburg, No. 7 for Triple-A Norfolk (Baltimore); Ole Miss product Thomas Dillard, No. 7 for Double-A Biloxi (Milwaukee); ex-Mississippi Gulf Coast CC star Brandon Parker, No. 5 as part of a four-hit game for Low-A Augusta (Atlanta); and Brookhaven native James Beard, No. 4 for Low-A Kannapolis (White Sox).