Tag Archives: Mississippi Braves

28 Sep

it’s party time

More Mississippians in the majors celebrated making the postseason on Friday night. In Detroit, former Biloxi High star Colt Keith and the Tigers beat the Chicago White Sox 4-1 to claim an American League wild card berth, while in Atlanta, Mississippi State alums Hunter Renfroe, Adam Frazier and Chris Stratton and ex-Ole Miss standout James McArthur popped champagne as Kansas City clinched the final AL wild card despite a 3-0 loss to the Braves. Detroit, making the playoffs for the first time since 2014, has won six in a row and is on a 31-11 run. Manager A.J. Hinch mentioned the team’s walk-off 10-inning win over the New York Yankees in the Little League Classic back on Aug. 18 as a huge moment. Rookie Keith went 3-for-4 in that game, doubled and scored the game-tying run in the ninth inning. Keith is batting .261 with 13 homers and 61 RBIs; he won’t win rookie of the year but will get some votes. The Royals, who clinched their bid when collapsing Minnesota lost at home to Baltimore, are back in the postseason for the first time since winning the World Series in 2015. Renfroe, Frazier and Stratton, each of whom has postseason experience, were off-season additions to a club that rebounded from a 106-loss season in 2023. Stratton and McArthur are currently on the injured list. Already having punched postseason tickets in the AL are Southern Miss product Nick Sandlin (Cleveland), ex-MSU standout Jordan Westburg (Baltimore) and Ole Miss alum Grae Kessinger (Houston). P.S. The White Sox’s loss was their MLB-record 121st of the season. Don’t blame Ocean Springs High product Garrett Crochet for that one; the All-Star lefty threw four shutout innings at the Tigers before departing because of his pitch limit. … Atlanta’s win, fueled by former Mississippi Braves star Max Fried’s electrifying start, moved the Braves into a three-way tie with Arizona and the Mets in the National League wild card standings. Only two of the three will get in the playoffs. Stay tuned.

25 Sep

fall finishers

In the 2024 Arizona Fall League, Mississippi baseball aficionados might want to pay particular attention to the Peoria Javelinas. Former Southern Miss standouts Landon Harper and Justin Storm and Ole Miss product Kemp Alderman will play in Peoria, which launches its season on Oct. 8. There are quite a few Mississippians headed for the AFL, sort of a finishing school for minor league prospects from all 30 MLB organizations. Harper, who pitched for the Double-A Mississippi Braves this season, is among the Atlanta contingent headed for the desert. Storm and Alderman reached the Double-A level in the Miami system. Harper, from Meridian, posted a 1.41 ERA over 22 appearances in Mississippi. Decatur native Alderman, the 2023 Ferriss Trophy winner, batted .242 with eight home runs, playing at four levels in the Marlins’ chain. Storm, out of Madison Central High, put up a 1.97 ERA at three levels in 2024. One of the more interesting names on an AFL team is Tim Elko, the ex-Ole Miss slugger now in the Chicago White Sox’s system; he reached Triple-A this year but is not ranked among the team’s Top 30 prospects. He’ll play for Glendale. Others making AFL rosters: Mississippi State alum Preston Johnson (Baltimore); Ole Miss product Houston Roth (Baltimore); UM’s Brandon Johnson (Kansas City); and ex-Rebel Dylan DeLucia (Cleveland), all with Surprise. MSU product Jackson Fristoe (New York Yankees) is going to Salt River; UM’s Derek Diamond (Pittsburgh) to Scottsdale; and MSU’s David Mershon (Los Angeles Angels) to Mesa. DeLucia, pitching hero of Ole Miss’ 2022 national title team, has been limited by injury to 13 pro appearances, all this season. Infielder Mershon, a 2024 draftee, debuted in Double-A this summer.

25 Sep

bright spots

On a supercharged Tuesday night in the big leagues when highlights were popping all over the place, a trio of former Mississippi Braves stars and an ex-Biloxi Shuckers standout found the limelight. In Atlanta, 2024 M-Braves alum Spencer Schwellenbach threw seven brilliant innings and Michael Harris II went 3-for-4 with a homer (and a great catch) as the Braves beat the New York Mets 5-1 in the opener of a crucial series. In Houston, Jason Heyward (M-Braves 2009) hit a go-ahead two-run homer and Josh Hader (Shuckers ’15-16) notched a clean four-out save as the Astros beat Seattle 4-3 to clinch their fourth straight American League West title. … Elsewhere, San Diego clinched a National League playoff berth, sealing a win over the Los Angeles Dodgers with a triple play; Baltimore clinched an AL berth with a wild win over New York at Yankee Stadium; and Detroit and Kansas City tightened their grip on AL wild card invitations. … But back to the ATL, where the Braves moved to within a half-game of Arizona (11-0 loser to San Francisco) and a game back of the Mets in the NL wild card standings. Schwellenbach started this season in A-ball and threw 13 scoreless innings in two May outings for the Double-A M-Braves before jumping to the big league club. He is 8-7 with a 3.47 ERA and has won three straight starts. A solo homer in the seventh inning was all the damage the Mets could muster against the right-hander. Harris, who jumped from Mississippi to Atlanta in 2022 and won rookie of the year honors, has been on fire since coming off the injured list in mid-August. He is batting .362 with seven homers, 13 RBIs and 17 runs in his last 15 games. … Over to Houston, where Heyward has found a home at age 35 after being released by the Dodgers in late August. He is batting .234 with four homers in 47 at-bats for the Astros and playing his usual stellar defense in the outfield. Hader, who has had some rocky times with Houston, notched his 34th save Tuesday; he has an 0.95 ERA in his last 15 appearances. Houston, which once trailed Seattle by 10 games in the AL West, is now 5 up. P.S. Former Ole Miss star Doug Nikhazy worked 5 2/3 innings (1 run, 10 strikeouts) to lead Columbus to a 3-2 win against Omaha in the opener of the Triple-A International League Championship Series. Lefty Nikhazy, a second-round pick in 2021, went 7-4 with a 2.98 ERA this season at Double-A and Triple-A in the Cleveland system.

24 Sep

philly flashback

The last time the Philadelphia Phillies celebrated a division championship was 13 years ago, when the club’s “Sports Illustrated Five” featured a pair of Mississippi junior college alumni. The Phillies beat the Chicago Cubs 6-2 on Monday night to claim their first National League East crown since 2011. That was the year that ex-Meridian Community College star Cliff Lee and former Holmes CC standout Roy Oswalt were members of a stellar rotation that appeared on the cover of SI’s preseason issue. Lee went 17-8 with a 2.40 ERA and Oswalt 9-10, 3.69, as the Phillies rolled to a 102-60 finish. Roy Halladay (a 19-game winner), Cole Hamels and Vance Worley rounded out the starting five, and Ryan Howard, Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins powered the offense. Alas, Philly lost in the NL Division Series to St. Louis (and a rookie right-hander named Lance Lynn). The lone Mississippi connection with the 2024 Phillies is veteran infield coach Bobby Dickerson, the Laurel native who has been on the staff for the last three seasons. P.S. Drake Baldwin, who played for the Mississippi Braves in 2024, and Jacob Misiorowksi, who pitched for Biloxi this season, were named minor league players of the year in their respective organizations by Baseball America. Atlanta prospect Baldwin, a catcher, hit .244 with four homers in 52 games for the Double-A M-Braves before finishing the season at Triple-A, where he belted 12 more bombs. Milwaukee prospect Misiorowski was 3-4 with a 3.50 ERA for the Double-A Shuckers; he struck out 127 batters in 97 1/3 innings, including time in Triple-A.

14 Sep

welcome back … ?

The Pittsburgh Pirates and fans at PNC Park gave Adam Frazier a warm “welcome back” on Friday night. The Pirates played a video tribute to their former star on the stadium scoreboard and the crowd gave him a standing ovation before his first at-bat. “Appreciate them doing that,” the Mississippi State product said in a postgame interview. “Then you gotta lock back in, that’s all I was trying to do right there … .” He did, helping visiting Kansas City — fighting for a playoff berth — roll to an 8-3 victory. Frazier scored twice and hit his fourth home run as the Royals improved to 81-67, second in the American League wild card standings. Frazier was drafted by the Pirates in 2013 and spent his first six MLB seasons in a Pittsburgh uniform. He was traded in mid-2021, which was the last time he played at PNC. He has bounced to four other teams the past four years. A .264 career hitter, Frazier’s first year in KC hasn’t been great — .205, four homers, 20 RBIs, 32 runs over 244 at-bats — but he plays hard and plays anywhere in the field he is needed. He also has postseason experience — with Baltimore in 2023 and Seattle in 2022. P.S. Saucier native Brandon Parker, back near his old stomping grounds at Biloxi’s Keesler Federal Park, homered for the second straight night as the Mississippi Braves beat the Shuckers 7-0 in a Double-A Southern League game. Parker has eight homers on the season. At Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College in Perkinston, Parker belted 38 homers in two seasons, setting the school record with 24 as a freshman in 2018. … Ole Miss alum T.J. McCants doubled home the winning run in the 11th inning as Low-Class A Kannapolis beat Charleston 2-1 to advance to the Carolina League Championship Series. McCants, who finished his college career at Alabama in 2024, hit .230 with two homers and four steals this season for the Chicago White Sox affiliate.

09 Sep

remember that time …

It wasn’t the kind of finale the Mississippi Braves would have hoped for. In the team’s last game at Trustmark Park, they lost 10-3. The last batter of the last game struck out. A crowd announced at 4,111 on a breezy, sun-splashed Sunday groaned at that last out but then gave the home boys a final round of applause. Just like that, 20 years — 19 seasons — of Double-A baseball in Pearl ended. The Atlanta affiliate sent scores of players to the big leagues. Won two league championships. Produced five no-hitters, a Southern League MVP, a pitcher of the year and a bunch of league All-Stars. There were shutouts and grand slams and walk-offs aplenty. Sunday’s game might not have been one for the scrapbook of memories, but there were plenty of those through the years for the more than 3 million fans who passed through the gates. Here’s one: On April 30, 2005 — the inaugural season — Brian McCann, the 21-year-old catching prospect just weeks from his first big league call-up, stepped to the plate in the bottom of ninth with the M-Braves down 1-0. West Tenn’s Rich Hill — yes, that Rich Hill — and three relievers had no-hit the M-Braves for 8 2/3 innings. Lefty Yorkin Ferraras was on the bump to face the lefty-hitting McCann with a man on first. As West Tenn manager — and Laurel native — Bobby Dickerson said after the game: “McCann is the one guy we didn’t want to face right there.” On a 2-2 pitch, Ferraras left a fastball out over the plate and McCann smacked it high and deep over the right-field wall for a 2-1 victory. “I’ve never had a feeling like that as long as I’ve been playing sports,” McCann said afterward. Nineteen years later, it still resonates. Baseball does that.

08 Sep

aloha from pearl

Good-bye, Mississippi Braves. Hello, Frontier League team to be named later. The M-Braves — Double-A affiliate of the Atlanta Braves — will play their final game at Pearl’s Trustmark Park today (2:05 p.m. vs. Tennessee). On Monday, fan voting will begin to pick a name for a new team that will play there in the independent Frontier League. (Visit ondeck2025.com.) Pearl city officials and the stadium management group have announced that Trustmark Park will have a pro team in 2025. As currently configured, the Frontier League, officially an MLB-supported Partner League, has 16 teams, 13 in the U.S., three in Canada, none in the South. If you’re scoring at home, this team will be the third independent club to come to central Mississippi (Jackson or Pearl) since 2000. (Several other cities in the state hosted indy teams at various times in the 1990s, but all are long gone.) Since 1990, fans in the metro have said good-bye to the Mets and Generals, both MLB affiliated teams, and the DiamondKats and Senators, both independent clubs. All four played at Jackson’s Smith-Wills Stadium, and all four suffered from poor attendance that impacted their bottom line. That’s why the M-Braves are leaving, as well, bound for Columbus, Ga., after a 20-year run at Trustmark Park. The M-Braves — who drew an announced crowd of 5,300-plus for Saturday’s doubleheader — have averaged just over 2,000 fans a game for the past several seasons, ranking near the bottom in all of Double-A baseball. The league average in the Frontier League this season was 2,305. Six teams drew under 2,000, including a Brockton, Mass.-based club that averaged 1,116. The team in Schaumburg, Ill., averaged a reported 4,627 to lead the league. … For the record, a new college summer league — the Legacy League — is scheduled to operate at Smith-Wills next year: eight teams playing a 40-game slate from May into July.

03 Sep

eye on …

David McCabe is rated 13th among Atlanta’s minor league prospects, but through 24 games with the Mississippi Braves he has yet to find his footing. The 6-foot-3, 230-pound McCabe, who missed the first four months of the season after Tommy John surgery, is batting .125 (10-for-80) and slugging .188 with a single home run, seven RBIs and 33 strikeouts. The switch-hitter is in the lineup tonight, batting third at DH, as the Double-A M-Braves begin their final — as in last ever — regular season homestand. Canada native McCabe was drafted in the fourth round in 2022 out of UNC-Charlotte, where he slugged .679 as a junior and hit 30 homers over his last two seasons. Power is his best tool. A corner infielder, he played at two Class A levels in 2023 and hit .276 with 17 homers and 75 RBIs and batted .278 in the Arizona Fall League. Before this season began, MLB Pipeline ranked him No. 6 on Atlanta’s prospect chart. He slipped in the most recent ratings. After all that time on the shelf, it isn’t terribly surprising that McCabe would start slow once he arrived in Pearl. But to have just one homer — on Aug. 9 — in 24 games has to be a little bit of a disappointment. … The M-Braves, riding a three-game win streak, are 30-27 in the second half and 61-64 overall, still in the running for a Southern League postseason berth. And they have a strong set of starters lined up to face Tennessee this week at Trustmark Park. Southern Miss alum Landon Harper (2-1, 1.32 ERA, in 20 appearances, three starts) is scheduled tonight and again in Sunday’s finale. Knuckleballer David Fletcher, the ex-big league infielder, Ernesto Mejia, Lucas Braun and Jhancarlo Lara have Games 2-5.

31 Aug

brewing a winner

A gaggle of former Biloxi Shuckers, products of Milwaukee’s rich farm system, had their fingerprints all over the Brewers’ impressive sweep of the Cincinnati Reds on Friday. The All-Shuckers Alumni outfield of Sal Frelick, Garrett Mitchell and Jackson Chourio combined for five hits, two RBIs and a run in a 10-inning 5-4 win in Game 1, which ex-Shuckers star Devin Williams closed out. In a 14-0 rout in Game 2, Mitchell homered, tripled, stole a base and scored three times; Frelick went 3-for-5 with two RBIs; and ex-Shuckers Brice Turang and Andruw Monasterio drove in a run each. Shuckers fans know these names. Heading into this season, the Brewers, despite three straight winning seasons, were not pegged as a playoff contender. But after Friday’s sweep, Milwaukee owns a 79-56 record and a 10-game lead in the National League Central. “Let’s face it, there wasn’t enough bratwurst and beer in the world to convince anyone outside Milwaukee that this team would be running away with the division,” Bob Nightengale of USA Today recently wrote. Popular and successful manager Craig Counsell bolted for Chicago after last season, replaced by Pat Murphy. Stalwart pitcher Brandon Woodruff, the former Mississippi State standout, has been on the injured list all year, and fellow ace Corbin Burnes was traded to Baltimore. But the plucky Brewers have found a way, relying mainly on young talent that has risen through the system. Chourio, age 20, is a shining example. Entering this season, he was regarded as one of the top two or three prospects in the minors and got a huge contract before ever playing an MLB game. After belting 22 homers and stealing 43 bases for the Double-A Biloxi club last year, Chourio is batting .273 with 16 homers, 62 RBIs and 19 steals, a rookie of the year-type season. Worth noting: Former Mississippi Braves star William Contreras, an All-Star catcher in 2024, homered in both games for the Shuckers on Friday and has 20 on the season. … Interestingly enough, a former Shuckers standout helped fuel Atlanta’s big win at Philadelphia on Friday. Orlando Arcia — much to the chagrin of Phillies fans — smacked two homers in the Braves’ 7-2 victory, which trimmed Philly’s lead to 5 games in the NL East. Arcia, having a down year with the bat (.228), does have 15 homers and is a very good defensive shortstop.

30 Aug

worth noting

Cincinnati’s Great American Ballpark isn’t the place you’d choose for your first major league start, but J.T. Ginn handled Thursday’s appearance at that launching pad relatively well. The ex-Mississippi State star from Brandon went to the bump for Oakland and retired the first eight Reds batters he faced before Will Benson homered. Ginn yielded another home run in the fourth inning and a couple runs in the fifth but left with a lead. The A’s couldn’t hold it and ultimately lost 10-9. Ginn allowed four hits and a walk and struck out four. In three MLB appearances, the 25-year-old righty has a 5.19 ERA and eight K’s in 8 2/3 innings. He was 15-16 with a 4.68 over four minor league campaigns prior to his call to The Show earlier this month. … MSU alum Gavin Collins is enjoying a career revival at Triple-A Memphis in the St. Louis organization. He went 2-for-2 with a three-run homer Thursday in the Redbirds’ 18-2 win against Iowa and is batting .271 with seven homers and 27 RBIs in 50 games. The versatile Collins, 29, who has played primarily catcher this year, was drafted by Cleveland back in 2016. He became a free agent in 2022, signed with Tampa Bay, got released and then batted .314 with 10 bombs in the independent American Association last season before signing with St. Louis. … Mississippi College product Blaine Crim and ex-MSU standout Justin Foscue homered for Triple-A Round Rock, providing all the offense in a 3-1 win over Oklahoma City. Crim has 17 homers, Foscue nine for the Texas farm club. … Ex-Southern Miss and Mississippi Braves star Hurston Waldrep allowed one run over five innings for Triple-A Gwinnett and has a 4.50 ERA in six games for the Stripers. The 2023 first-round pick may yet get another look in Atlanta, where he was shelled (13 runs in seven innings) in two outings earlier this season. … K.C. Hunt, signed as an undrafted free agent out of MSU by Milwaukee last year, will make his fourth start tonight for Double-A Biloxi, where he is 0-2 despite a 3.31 ERA. Hunt, the Brewers’ No. 29 prospect, has pitched at three levels this season and has a 7-3 record, 2.21 ERA and 123 strikeouts in 85 2/3 innings. … Kudos to Jason Heyward, the former M-Braves star who smacked a two-run double in his second at-bat for resurgent Houston, which beat Kansas City 6-3. Heyward, a 15-year MLB vet, was released by the Los Angeles Dodgers last week.