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Atlanta Braves Clippings Friday, August 28, 2020 Braves.com Braves prioritize starting pitching at Deadline By Mark Bowman ATLANTA -- If the Braves had known all that would go wrong during this season’s first half, there’s no way they’d expect to be in their current position, sitting atop the National League East and winning at a pace that would lead to 97 victories during a 162-game season. Max Fried is the only remaining member of the season-opening rotation and much of August has elapsed without both Ronald Acuña Jr. and Ozzie Albies. But the Braves have proven deeper than expected offensively and their bullpen has lived up to high expectations. So, it appears this is a bunch that could make some noise in the postseason with the right fix or two before Monday’s 4 p.m. ET Trade Deadline. There’s a chance Cole Hamels will prove healthy enough to steadily build endurance in September and there’s a possibility Mike Foltynewicz will regain the velocity needed to again find success at the big league level. But the Braves have no choice but to make pursuing a starting pitcher the priority over the next few days. An important wrinkle to this year’s Trade Deadline is that teams can only trade players who are part of their 60-man player pool (assigned either to the big-league team or the alternate site). Clubs are permitted to include players to be named later in trades, however. Additionally, scouts have not been allowed to attend games in person, so all assessments of prospects have been done based on provided video and data and past knowledge. Buy/sell/hold: Like his peers, Braves president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos will weigh how aggressive he should be this season. But there’s no doubt, he’ll at least attempt to add to a team that is much stronger and deeper than the two Atlanta clubs that were eliminated in the NL Division Series both of the past two years. What they want: Ian Anderson’s impressive big league debut on Wednesday altered the perspective from both an immediate and long-term perspective. With Anderson and Max Fried, the Braves are hopeful to have at least two reliable starters over the remainder of the season. At the same time, Anderson’s arrival gives hope that he will join with Fried and Mike Soroka to form a formidable trio over the next few years in Atlanta. The recent struggles of Kyle Wright and Touki Toussaint have weakened the system’s starting pitching depth. But the Braves have indicated they are focused on starting pitchers whose contracts will expire at the end of this season. What they have to offer: With an abundance of young talent at the big league level, the Braves’ prospect pool doesn’t look quite as impressive as it did over the past few years. But there is still a lot of quality depth within this system, which is headlined by Cristian Pache and Drew Waters, who both rank among MLB Pipeline’s top 30 prospects. If Atlanta wants to make a big deal, they would have attractive currency in the form or either of these two outfielders. With Bryse Wilson, Huascar Ynoa, Freddy Tarnok and others, this club has plenty of those attractive mid-level prospect available to satisfy the needs of what might be deemed a less-significant deal. Chance of a deal: There’s better than a 50 percent chance Anthopoulos will find a solution within what is a thin starting pitching market. The odds are low that Lance Lynn or Trevor Bauer are going to end up in Atlanta. But once the deadline passes, the Atlanta rotation will likely consist of more than just Fried and Anderson. Atlanta Journal-Constitution Hard not to get carried away by these resilient Braves By Michael Cunningham, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Baseball can be a strange game. The oddness is compounded by this small sample size of a season. That’s why I try not to get too carried away by the Braves. But then I watch them keep winning despite rarely having their full squad available. I look at a second-half schedule that includes one opponent with a winning record. I noticed their FanGraphs odds to win the World Series (5.8%) have crept up to the point that, entering Thursday, only the Dodgers (17.9%) had higher odds in the National League. Now I’m wondering how far these Braves can go. I know that’s premature. The Braves are a virtual lock to make the playoffs, but we know how that’s gone lately. Yet if the Braves have been this good with so much going wrong, how good will they be now that more things are going right? The Braves (18-12) led the NL East after sweeping a doubleheader against the Yankees on Wednesday. That was four more victories than second- place Miami, which already lost a series to the Braves. After Wednesday’s games, the MLB season was 35 days old. The Braves led the NL East for 23 of those days. Somehow, the Braves just kept winning. “It wasn’t easy, believe me,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said. “It was a very productive first half, but it wasn’t by any stretch easy to get there with everything we’ve been through. These guys keep grinding. “We’ve lost chunks of our lineup. We’ve lost big chunks of our starting rotation. They just keep playing.” That’s been a theme for Snitker’s Braves. They’ve made habit of winning when the probabilities suggest they won’t. The Braves beat the Yankees in Wednesday’s second game on Freddie Freeman’s two-run homer in the sixth inning of the seven-inning game. That’s eight Braves victories this season on the final at-bat, most in the NL. The Braves have done it 84 times since Snitker became manager in May 2016. I want to say it’s unsustainable, but the Braves have done it for a long time. That resiliency is why, after 20 games, I concluded the Braves are built to last. It didn’t take long for me to start questioning that stance. Right- hander Kyle Wright got knocked around again the next day. Ronald Acuna’s timeline to return to the lineup got extended again. It looked as if the Braves might wobble. Instead, they won two of three games in Miami while scoring a total of eight runs. They won their opener at Washington by scoring four runs in the ninth, including Dansby Swanson’s game-winning homer. A rare bullpen blowup cost the Braves the second game of that series. They brushed it off and took two of three from the Phillies with another walk-off homer, this time by Adam Duvall, in the second game. And then the Braves swept the Yankees at Truist Park on Wednesday. The Yankees have their own injury issues. No one wants to hear that from the team with the biggest payroll. The Yankees still have ace Gerritt Cole, who hardly ever loses. Cole lost to the Braves, who had right-hander Ian Anderson making his MLB debut. The Yankees lost to the Braves a second time when lefty Max Fried held them down and Freeman smacked his homer. “It’s actually really, really big, especially in a 60-game season,” Freeman said. “When you have two games in one day, it can easily go the other way.” The past 10 games were like the previous 20 for the Braves. They overcame bad luck and beat-up starting pitching with big bats and backbone. The Braves kept winning despite four-fifths of their projected starting rotation being injured or ineffective. They kept hitting with Ozzie Albies doing little before going on the injured list, Acuna missing 10 games and Freeman scuffling by his standards. The Braves kept scoring even though they weren’t getting on-base much. With Albies on track to return soon, starting pitching is the only thing on that list that’s still a concern for the Braves. There are signs that’s improving. After 20 games only three MLB teams got fewer innings per start than Braves pitchers, whose 5.72 ERA ranked 25th of 30 teams. After 30 games six teams were getting fewer starts per inning than Braves starters, whose 5.01 ERA ranked 20th. That’s not good. But it’s remarkable considering Fried is the only starter left from the beginning of the season. He’s become the staff ace since Mike Soroka was lost to injury after three starts. Entering Thursday, Fried’s 2.4 Wins Above Replacement (Baseball Reference) were the most in MLB. The rotation still is shaky behind Fried. A strong debut from Anderson, the organization’s top pitching prospect, was a boost. Veterans Josh Tomlin and Robbie Erlin have been bullpen guys later in their careers. The Braves just need them provide as many effective innings as they can before handing off to a deep bullpen. If the pitching remains inconsistent, it will be mitigated by a lineup that’s fully operational. It’s been good most of the season because of the load carried by Marcell Ozuna, Swanson and catchers Travis d’Arnaud and Tyler Flowers. The lineup is much better now that Acuna is back. And Freeman is on one of his runs: 31-for-102 (.304) over his past 10 games with five homers, 10 doubles and 21 walks. Freeman had severe COVID-19 symptoms during camp.

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