The best part of this game is that none of its counts.
The Braves brought a lot of relief-ish arms to camp this year, as presumably, one of them will walk away with the shiny prize of getting to serve as the final member of the Opening Day bullpen. A lot of those guys pitched today in Clearwater against the Phillies, and boy, it was not great for any of them.
First off, we had Anderson Pilar, the Rule 5 Draft pick from the Marlins. Pilar was… bad. Just bad. His final line featured three outs, three walks, a leadoff homer by Trea Turner, and a bunch of other unpleasant ball-in-play stuff, to just two strikeouts. He couldn’t escape the first and got a breather, but then went out for the second and it was pretty much just as bad as before. He ended up throwing around 50 pitches in the outing, which suggests some degree of stretched out-ness which seems kind of weird because I don’t know why the Braves want to keep a Rule-5-inflexibility long relief guy. At this point I expect Pilar to get sent back to the Marlins before Spring Training is over, but truly, who knows what the success metrics for his outing were? Still, he probably didn’t meet them.
By the time Pilar left for good, the Braves were down 5-1. Jonathan Hughes, who is not a bullpen hopeful but just a guy out there to nom nom nom Spring Training innings because someone’s gotta do it and no one knows where Connor Johnstone is, did not live up to his more-famous namesake by also getting blasted to the tune of an 0/3 K/BB ratio (no, not the reverse) and a homer allowed while getting just four outs. He got Breakfast Club-erred. He’s lucky he was charged with just two runs instead of Sixteen Candles. If he were on the “players in camp roster” to begin with, he’d probably have to take a Plane, Train, or Automobile to minor league camp. You get the idea.
Enyel de los Santos has been really good this Spring Training after a horrid 2024 (and honestly, a shaky 2023 that he made look good thanks to a low HR/FB). He looked good in his first inning of work, striking out the side… but then was a lot worse in inning number two, giving up yet another homer and also walking a guy.
Buck Farmer couldn’t capitalize, with a 2/2 K/BB ratio and his own homer allowed in two innings of work. Landon Harper, of all people, was the only guy the Braves used in this game that faced more than one batter and didn’t allow a homer (but did get two runs charged against him anyway).
Woof, man. Just woof.
On the batting side, the Braves sent a half-hearted lineup that ended up scoring nine runs in total, albeit most of it was against randos from the Philadelphia side of the pitching slate. Eli White and Bryan de la Cruz both had doubles, and Connor Capel had a “triple” that was really the result of a missed diving catch, but there isn’t much else to mention here despite the whole nine runs thing. Six of those runs came in the eighth and ninth, and literally one of them came on a hit, as the others were either driven in via outs, bases loaded walks, or a wild pitch. A smaller woof.
Anyway, the Braves are now .500 in Grapefruit League action for some reason, and they’ll play the also-.500 in Grapefruit League action Nationals at home tomorrow, in a game that will probably feature better pitching than this one, because it kind of has to. This is now two games in a row where the Braves have had basically the worst pitching performances imaginable after cruising through the first couple of weeks of Spring Training on the run prevention side, which is mildly amusing.