The Braves have acquired right-hander Enrique Burgos from the Diamondbacks in exchange for cash considerations, as announced via the D’Backs Twitter feed. Burgos, 26, was designated for assignment by Arizona earlier this week.
[Updated Braves depth chart at Roster Resource]
Burgos has a 5.27 ERA over 68 1/3 career innings in the big leagues, all with the D’Backs in 2015-16. He has spent his entire career in Arizona’s organization, originally signing an amateur contract with the team in 2007 and then posting a 4.39 ERA, 9.6 K/9 and a 6.2 BB/9 over 428 2/3 minor league innings with the Snakes, pitching exclusively as a reliever since 2012.
At both the MLB and minor league levels, control issues have plagued Burgos, as he simply hasn’t been able to command his explosive (96mph) fastball on a consistent basis. Burgos has been able to miss bats with his big heater and he posted some good grounder rates over his minor league career, so there is certainly some late-bloomer potential here for the Braves if they can figure out how to cut down on Burgos’ walks.
Smart move.
Braves should pick him up
sounds like they did
Didn’t they just do that?
Fantastic move. Burgos was in the 9th inning picture as recently as last year.
That speaks more about Arizonas bullpen rather than his skill
“control issues have plagued Burgos, as he simply hasn’t been able to command his explosive (96mph) fastball . . .”
Not intending to pick nits but command and control are not the same thing. Control = not issuing walks. Command = the ability to put the ball where it is intended to go. A knuckleball pitcher who issues few free passes would be demonstrating good control without displaying the slightest bit of command.
In this case, Burgos demonstrates a decided lack of both actually. Not only does Burgos issue far too many walks (control), he tends to miss his spots by a foot or more (command) with some regularity. Basically, his approach seems to be to simply rear back and then fire as hard as he can at the strike zone. He gets plenty of strikeouts that way, but he also falls prey to any batter with patience. HE has games where the smart move is to simply go to the plate insisting he throw three strikes before he throws four balls or hits the batter. He also keeps his catcher dancing around behind the plate, making it difficult to control the running game.