The Braves have swapped out young southpaw A.J. Minter for veteran Jonny Venters, per a club announcement. The former was optioned to Triple-A to make way for the latter’s activation from the 10-day injured list.
It’s a disappointing development for Minter, who looked to be a long-term, late-inning stalwart entering the season. The 25-year-old has struggled to stay in the zone, coughing up 7.4 BB/9 while recording 13.1 K/9. He has allowed a dozen earned runs in eleven frames on the year.
Venters, 34, was tendered a contact and agreed to a $2.25MM salary after a remarkable comeback campaign following a five-season absence from the majors. He was knocked out of action by a calf strain but is now ready to return to action. Venters has had a bit of a wild showing on his rehab assignment but was solid last year, turning in 34 1/3 innings of 3.67 ERA ball with 7.1 K/9 and 4.2 BB/9 along with a hefty 69.1% groundball rate over 34 1/3 innings.
Good idea! Oh wait, is Venters really any better? Damn embarrassing!
just shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic…yeah this should work smh
About time
Good, AJ needs to regain some of his confidence and control. Hopefully Jackson and Newcomb can handle closing for now.
Newcomb?? You can’t be serious. He’s Biddle bad at giving free passes
So are a ton of closers. If he can regain the ability to miss bats, he’d probably make a decent closer.
plenty of players give up a lot of walks and are still good. you can theoretically walk three players per inning and not allow a run. its one thing ti allow runners, its another to allow them to score.
Newcomb and AJ are identical in the walks issue for a reason. Neither pitcher is missing bats at a high clip. The upside for Newcomb is that he has always has to pitch in a starter mentality where he hasn’t just tried to come in and blow people away for an inning. We may see his confidence take off and him become dominant again.
AJ on the other hand is just not going to be that. His 4-seamer is 92-94 with no movement and is not even average for a reliever in today’s game. His cutter really only seems to work when he locates it just a bit inside to righties. If he throws it anywhere it’s either ripped or fouled off, extending the at bat. This results in him eventually walking the ones that don’t rip him. The problem with all this is he is already throwing as hard as he can. He can’t generate enough swing and miss to overcome the hit probability and control breakdowns. In short, AJ is a strikeout pitcher that doens’t have a high enough K-rate.
At this point even Venters is the better option as he can at least generate outs via contact when he gets his sinker down but not too far down. His only problem this year was his control of his out pitch was off just a little, and in sinker land that is a big problem. You either bounce it for a ball or leave it up for a rip. Hopefully he has worked that out.
Not only that, at least JV can be used as a lefty specialist as he is tough on lefties. Minter really has never been a dominant force against lefties, so the platoon or specialist role doesn’t even fit for him.
To me, Minter is already lost. Let’s just cut bait on that and move on. I would rather give Touki and Newcomb a chance in the pen that watch Minter continue to get destroyed. Better yet, why not Gausman? His stuff has closer written all over and his 2nd/3rd time through the order numbers are bad. Maybe we should let him give it a try and let the younger guys continue their trajectories as SP’s. Who knows.
For now, it looks like Luke Jackson will be doing the closing, and I have no problem giving him a shot. He can’t be any worse than Minter.
GO GET KIMBREL!!!! GO GET GET HIM!!!!!!!!!! STOP BEING CHEAP!!!!
I just don’t see it happening, after the draft several teams should be all over him. Imo, he’s worthy of 3 years 45 million, I don’t see LM paying anything near that. Hope I’m wrong, it’s happened before, twice.
Not aboutvthe price, it’s about the draft pick. Did you watch baseball this week? The Braves aren’t one player away from being competitive with the Dodgers. No need to sacrifice the future to be one step closer.
This team would easily be 5 games better if they had addressed their pen. Literally instead of 18-20 should be 23-15
Is Kimbrel alone enough? No but certainly the first piece and then after that they have a plethora of starting pitching prospects that really have nowhere to go (except shipping them to the bullpen) so why not actually just use them to acquire proven talent.
This isn’t rocket science. It’s a very easy fix we just have a totally incompetent GM refusing to make trades while spending the cash on frivolous things like Donaldson when we have Camargo and a young prospect ready to move up in Riley instead of spending on the area we need to address the most.
I’ve never seen more incompetent mismanagement of a team by a GM ever.
Agreed, but I also think the man in the dugout needs to go too. Who uses AJ with the game on the line? Oh, wait, it’s the same one that asks our pitchers to walk an opposing hitter to load the bases, so we can walk a run in.
Lol. You wrong, bro.
I think the thing y’all are missing, is the money is there to get kimbrel and not mortgage our future. Here’s another point, much like mentioned above, an elite closer puts us roughly at 23-15 (assuming he does what he’s always shown he can do). When you win, you bring more fans to games, more what on tv, more purchase merchandise. When you win, you make more money, and typically your ROI becomes a non issue because you get it back quickly. Stop filling yourselves. This team has the resources, it’s just managed by a bunch of greedy pigs that are operating a conservative business instead of a growth oriented business
Also please forgive my autocorrect and poor grammar/spelling. It’s an evil combination.
A GM can’t make moves when money is being withheld by the owner. Sharpen up.
Then a GM can’t go out and publicly tell the fans that they have financial freedom and money isn’t a concern. Go watch the interview after the season ended last year… he said it quite a few times.
Someone call Bartolo !!!
Someone call the morgue for the bullpen
Acuna back in the lead off spot tonight
Diamondbacks played amazing defense last night and robbed Acuna but why is Jackson throwing hanging curves when he pushes 98. Threw twice as many offspeed pitches as fastballs. I want more pieces but what is the pitching coach doing?
Slider is his “best” pitch, so they say, but for the life of me could not figure out why he wasn’t throwing the fast ball more.
How can you throw Jackson out there to close? It is waiting for the inevitable to happen, which it did.
Luke Jackson has been the best relief pitcher for the braves.
Maybe, but you got that right, he’s a relief pitcher and shouldn’t be closing.
I’ve been saying for 2 years now that Minter isn’t closer material. Unfortunately, I was right.
The Braves have lost 12 of their past 13 postseason series and just got swept by the Dodgers. They have 2 options. Work with what they have and hope for the best OR make moves. What’s the play?