Tyrell Jenkins just became the third of the Atlanta Braves’ lovingly assembled young pitchers — the third in two months — to be demoted to Class AAA after being installed in the major-league rotation.
OK. So Jenkins-as-starter didn’t work, even though he had a run of three consecutive quality starts before getting touched for 16 earned runs in eight innings...He might well be suited to relief. Were it just Jenkins, we’d say, “No big deal.”
But Wisler got worse the more he worked in Year 2 - his ERA as of June 1 was 3.16. As of July 1, it was 4.14. As of July 28, it was 5.16. Blair, considered almost big-league ready when the Braves acquired him in the second Miller trade, came up in April, was sent back and then recalled — and was awful the whole time.
That three promising pitchers were demoted simply because they’d stopped getting people out is worrisome: Was there something the Braves could have done — some mechanical tweak — to keep them at the big-league level?
So far, the Braves haven’t found a starting pitcher who has proved he can stick in a rotation. (Mike Foltynewicz has the stuff, but his pitch counts run so high — over 100 in seven of his past eight starts, the exception being a 99-pitch game — that he rarely works past the sixth inning.) Granted, it’s early days. We haven’t seen Sean Newcomb or Touki Toussaint or Max Fried or Kolby Allard or Mike Soroka, to say nothing of Ian Anderson and Joey Wentz or Kyle Muller. All hope is not yet lost.
As Hart said last summer, quoting the baseball adage regarding pitchers: “You need 10 to get three.” As it stands, we can’t say for sure that the Braves have found even one.
Reasons for concern?
Normal growing pains?
These guys still long-term pieces in your eyes, or should they make way for the new crop of young pitching prospects we're pinning our hopes on?
Any concerns about the direction of the rebuild?
