Sunday Seeds: Sean Murphy's return, trading for Jason Delay, and Jarred Kelenic
The Atlanta Braves are setting things up to split time behind the plate yet again
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Lots of news across Braves Country coming your way, so let’s dispense with the pleasantries and get right to it. This is your weekly news recap!
Murphy’s back this week
Veteran catcher Sean Murphy, slowed since early in spring training with a broken rib, is just days away from returning. He’s been rehabbing with Triple-A Gwinnett all week, starting at catcher and going 2-10 with a homer and two RBI. After Friday night’s start, one in which he got three at-bats and played seven innings behind the plate, he was seen in Truist Park on Saturday for Atlanta’s shutout loss to the Miami Marlins.
Per manager Brian Snitker, Murphy is scheduled to play all nine innings for Gwinnett on Sunday in their finale against the Nashville Sounds. Should everything go well, he’s likely to be activated for Tuesday’s series opener against the Philadelphia Phillies.
Atlanta will have a decision to make at that point - do they option rookie backstop Drake Baldwin back to the minors and let Murphy start 80% of the games this season, or do they designate Chadwick Tromp for assignment to keep Baldwin’s bat with the major league team?
There are pros and cons of both approaches - DFAing Tromp means you likely lose him to another team, as he’s a well-regarded defensive catcher who would perfectly fit the backup role of twenty teams in the league. For a special talent like Baldwin, maybe that’s a small sacrifice to make to keep him at the major league level and learning from the veterans every day.
But with Murphy returning, Drake Baldwin wouldn’t be able to play as much as you’d ideally like - Alex Anthopoulos has gone on the record in the past about wanting young catchers to get as much playing time as possible, to help their development. He gets that in Gwinnett, but not in Atlanta.
I have a feeling that the Braves are going to keep Baldwin in Atlanta, but we’ll likely find out either on Monday’s off day or on Tuesday.
An optionable backstop acquired via trade
The Braves completed a minor trade last week, acquiring 30-year-old catcher Jason Delay from the Pittsburgh Pirates for cash considerations and optioning him down to Double-A Columbus.
The choice to send Delay to AA was a playing time thing - Murphy is already rehabbing in Gwinnett plus veteran Sandy León and Chandler Seagle are both on that roster, as well, so he’d have been the fourth catcher. In Columbus, he’s with org guys Dylan Shockley and Adam Zebrowski, although veteran James McCann is playing his way back into form in Columbus. (For now; I expect McCann to move up to Gwinnett when Murphy is activated.)
But I want to brag for a second, if you’ll indulge me. Here’s a clip from the March 7th episode of the Braves Today podcast:
Thank you, Alex Anthopoulos, for listening to Braves Today.
Acquiring Delay allows the Braves to move on from Tromp if they want to keep Baldwin with the big league team. This is how I’d see the veteran catching depth shaking out if that move happens:
Atlanta: Baldwin and Murphy
Gwinnett: León and Delay
Chadwick Tromp: Claimed off of waivers
James McCann: Eventually opts out of his deal (May 1st or June 1st are the two dates)
From a purely depth perspective, keeping Tromp in the big leagues and letting Baldwin play every day in Gwinnett is the right move. But Baldwin’s bat has been legitimately impressive so far, despite the lack of conventional statistics to back that up. Expect a deep dive coming on either Monday or Tuesday when Atlanta makes that Murphy roster decision.
UPDATE: Atlanta went ahead and announced their decision after Sunday’s game was rained out, returning Murphy from rehab and DFAing Tromp. Tomorrow’s newsletter is a deep dive into why they’re keeping Baldwin.
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Kelenic can’t buy a hit right now
Jarred Kelenic is on the struggle bus.
We already wrote and podcasted about1 this potentially being his last chance to stick as an everyday player - even with the injuries and suspension issues for the Braves, that hasn’t changed.
In fact, the conversation has gotten louder.
Heading into Sunday’s series finale against the Marlins, Kel is 4-for-26 (.154) with his only extra-base hit being a line drive homer. He has no walks against twelve strikeouts and still, inexplicably, looks overmatched at the plate.
When he unloads on a ball, it works - he has four hard-hit balls and three have fallen for hits.
The problem is that he’s just not doing that. He’s seen 100 pitches and put fourteen of them in play, batting .100 on non-hard-hit balls.
(It was an 89 mph liner to center field on Saturday.)
The Statcast card is ugly - the only area where there’s even a hint of red is in bat speed, but there’s enough blue to paint the sea in your next paint-by-numbers. And his .154 batting average and .269 slug are both earned; his xBA is .153 and the xSLG is .262.
With Alex Verdugo being moved to Triple-A for the next progression of his spring ramp-up, Kelenic’s days are quickly numbered. Additionally, corner outfield mate Bryan De La Cruz is absolutely outplaying him right now; while De La Cruz’s .167 average isn’t much better than Kelenic’s .154, he’s also had some bad luck with just three of his seven hard-hit balls falling for hits.
Kelenic’s edge over BDLC has always been the defense, but with Stuart Fairchild and Eli White both on the roster to assist late in games, Kelenic may find himself in a Stripers uniform quite soon.
Smith-Shawver’s perplexing usage
AJ Smith-Shawver went 4.2 innings yesterday, striking out six Marlins but allowing seven hits and three walks.
I think a lot of that was down to his fastball.
It’s never been a great fastball from a movement perspective, but consistently got enough induced vertical break to be effective when he threw it up in (or above) the zone.
Only, he didn’t do that.
AJSS threw 24 fastballs yesterday, all but nine of them to lefties, and he was often throwing it down in the zone. Here’s a chart of his pitch locations yesterday - the red dots are fastballs.
See how, with the exception of a lot of first-inning center-cut heaters last night2, he was working down in the zone? It doesn’t make a lot of sense from a pitch usage standpoint. The core competency of a four-seam fastball with even average IVB is that the backspin makes hitters misread how much it’ll drop and swing underneath it. Why throw it down so often?
It’s not just a Saturday issue, either - here’s a heatmap of all of his fastball locations on the season, broken out by left- and right-handed hitters:
I staked my flag this spring that he was the likely breakout pitcher for Atlanta this year, but that heater has to be up in the zone a lot more reliably for that to be true. His most-used pitch on Saturday was a splitter, one that was in the zone less than 40% of the time.3 That’s something a reliever does, not a starter that’s hoping to go five or six innings. He has to be better.
Podded?
And he paid for those - both the leadoff double from Xavier Edwards and the two-run Matt Mervis homer came off of center-cut heaters.
By contrast, Miami’s Cal Quantrill hit the zone only 16% of the time with his splitter last night but he also had a 62% zone rate on his heater, throwing them almost equally.