Kyle Wright will begin his offer for a place of rotation when the Braves play against the Rays at the opening of both teams’ Grapefruit League season on Sunday afternoon at Charlotte Sports Park.
Wright is scheduled to start and launch two entries for Braves, who will also have Sean Newcomb, Grant Dayton, Carl Edwards Jr., Chad Sobotka and Patrick Weigel all available to make a appearance of relief.
According to the 2021 spring training protocols, spring games until March 13 will be scheduled as seven-entry games, but, by mutual agreement of both coaches, can be shortened to five entries or increased to nine entries. Games that take place after March 14 will be scheduled as nine-entry games, but can be shortened to seven-entry games. Braves coach Brian Snitker said he expects all of his team’s games to be scheduled for seven entries in this two-week period.
With a street game also scheduled for Monday against the Red Sox, Snitker said he expects to play only half of his regulars in the Grapefruit League debut.
“I think we’re just going to spread it out,” said Snitker. “We have a lot of guys that we want to see.”
The Braves’ rotation plans will depend on what is determined in relation to Mike Soroka in the coming weeks. Although the team has not ruled out the possibility that Soroka will be ready at the start of the regular season, the expectation is that he will be given more time to recover from a ruptured right Achilles tendon.
If Soroka really starts the season on the injured list, Wright and Bryse Wilson are the main candidates for the rotation vacancy.
Wright has been on the Atlanta Opening Day list for each of the past two seasons. But the 25-year-old right-hand posted an ERA of 6.59, totaling just 12 career starts so far. He showed some promise when he finished last year’s regular season with three strong starts and then launched six goalless entries against Marlins in Game 3 of the National League Division Series.
Freeman’s arrival
Freddie Freeman spent this week looking after his wife, Chelsea, who gave birth to the couple’s third child last weekend. The current NL MVP is due to arrive in Florida on Friday night and complete his admission test on Saturday. This prepares you to start training with your fellow Braves on Monday.
Even if Freeman missed the entire first week of the Grapefruit League season, he would still have more than three weeks to prepare for Opening Day.
“It’s not a big deal,” said Snitker. “As you remember, he usually gets hot in the first 10 days of [the Grapefruit League season] and is bored for 10 days and then goes back to work. I don’t care about that. “
Other spring training protocols
For Spring Training games until March 13, defensive managers will have the option to finish an inning before the third out, provided that at least 20 shots have been totaled in the middle and an appearance of the plate is not in progress. This will end the common practice of having to summon possibly unprepared Minor League pitchers to make an abrupt entry after a pitcher exceeds his target pitch count within an inning.
The minimum three batters rule will come into effect for all games played on or after March 14.
Managers will also have the option to reinsert pitchers throughout the spring training. This will give managers the option of using a reliever in a given situation to end an entry and then possibly bring their initiator back to start the next entry.