10 thoughts on Braves at the start of June

This story was excerpted from Mark Bowman’s Braves Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

As the Braves lost the first two games of this week’s series against the A’s, I saw a lot of folks playfully saying there would be a need for a second annual June 1 team meeting at Chase Field. The posts were funny. So too are the memories of the players who said the meeting consisted of manager Brian Snitker saying, "Don’t panic, everything is going to be fine."

These team meetings are often pretty boring. Hopefully, you won’t think the same of these 10 rambling thoughts about the Braves.

1. How bad has the bullpen been recently? While walking through the crowd to get to the clubhouse last week, I heard a young boy say, “I’d have rather seen Danny Young in that spot.”

2. Young has a 1.08 ERA in 8 1/3 innings with Atlanta and a 6.00 ERA in nine innings for Triple-A Gwinnett this year. He’s currently at the Minor League level, but he might never be more beloved than he currently is by Braves fans. That’s baseball.

3. But there actually was reason to be encouraged by the Braves bullpen over the past few days. Lucas Luetge was designated for assignment after proving the pitch timer can only do so much. More importantly, AJ arrived and A.J. seems to be returning to form

4. A.J. Minter looked more like himself as he worked a third straight scoreless appearance on Wednesday. As for AJ Smith-Shawver, he looks just a couple years older than he did when he first started pitching.

5. Remember a couple weeks ago, when I pointed out how remarkable it was for Smith-Shawver to reach the Triple-A level after just 26 professional starts, 10 fewer than Steve Avery during his meteoric rise? Now, Smith-Shawver finds himself at the Major League level after just 110 innings above the high school level, and 19 above the High A level. Scouts raved about this 20-year-old last summer, saying he was clearly the Braves’ best pitching prospect. But nobody saw this coming, especially those who didn’t utilize him as a pitcher until the summer before his senior year.

6. If Smith-Shawver gains a high-leverage role in the bullpen and Minter gets back to where he was last year, when he was one of the game’s top relievers, the Braves bullpen will improve. But it could really go from liability to asset if Kirby Yates and Joe Jiménez start to earn some high-leverage confidence. Jesse Chavez was expected to be the best-liked guy in Atlanta’s bullpen. He wasn’t supposed to enter May as the third-best relief option.

7. Watching Orlando Arcia play this season, I’ve questioned why there was even a shortstop competition in Spring Training. But I can’t really talk. A few days before the regular season began, I predicted Braden Shewmake would lead Atlanta in shortstop starts this year.

So, it’s not like I bought into Arcia as an everyday player either. Heck, I’m not sure Arcia or his agent did, based on the three-year, $7.3 million deal signed on Opening Day. But despite missing a little more than three weeks with a fractured wrist, he ranks eighth among shortstops with a 1.3 fWAR.

8. It’s incredible to see the Braves have posted the fourth-best starting pitching ERA (3.35) since either Max Fried or Kyle Wright last threw a pitch. Now Michael Soroka has returned and Fried could be about a month from rejoining this rotation.

9. I compared Marcell Ozuna's production to that of a guy who couldn’t see (2022 Eddie Rosario) and expected he would have been released once Travis d'Arnaud returned from the injured list. Baseball creates crazy developments. But April Ozuna becoming May Ozuna was one of the craziest I’ve ever seen.

10. Michael Harris II is going to hit 20-plus homers this year. Crazy? Well, he hit 19 homers after debuting on May 28 last year. He already has two, and after being either sidelined or restricted by a knee brace throughout a significant portion of this season’s first two months, he’s about to go on a tear.