Reviewing Mississippi Braves Tyrell Jenkins’ Thursday Start
Tyrell Jenkins posted a solid start on Thursday for the Atlanta Braves Double-A affiliate the Mississippi Braves. He hurled six scoreless innings giving up six hits and two walks allowed while striking out six batters.
I’ll start my review of AA starters with a review of offseason acquisition Jenkins. Standard disclaimers that my previous reviews have contained in that I’m not a trained scout. For this particular game, I did not have access to the audio broadcast, and with the typically low-budget graphics of a minor league video broadcast, I did not get a chance to know the actual speed of any of the pitches.
First Inning
Leadoff hitter for Biloxi was Kyle Wren. Jenkins came right after Wren, moving the ball around up and down, inside and out before getting a groundout to first that Jenkins did a very nice job of hustling to first to cover.
Jenkins pounded Yadiel Rivera low in the zone before getting a grounder back to the mound. Jenkins dialed up another gear against elite shortstop prospect Orlando Arcia, pushing two high fastballs by Arcia. He then went off speed and off the plate with three consecutive pitches before blowing another bit of high heat past Arcia.
Second Inning
Nick Ramirez led off the inning against Jenkins. Tyrell went low and outside the first four pitches of the at-bat before he went middle outside on his fifth pitch, and Ramirez yanked it between the first and second baseman.
Michael Reed got three pitches all very close on the lower inside part of the zone, one he swung at, the other two split between a ball and a strike. Reed then slapped a ball out of the strike zone low sharply toward short.
Shortstop Daniel Castro made a great play and got up quickly with it to get the lead runner, but there was not enough time to try for the double play.
Jenkins flashed his best changeup on the second pitch to Taylor Green, with Green nearly falling down swinging so hard as the ball went by a full tick after his swing. Jenkins put a ball in Green’s sweet spot, but Green just missed it to fly out to right field.
Jenkins went back low to the right-handed Tyrone Taylor at the plate. Taylor laid down a perfect bunt between Jenkins and Rio Ruiz where neither had a play on Taylor, moving the runners to first and second. Jenkins then got a grounder by Adam Weisenburger to the right of shortstop that Castro flipped to Corban Joseph to end the inning.
Third Inning
On the first three pitches of the third inning, Jenkins got pitcher Tyler Wagner to ground out and Wren to fly out. Jenkins put out three very solid pitches low in the zone, trying to get Rivera to roll over one, but Rivera was patient and drove the fourth pitch of the at bat, an offspeed pitch that didn’t quite break down in the zone the way his previous pitches did, into right field for a single just out of reach of Corban Joseph.
Jenkins rebounded and pounded the low zone against Arcia and got a quick grounder to third base to end his inning.
Fourth Inning
Jenkins looped two curveballs to Ramirez to start the fourth, and Ramirez golfed one out of the zone between Castro and Matt Lipka in left field for a single.
Reed followed up with another single just out of the reach of second baseman Joseph. Jenkins did well going right at Green after the two singles, but Green didn’t offer on two sliders. Green then took the fourth pitch of the at bat nearly out of the park down the right field line. Jenkins got Green to ground back up the middle.
Jenkins knocked it down and got the runner at second, but if he let the ball get through, the M-Braves may have been able to get a double play.
He started Taylor off with an inside curve that froze Taylor. Jenkins tried to go even farther inside and Taylor didn’t bite. Taylor then fouled a changeup straight back.
Jenkins had another very good curveball that Taylor didn’t offer at and catcher Chris O’Dowd didn’t frame well at all before getting Taylor to strike out on yet another curveball.
Weisenburger then drew an easy walk on five pitches that Jenkins just didn’t have good control on. He was missing O’Dowd’s glove significantly through that at bat and into the first pitch against the pitcher Wagner.
O’Dowd went to the mound to calm Jenkins down, and Jenkins proceeded to uncork a wild pitch with the bases loaded that would have scored a run without a very lucky bounce and heads-up play by O’Dowd off the backstop. Jenkins recovered to strike out the pitcher to end the inning.
Fifth inning
Wren led off the fifth inning. After some struggles with his control in the fourth, Jenkins came back with good pitches, but Wren blooped another BABIP ball just out of Castro’s reach up the middle.
His first pitch to Rivera tailed inside as Rivera attempted to square up for a bunt. The pitch hit Rivera on the back leg, putting runners on first and second.
Jenkins missed low to Arcia and then didn’t get the call he was hoping for on the second pitch. To his credit, Jenkins didn’t try to nibble and went right back after Arcia, but he lost Arcia to a walk after Arcia was able to check his swing twice on sweeping pitches.
With the bases loaded, Jenkins took more time in between pitches to Ramirez. He got Ramirez to fly out high, but shallow, so the runners couldn’t advance. After an infield conference on the mound, Jenkins went after Reed, and on the comeback grounder to the mound, Jenkins wisely went home, and O’Dowd then went to first to get the double play and get out of the inning.
Sixth inning
In an interesting bit with the new rules to speed up the game, Jenkins got a “gift” strike in the first batter of the sixth when Green tried to call time out after Jenkins had already started his delivery.
Jenkins used a very pretty curveball to get the strikeout and send Green back to the bench talking to himself. He then struck out Taylor on three breaking pitches. He attacked Weisenburger with fastballs low in the zone, two of which Weisenburger fouled off, before getting him to ground a nice curveball to shortstop for a 1-2-3 inning.
Reviewing Tyrell Jenkins: Overall
In watching Jenkins, I can absolutely get why he generates power with his leg kick, but I can absolutely see why he’s struggled to keep his control at times as he had moments where he was inconsistent with that leg kick in its height and whether his leg was bent or straight.
Jenkins does work very quickly, so the new pitch clock is not an issue for him at all. Out of the stretch, Jenkins doesn’t have the timing deception in his delivery that his leg kick provides, which explains a lot of the “piling on” that he gets once he gives up a first hit and suddenly has snowballed into four more hits and a “blow up” inning.
Jenkins in the fourth and fifth did get BABIP’d by bloop singles and balls just outside of the reach of a defender. Jenkins did work his way out of both situations, though, to his credit.
Jenkins did miss out on a number of close pitches due to some very poor framing by O’Dowd behind the plate. He has a curveball that is absolutely ridiculous along with top end velocity. That combination alone is going to carry him, but he showed sliders that broke a bit too much, including one pitch that went to the backstop.
What I was most impressed by was the lack of visible difference in his arm action and arm speed on his changeup. He got a number of poor swings and swing and misses on changeups in this game. He certainly worked his way out of jams well enough to earn a win, but the Mississippi offense didn’t come alive until after Jenkins had left the game for a reliever.
I think I see a lot of positives in Jenkins’ game. That curveball is simply filthy.
The timing of his leg kick really seems to have hitters getting less-than-optimal contact on his pitches, but once he is in the stretch, it seems like he’s thrown off in his pitch timing, and the hits racked up once there was someone on base.
This is something that will have to be ironed out before the big leagues because there will be base runners on base at times in the major leagues, and he’ll have to be able to get outs from the stretch.
I also noted that Jenkins fielded an abnormal amount of hits, partly due to him being a very good athlete off of the mound, but also because he happened to get a number of balls back to him in this game.