Braves Call Up Jake Brigham

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Slow developer

The 27 year old Brigham is a power pitcher whose fastball sits in the mid-90s and reaches the the upper-90s on occasion. He used to throw an overhand curve but eventually transitioned to a slider. He’s attempted to add a change but it’s been a work in progress.

The Pirates signed him to a minor league contract for 2014 with an invitation to spring training.Brigham has always been a starter. He was slow to develop and remained in A ball until 2011 then spent the next three seasons bouncing between AA and AAA.

Despite the two-pitch repertoire, he’s mostly been a starter and a largely ground ball pitcher (41%). The overall numbers weren’t particularly impressive with ERAs above 4 WHIPs running 1.4 + since 2011.This year however things have changed quite a bit.

Updated:

Brigham told Mark Bowman most of improvement came when pitching coach Brad Holan suggested he add a sinker to his extra warm heater and slider.

"“We started messing around with it and it led to first-pitch outs, quick outs, a lot of ground balls, (and) going deeper into games.. . It’s been a real weapon (when) behind in the count, something that moves and is going to put the ball on the ground.”"

More from Tomahawk Take

Brigham was named Southern League Pitcher of the Week two weeks in a row (May 25-31 & June 1-7) after taking a perfect game into the ninth inning on June 4 before surrendering a double

He retired 24 straight batters on 82 pitches, taking a perfect game into the ninth before the double but that was all they got as he faced only one batter over the minimum in his complete game one-hitter He finished with 96 pitches, 68 of them for strikes. There’s a short video from that game here.

In 12 starts for the M-Braves Brigham posted 3.05 ERA and 1.062 WHIP striking out 49, walking 14 and giving up only one home run in 65 IP. Those numbers earned him a call up to Gwinnett where he made just one appearance before getting the call.

That’s A Wrap

Brigham may seem an odd choice for an add to the roster at this point and a call up. The Braves haven’t said whether Perez will go on the DL but that seems to me to be the only logical course of action. Injuries to pitcher’s legs and feet can cause all sorts of unconscious adjustments to their mechanics which in turn can cause further injury. Risking Perez too soon would be silly – as was leaving him in after getting smacked with a line drive last night – and too big a risk to take when Manny Banuelos is pitching lights out at Gwinnett.

The potential for a double header tomorrow if the game today was rained out was likely the impetus for the call up of Brigham and he could simply be the 26th man in the event that was the case. The weather doesn’t show any sign of knocking the game out however and the real reason may be the potential unavailability of Luis Avilan from the bullpen today and a reluctance to use Sugar ray Marimon for anything but long work.

Whatever the reason it’s easy to root for a guy like Brigham getting his chance after nine years of bouncing around the minors particularly when he seems to have figured it out and almost threw a perfect game two weeks ago. Jake is on Twitter as @jbrigham49 and along with (it appears mostly by) his wife Taylor they have a blog about his minor league travels and her love of fashion.

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