As the Atlanta Braves continue to look for a fifth starter to begin the season with Mike Soroka likely out, Bryse Wilson is showing his postseason success wasn’t a fluke.
After the disappointment of the Atlanta Braves blowing a 3-1 lead in the NLCS wore off (maybe it still hasn’t worn off for some), many of us began to wonder what could be in 2021 with a fully healthy starting rotation that has Soroka and Max Fried at the top.
And then you think about the start Bryse Wilson had in the postseason and how he completely dominated the lineup of the eventual World Champion Dodgers.
With the Braves running out of starting pitchers to go to, they gave Bryse the ball in game four. he rewarded the team by giving up just 1 earned run on 1 hit and 1 walk over 6 innings with 5 strikeouts.
Just about every Braves fan was asking themselves after that game, “was that for real?”
Because it’s not like the Dodgers’ hitters were just having a bad night or were unlucky on balls in play, Bryse was dealing. He was locating all of his pitches and kept their hitters off balance.
It truly was a thing of beauty, and even watching the video above now, I still get chill bumps because of how awesome it was.
Now Bryse just has to prove that he can be that type of pitcher on a consistent basis.
Even after that start — and the good run Kyle Wright had before his blowup in the NLCS — the front office went out and got two starting pitchers this offseason, essentially pushing Wilson and Wright out of the starting rotation.
That would seem to indicate the Braves don’t believe their small sample size of success was real.
Or, more likely, they just don’t want to be caught in a scenario like 2020 where they’re scrambling to find starting pitching — to the point where they have to go out and get guys like Robbie Erlin and Tommy Milone.
Why Braves Should Believe in Wilson
Like with many of these young pitchers for the Braves, the stuff is there, it’s having the confidence to trust that stuff they’ve struggled with.
Bryse seemed to start and turn that corner — as did Wright — in the second half of 2020.
What is interesting about that game four start against the Dodgers, he pretty much ditched his slider (he only threw it once in that game), and primarily threw his fastball, change-up, curveball, and sinker.
He got eight swings-and-misses from the Dodgers in that game and none of them came on his curveball. Five of them came on fastballs, two on change-ups, and one on the sinker.
And he had 15 called strikes in the game — six on fastballs, two on change-ups, four on curveballs, and three on sinkers.
Part of that is just the Dodgers’ willingness to take pitches and work at-bats, but mostly it was because Wilson was trusting his stuff in the zone and getting ahead and counts. And he was keeping hitters off-balance that they had no idea what pitch was coming.
Unfortunately, I’ve only been able to see him on TV once this Spring, and it was his first outing. But the results are certainly there as he’s allowed just 2 earned runs on 10 hits and 1 walk over 9 innings with 6 strikeouts.
On Monday he pitched 4 scoreless innings allowing 5 singles and no walks and didn’t strike out anyone.
The key — as is the case with any big-league pitcher — is locating that fastball. Wilson has a good one, but if you leave it over the plate too often as he has in the past, any good big-league hitter is going to crush that pitch.
Against the Dodgers, he was able to dot the edges with that fastball, which set up his breaking pitches. And he was able to get his offspeed stuff over for strikes early in counts, again, keeping hitters off-balance.
If Wilson can continue to pitch like that, he’ll be a very solid middle of the rotation arm for a long time with the Braves. And the way he’s building on that postseason success this Spring, he’s likely going to get a chance to prove it wasn’t a fluke by starting the season in the rotation.