Braves Minor League Recap: Rome was off to the races on a rainy Friday

The weather on Friday did not want to cooperate for the Atlanta Braves farm system as rain wiped out the minor league games for both Gwinnett and Augusta with Saturday appearing to look pretty grim as well in terms of the forecast. Mississippi struggled in their season opener while Rome used speed on both sides of the ball and some timely hits to remain undefeated.

Gwinnett Stripers

Postponed - Rain sucks

Gwinnett will make up Friday's game against Norfolk on May 31

Mississippi Braves

Box Score - 4/7

Roddery Munoz took the mound for Mississippi in their season opener and struggled to consistently find the strike zone as well as to keep one of the top prospects in all of baseball, Jackson Chourio, in check. In four innings of work, he gave up three runs on three hits and four walks while striking out three batters on 67 pitches. It was his first start of the season, so it is probably best to not read too much into this one appearance, but Roddery does have a history of inconsistency when it comes to his command. As a result, we are gonna keep an eye on it. The Mississippi bullpen did a really nice job, though, as they threw five scoreless innings with seven strikeouts.

As for the Mississippi offense, well...there really wasn't much of one as they managed only three singles the entire game. If you are looking for someone that stood out the most, that was Luke Waddell who collected one of those singles while also walking a pair of times. Waddell is coming off an injury-shortened 2022 season, so its nice to see him start things off on the right foot.

Rome Braves

Box Score - 4/7

JJ Niekro was on the bump for Rome on Friday evening and he looked okay outside of a rough first inning where he gave up a hit and a pair of walks. In fact, it looked like it could be a really short night for Niekro until Kadon Morton bailed him out with an incredible throw on a fly ball to left that nailed the runner at home to end the inning. Seriously, it was an amazing throw. After Hunter Riggins came in out of the bullpen and struggled to throw strikes and walked four batters, the Rome bullpen managed to limit the damage the rest of the way.

As for the Rome offense, a fairly strong wind blowing in last night meant that they were going to have to use some small ball to push runs across last night and that is exactly what he did. Kevin Kilpatrick Jr. was impressive as he had a hit, two walks, and two stolen bases on Friday (although the ejection he got late in the game was less good). Just one of those guys whose athleticism really plays in games. Keshawn Ogans had a big two-run double to give Rome the lead. As for Nacho Alvarez, he was relatively and seemed overly passive in watching some center-cut offspeed stuff down the middle go by him, but he still had an opposite field single that drove in a run. A hat tip to Stephen Paolini as he had three walks in the game, stole a base, and made a really nice running catch towards the right field corner as well.

Augusta GreenJackets

Postponed - Rain sucks

Augusta will try to make this game up today (4/8) although the forecast in Georgia on Saturday may make actually doing so a bit problematic.