Braves News: Braves routed by Dominican Republic, rotation battle, more

It was a pretty quiet day for the Atlanta Braves yesterday with the notable exception of their matchup against the Dominican Republic. The DR national team is absolutely loaded and, well, things did not go well for the Atlanta professional baseball club of record.

The Braves ran out a lineup consisting of mostly fringe roster contenders and minor leaguers while the Dominican had their own All-Star team and were subbing in guys like Wander Franco and Ketel Marte. The Braves did their best, but ended up getting destroyed by the score of 9-0. Take some solace in knowing that that Dominican team is a prohibitive favorite in the ongoing World Baseball Classic.

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Elsewhere on the side, we had an update on the state of the competition for the Braves' fifth rotation spot. There is a chance that the Braves will need more than one of these guys to start the season especially if Kyle Wright needs a little more time to get ready and fully stretched out than expected, but the team doesn't have a shortage of interesting candidates.

MLB News

We had an actual trade go down yesterday as the Rangers traded the uber versatile Mark Mathias to the Pirates for a player to be named later. We know that the Pirates love them some players that don't cost real money, but Mathias is actually an interesting bat that can play all over the field even though his offensive upside is limited.

The Braves former scouting director and news Astros' new general manager Dana Brown knows a thing or two about the merits of trying to lock up young players before free agency. In fact, one of his first orders of business in Houston is to try and get some extensions done before the 2023 season. Brown went on the record to talk about his philosophy when it comes to extensions and gave some updates on the status of such talks with Kyle Tucker and Framber Valdez.