Saturday was a day to forget for the Atlanta Braves. For starters, they got absolutely destroyed by the Tigers in their spring matchup with the Tigers as they fell by the score of 16-7. Spring training results absolutely should and do not matter in the grand scheme of things as teams are playing players that are both rusty and are not big leaguers, but that doesn't mean it is fun for anyone involved when games like that happen.
However, the more troubling thing was to see the relievers that the Braves are going to rely on the most struggle mightily. Raisel Iglesias gave up a couple of runs and AJ Minter got knocked around and was only able to record a single out. Again, it is just spring training, but we are creeping up on Opening Day and it certainly would have been better to have those guys looking sharper.
More Braves News
Other than their spring matchup yesterday, it was a pretty quiet news day for the Braves. However, our friends over at Battery Power put together a really nice writeup on what things could look like if Vaughn Grissom doesn't work out at shortstop. One name that I would add as a dark horse is Braden Shewmake. While I am not personally high on Shewmake's bat, we do know that the guy can play shortstop defensively and the Braves seem to like him.
MLB News
The big baseball news yesterday was the Diamondbacks giving one of the top prospects in baseball, Corbin Carroll, an eight year, $111 million extension. The deal is somewhat similar to the deal that Ronald Acuna Jr. got from the Braves once you factor in some salary inflation. If the club option is exercised, the deal can be worth $134 million. For those wondering, yeah....Corbin is probably that good and this is a really good move by Arizona.
Arte Moreno pulling back his desire to sell the Angels this past offseason was a fairly big deal at the time and it is decidedly unclear as to whether or not the move will be good for the franchise going forward. However, he did go on the record to talk about how the sale process was going before he made the decision to keep the team and it is a reminder that one shouldn't feel too badly for MLB owners because teams are incredibly valuable.