TAMPA, FLORIDA – MARCH 21, 2026: Alex Lodise #74 of the Atlanta Braves warms up during the first inning of a spring training Spring Breakout game against the New York Yankees at George M. Steinbrenner Field on March 21, 2026 in Tampa, Florida. (Photo by Nick Cammett/Diamond Images via Getty Images) | Diamond Images/Getty Images
The Columbus Clingstones went on a tear offensively, with Alex Lodise and Jordan Groshans each vying for the system lead in home runs with their output on Thursday night. Eric Hartman has yet to hit a home run in Double-A as those two have passed him up, but is showing some signs of life as well, while the pitching from top-to-bottom gave every level something to look at.
(61-61) Gwinnett Stripers 1, (56-66) Durham Bulls 3
Box Score
Statcast
Patrick Clohisy, CF: 0-4, .374/.447/.539
Lizandro Espinoza, SS: 0-4, .286/.286/.714
JR Ritchie, SP: 5.2 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 3 BB, 7 K, 3.22 ERA
Rolddy Munoz, RP: 1 IP, 1 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 1 BB, 1 K, 3.74 ERA
JR Ritchie led the way in a well-pitched evening for the Gwinnett Stripers even though they choked the game away later on. Ritchie has been out of the zone too much in his recent starts and that did carry over for this game, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he commanded the ball poorly. He was elevating his fastball consistently even if he didn’t force a lot of chases above the zone, and was able to avoid his sinker getting battered around in the early innings. Once he settled into a groove late in this game and opened up the arsenal he hit the next level and his breaking stuff was at its peak for this outing. Ritchie had eight misses on his breaking ball which carried him to his seven strikeouts, and it was his ability to land the curveball at or below the strike zone that really stood out from this outing. Fastball and curveball placement being pluses doesn’t necessarily mesh with the walk rates we have seen from him recently but there really isn’t much to complain about with how he attacked on those two pitches. His changeup wasn’t where it needed to be which limited how effective he could be with the pitch as he left it up and on his glove side more often than not. He didn’t use it much at all until he got into the third trip through the order where he was mixing pitches well and hitters were off balance on much of what he was throwing, and he hit his peak in the fifth inning by striking out three batters with two men on base to protect a 1-0 lead.
While Ritchie was rolling the offense scuffled and got a bit lucky to get a run at all. Brett Wisely led off in the second inning by forcing a walk and then stole second base, so when Kyle Farmer’s chopped to the right side slid just past the first baseman Wisely was able to trot home and give Gwinnett a 1-0 lead. That lead held until the ninth inning. Neither pitching staff gave ground and Gwinnett turned to Rolddy Munoz. Munoz, unfortunately, had one of his blow up starts. Munoz had absolutely no clue where anything was going, and before you could blink he gave up a leadoff double, hit two batters, then walked home the tying run. Durham got two more in on sacrifices, but it should have been much worse. Munoz threw a slider dead center that got absolutely hammered into the right center field gap, but a diving play from Patrick Clohisy turned a bases-clearing hit into a sacrifice fly and kept Gwinnett in the game. The Stripers got two on in the ninth inning, but failed to score any of them. That diving catch from Clohisy was his lone contribution to the game, but it was a much improved version of Clohisy over some of his recent offensive outings. He made solid contact on a couple of occasions and put up a good approach at the plate, and if he can show more comfort with sliders like in this outing he should be able to put this recent meh stretch behind him. I’m really excited to see Lizandro Espinoza finally healthy again especially with the home run in yesterday’s game. He was not as successful last night with an 0-4 showing and I expect him to face an uphill battle trying to come back from injury and get a look at a new level, but he’s a player that is really worth a look. I was a fan of the changes to his approach that we’ve seen and increased impact he is making on the ball, and I thought prior to his injury he was on his way to a breakout season. He’s flown under the radar but steadily improved everything he needed to since joining the Braves, and the hit tool questions are a major concern but if he’s drawing walks, hitting the ball as hard as he has this season, and playing solid shortstop he’s going to get some major league looks at some point.
Swing and Misses
JR Ritchie – 14
(55-57) Columbus Clingstones 6, (61-56) Montgomery Biscuits 1
Box Score
John Gil, 2B: 1-4, .293/.373/.397
Eric Hartman, LF: 0-4, .211/.348/.228
Alex Lodise, SS: 1-4, HR, .182/.250/.455
Owen Carey, RF: 0-4, .232/.328/.411
Garrett Baumann, SP: 7 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 7 K, 4.26 ERA
Last week Garrett Baumann went nine innings and this week he cruised through another seven with a game that was even better than it looks in the final stat line. Baumann gave up a run in the first inning when a hitter managed to muscle a fastball up and in out to right field for a double, then scored on a wild pitch that bounced well away from Archer Brookman behind the plate. After that he was in complete control of the game. Baumann dominated the top of the strike zone with his fastball, and Baumann often lives and dies by fastball command so seeing him this sharp was a great outcome. He consistently threw his four seamer past hitters, and when he needed to his curveball and changeup both had the bottom of the zone and produced results. Baumann’s curveball has taken a step to being the breaking pitch he needed to get him over the hump, and with that the biggest step is going to be consistently finding the edge with his fastball. Much of the damage against him comes because he lets his fastball drift down and doesn’t really have the fastball traits to miss a lot of bats, so days like this are refreshing when projecting him to another shot at Triple-A. He still lacks a pitch that I project as a go-to bat misser at the major league levels, but he has the basic command building blocks and an average arsenal top-to-bottom which should be enough to push him to a future as a starter.
The offense was the Jordan Groshans show once again. Groshans had his third-multi home run game of the season, a performance that pushed his hitting streak to 11 games. in that 11 game span he has six home runs and only three strikeouts, and this game would have pulled him into a tie for the system lead with 25 home runs. It would have been a tie, except before he got the chance Alex Lodise hit his first Double-A long ball. Lodise. Lodise showed off his great pop by staying back on a sinker and shooting it over the wall to right center field, and so far he has looked solid in the adjustment to Double-A. He had a couple of aggressive hacks on fastballs too far up for him to reach and whiffed, and that’s still something he needs to tone down in his approach, but he has continued to look better against spin. There were a few hard hit near misses in this game as well. Eric Hartman is still looking for his first Double-A home run and had another near miss, driving a ball in the first inning to the deepest part of the park where it died for a fly out. John Gil did a similar trick a few innings later, crushing a hanging slider out to left field where it died just shy of leaving the yard. I think Hartman has done well in terms of his approach upon being promoted, he just isn’t getting fastballs in the zone and he’s not producing a ton of power on other pitches. He’s been making more contact than the strikeout rates suggest and he’s just a bit off from hitting his stride. The biggest issue I see is that pitchers are keeping the ball away from him and he is still trying to yank those pitches, which is leading to more rollover ground balls than anything. His swing is geared to the pull side and it’s what makes him successful so it’s nothing the Braves can really change, but an attack plan to have better success on the outer third is going to be a key stepping stone for him.
Swing and Misses
Garrett Baumann – 18
Owen Hackman – 3
(56-58) Rome Emperors 5, (53-64) Hub City Spartanburgers 4
Box Score
Carter Beck, CF: 0-4, RBI, .182/.182/.182
Conor Essenburg, RF: 1-4, RBI, .204/.405/.296
Luis Guanipa, DH: 1-4, .224/.234/.355
Ethan Bagwell, SP: 3.2 IP, 4 H, 4 R, 4 ER, 2 BB, 1 K, 3.83 ERA
I tried to watch this game and think of what went wrong for Ethan Bagwell, and the honest answer is that it wasn’t very much. He allowed four runs in the second inning but the Spartanburgers did not hit the ball hard against him, and there were some borderline pitches in two-strike counts that went against him that extended at least one at bat longer than it should have gone. Bagwell didn’t have the best feel for his slider in this game and that didn’t help his cause, and it’s why he struggled to miss bats, but his fastball command was strong throughout. Bagwell worked around the edges with his fastball and utilized the pitch to get weak ground balls and quick outs, but that also had the effect of him having one inning where all of those hits found grass at the same time. It wasn’t Bagwell’s best work, because without a secondary offering to carry the weight late in counts he struggles to finish at bats and is reliant on batted ball luck, but his command was good enough and the batted balls he allowed don’t really support the four runs he gave up. He left his last start with some back soreness, so him being healthy for this game was already a positive, and it’s not great to speculate but it wouldn’t be out of the question to say there is still a lingering issue there. He was not near as sharp with his breaking ball as he has been for the past two months and I don’t expect that to be a trend that holds.
There wasn’t a huge amount to write home about offensively as Rome just took care of their opportunities when they had them. The Spartanburgers issued a lot of walks and hit Cody Miller a couple of times, and that put the Emperors in position to score runs which they pulled off. It was just a 1-4 day from Luis Guanipa but he looked as good as I’ve seen him at this level and he’s definitely working through some changes that are affecting his swing. He was aggressive in his first couple of at bats but he was swinging at hittable pitches in the strike zone, and in both cases he attacked with the intent to hit it hard on the pull side. One of those turned into a hard hit single, and approach early in the count is exactly what I’m hoping to see more of as the season draws to a close. He had some decent takes in his third at bat and ended with a ground out, and the only at bat he really looked uncomfortable was against a side-armer in the 7th inning. Guanipa is always going to be aggressive, and I’m fine with that sacrifice as long as he’s taking those hacks with intent to do more than just make contact and he did so in this game. Conor Essenburg had a couple of hard hit balls in addition to a couple of strikeouts. On the first one he just got beat and didn’t approach the at bat well, but the second wasn’t fully his fault. The opposing pitcher got two borderline calls, neither of which Essenburg liked and both of which were probably out of the zone, and it led to him feeling he had to chase a fastball off of the edge 0-2. Carter Beck had a rough one, with weak contact in his three plate appearances before ending the game getting dominated by a guy with a good changeup. This is the first time I’ve seen Beck really look lost against a specific pitch and I’m going to be keeping a close eye in future games on how he looks against right-handed changeups.
Swing and Misses
Jacob Shafer – 5
Ethan Bagwell – 5
(62-54) Augusta GreenJackets 3, (58-58) Columbia Fireflies 4
Box Score
Patrick Brosius, RF: 2-4, 2B, .297/.413/.514
Juan Mateo, SS: 1-4, BB, .254/.332/.356
Davis Polo, SP: 6.2 IP, 5 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 1 BB, 3 K, 3.25 ERA
Davis Polo had an interesting dynamic in this start. His slider was solid but he wasn’t pitching with his best changeup, and he had to make some adjustments to find success against left-handed hitters. To start with the three runs, he made a couple of bad pitches that led to the Fireflies getting a run on an RBI double, but the rest of the inning was just bad luck. The next hitter got rewarded with an infield single that could have been called an error, but in any case was a bad hop that got away from the second baseman and led directly to another run to no fault of Polo. Polo ran into some control issues in the fifth inning that led to a run, but otherwise he did a good job of locating his fastball. For much of the game Polo was feeding sinkers low and mixing in sliders, and he got a ton of ground balls as usual but his secondaries just weren’t getting the results he was used to. Polo doesn’t pitch up in the strike zone as often as a lot of Braves prospects, but when he turned to that the second time through the order he had his best innings of the night. He was consistently pumping 93-95 and hitting it on the top edge of the strike zone, and the Fireflies couldn’t get to it to fight it off. Polo doesn’t often miss bats like that with his fastball and it was nice to see that facet of his game, and it’s something I would like to see be part of his approach more often in the future. That is dependent on Polo being able to actually command the ball there, which isn’t always a given, but it gives a lot more depth to his arsenal.
There wasn’t a great offensive showing from anybody, as top-to-bottom the lineup struck out quite a bit and it prevented them from taking advantage of the opportunities they were given often enough. Parker Brosius was the exception with a single, a double, and a hard hit fly out late in the game, but that’s going to be the expectation for him moving forward. I am interested to see Brosius tested against better stuff, because I want to see if he is going to be able to handle pitchers that can land fastballs on the inner half and breaking balls away more consistently. Brosius’s swing path can get long to the ball and he’s gear to yank everything, but I don’t see enough bat speed there to get away with that against consistently good velocity. He also doesn’t have a swing that shows the athleticism to adjust to spin and he’s going to be on top of it with his approach, those these are early returns and also pretty picky complaints for a ninth round pick at this stage.
Swing and Misses
Davis Polo – 10
Cristobal Abreu – 3