Atlanta Braves news and links: Another bad day for Bartolo

BRAVES NEWS

Houston clobbers Colon as Atlanta loses again

Bartolo Colon’s rough start to the 2017 season continued in Houston, as the Astros walloped him for five runs in the first inning and then added three more earned runs on Colon’s tally to eventually win the game 8-3.

ESPN: Freeman is Atlanta’s new Chipper Jones

Freddie Freeman has been receiving some high praise from national media outlets as he’s picked up exactly where he left off last season with his performances with the bat. In fact, Jerry Crasnick ESPN has gone so far as to say that Freeman’s become the Braves’ reincarnation of Chipper Jones. Now that is high praise.

Freeman, meanwhile, has developed into a monster player in Atlanta. He has found his "man strength," as manager Brian Snitker refers to it, and set career highs with 34 homers and a .569 slugging percentage in 2016. This season, he's off to an even more impressive start at the plate.

"When you're committing the kind of dollars we committed to Freddie Freeman, the best predictor of the future was the past," [former Braves GM Frank] Wren said. "In every park we played in, we saw Freddie take batting practice and hit balls as far as anyone. If you add power to what we had already seen, then you've got a star. That's what we're seeing today."

Braves promote Acuna and he shines immediately

The Braves made a couple of big promotions on the farm yesterday. Patrick Weigl is now a member of the G-Braves, and 19-year old top prospect Ronald Acuna has apparently been strapped on to a rocket ship because the Braves have decided that he’s ready for AA baseball. Acuna proceeded to reward the franchise’s confidence in him by hitting a dinger in his first plate appearance at the AA level.

Was Chuck Hernandez the right choice as pitching coach?

The Braves are off to a slow start this season, which was to be expected. WIth that being said, I don’t think that anybody expected the rotation to be as beleaguered as they are right now. Should we be blaming new pitching coach Chuck Hernandez for these issues? Kris brought up the question after Mark Bowman discussed it in his latest mailbag for the Braves’ website.

Bowman has been critical of the decision to replace McDowell, but it is a valid question to ask given the Braves’ early struggles in the pitching department. Colon and Dickey have struggled to start the season. Garcia has been better but the bar overall has been set pretty low.

From a team perspective, perhaps their thinking is that the future will begin much sooner than many were expecting. Sean Newcomb has shown flashes in Triple-A as has Lucas Sims who has saved his status as a prospect with a solid turnaround this season. A little further back are guys like Max Fried and Patrick Weigel.

The point is, this staff could go from one of the oldest to one of the youngest quickly

MLB NEWS

Amazin Avenue: New York shouldn’t trade Harvey

Meanwhile in New York, the drama between the Mets and Matt Harvey continues to rage on as things have turned into, as Grant Brisbee described it, “another episode of LOL Mets.” Meanwhile, this has brought up the question of whether or not the Mets should try to trade Harvey. You could argue that his trade value is probably at the floor right now, but our friends at Amazin Avenue believe that now isn’t the time to trade him anyways.

There may come a time that trading Harvey would make sense for the Mets, as it seems pretty clear at this point that the team and player won’t be together beyond the 2018 season. But that time isn’t now. The Mets need Harvey to improve on the mound, both for the team’s success this year and for him to establish any value whatsoever if they want to trade him.

Britton may be out until after the All-Star break

Baltimore may have to find a way to deal with missing one of the game’s best relievers, as the arm injury that placed Zach Britton on the disabled list is probably going to keep him out for a long time. The latest progonosis has him missing 45-60 days, which would be a huge problem for the O’s — both now and in the future.

Britton rushing back is what seems to have made the problem, whatever it is, worse this time around, so the team should do all that it can to ensure that doesn’t happen again.

For what it’s worth, Britton himself, responding to the reports saying 45-60 days, told MLB.com’s Brittany Ghiroli, “I’d be shocked if I’m not back within 45 days.” At best, it seems they will have to get through the rest of May and much of June with a Britton-less bullpen.