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Braves’ Banuelos Reunion with Yankees a Mixed Bag

By Wayne Cavadi

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Manny Banuelos was once a prized pitching prospect in the New York Yankees system. He, along with the Killer Bees of Dellin Betances and Andrew Brackman, was the future of the Yankees rotation. We know how that turned out: Betances is one of the best set up men in baseball, Brackman is out of baseball, and Banuelos was traded this past offseason to the Atlanta Braves. 

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Last night in Gwinnett, the 24-year left-hander, squared off against his old team. The Gwinnett Braves hosted the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders and Banuelos would go 6 innings against his former mates. It was an interesting outing to say the least.

Banuelos of course, is now in his second season after missing essentially two years of baseball from Tommy John surgery. The young lefty started slow last season, going about three innings per performnce until he was finally stretched out. to go 6 or 7. This year there were no holds barred.

He did not have his A game last night, but he wasn’t absolutely terrible. Banuelos came out gunning with an 8-pitch first inning, five of which were strikes. He attacked the leadoff hitter and second batter with first pitch strikes and appeared to be in control, with a little chip on his shoulder against his old team.

The second inning is where Banuelos struggled and showed the problems he had last year. His fastball didn’t seem to be overpowering from the get go, hitting a mere 90 consistently on the gun. Without that go-to pitch, the rest of his arsenal would need to be spot on to maintain the RailRiders. It was not.

Take a look at the opening sequence of the second inning:

That’s a lot of balls and while the box score doesn’t show how wild Banuelos was last night (three walks and one hit batter, which could have been a lot more), he was falling behind nearly every batter early on. He threw 37 pitches in that second inning, 18 were for balls. That always leads to trouble when the fastball is down in velocity and the out pitches are all over the place.

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Luckily for Banuelos, with Jonathan Galvez on second and Slade Heathcott on first after another five pitch walk, the Braves Todd Cunningham made a spectacular diving catch in centerfield to end the second or the game would have been completely out of hand early. Instead, the Braves were able to erase the 4-0 deficit Banuelos pitted them and walk off with a win in the ninth getting Banuelos off the hook.

Aside from the second inning, Banuelos was able to get himself out of trouble the rest of the night, but his pitch location was a microcosm of the whole night. Banuelos had appearances like this last season, which MiLB called “effectively wild”, but they need to stop. He tossed 6 innings of baseball, in which he tossed 91 pitches. 42 of those were balls. When a pitcher throws 46 percent of his pitches for balls, he is putting hitters in a position to draw a walk or sit in a hitter’s count, and more often than not, Banuelos will pay the price with crooked innings.

It’s not to say Banuelos had an awful night. He went four solid innings after that rough second, only walking one more and striking out two more for three on the night. Banuelos needs to stop being his own worst enemy and falling behind in counts. He has the stuff to make it on the Major League level, but until he can find the zone more consistently and start stringing together consecutive strikes by the bus load, he will remain a top pitching prospect and not a big league pitcher.

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