Almost a full week into Spring Training, the biggest story coming out of the Yankees\u2019 camp has been starting pitching. Each of the first six games of the Grapefruit League schedule have seen impressive performances from a starter\u2014from Elmer Rodr\u00edguez posting three scoreless frames on the first game of the spring last Friday to Ryan Weathers lighting up radar guns last night. This afternoon, Rodr\u00edguez will get his second turn with the ball and try to keep the good times on the bump rolling against the Braves.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t forget: Elmer is on the roster for Team Puerto Rico in the upcoming World Baseball Classic. It\u2019s not entirely clear how big of a role he\u2019ll play for manager Yadier Molina\u2019s squad, but his confidence must be very high after his first spring start<\/a>, in which he faced an Opening Day-caliber Orioles lineup and shut them down over three innings. The Atlanta lineup he\u2019ll face today is \u2026 not quite that, as it doesn\u2019t seem like manager Walt Weiss brought a single likely starter on the road to Tampa. The only player on the Braves\u2019 projected Opening Day bench<\/a> is utilityman Brett Wiseley. Shout-out to long-ago Baby Bomber<\/a> Ben Gamel though, still getting after it as an NRI and batting cleanup.<\/p>\n If we make comparisons to last year\u2019s rookie starters, Elmer is closer in terms of profile to Will Warren, as opposed to fellow hotshot prospect Carlos Lagrange with his more Cam Schlittler-esque wipeout stuff. Rodr\u00edguez has already shown a knack for sequencing, allowing him to stay a few steps ahead of his opponents and allowing his stuff to play up. Still, it\u2019s not like he can\u2019t throw hard: his sinker reached 97 mph last Friday.<\/p>\n The Braves will send veteran and recent Yankee Carlos Carrasco to the hill today. Carrasco struggled in eight appearances with the Bombers last year, pitching to a 5.91 ERA before being cut loose. He joined Atlanta later in the year and was hit even harder, surrendering 15 runs in three games. Still, while he hasn\u2019t registered a positive WAR figure since 2022, that\u2019s not really the point with Carrasco. He\u2019s a highly experienced, well-regarded clubhouse figure who clearly still has the competitive fire. The soon-to-be 39-year old righty pitched well in his first spring start, with two scoreless frames against the Rays.<\/p>\n Cookie will face a plethora of his former Yankee teammates this afternoon. The first eight lineup spots are essentially the full regular season order. Trent Grisham, Aaron Judge, and Cody Bellinger, all playing in the outfield, will get us started. Jazz Chisholm Jr. will man the keystone, Paul Goldschmidt anchors first, and Austin Wells will don the tools of ignorance. Ryan McMahon and Jos\u00e9 Caballero are your left-side infielders with former A\u2019s power bat Seth Brown pulling up the rear at DH.<\/p>\n Location: George M. Steinbrenner Field \u2014 Tampa, FL<\/p>\n TV broadcast: YES Network, Gray TV (ATL), MLB Network (out-of-market)<\/p>\n Radio broadcast: ESPN 103.7 WIFN 1340 (ATL)<\/p>\n Online stream: Gotham Sports App, MLB.tv<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Almost a full week into Spring Training, the biggest story coming out of the Yankees\u2019 camp has been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":594585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2394],"tags":[191,46,4166,5,192,4,38538],"class_list":{"0":"post-594584","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-atlanta-braves","8":"tag-atlanta","9":"tag-atlanta-braves","10":"tag-atlantabraves","11":"tag-baseball","12":"tag-braves","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-yankees-game-threads"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116138540427693054","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=594584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/594585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}