ORGANIZATION REPORTS
The question was about the quality of Josh Green’s sinker, a pitch that was said to have fallen off last season, and the 25-year-old righthander didn’t even need to hear it in its entirety before providing an answer.
“It’s right where it needs to be,” Green said. “It’s doing what it’s supposed to right now—and some.”
When it is right, Green’s sinker can be a dominant pitch. It helped him record one of the highest groundball rates in the minors in 2019. But the pitch was said to have lost some of its effectiveness at the D-backs’ alternate training site last year.
Green said there was a good reason for that. He spent the bulk of last year working to refine his cutter. For years, the pitch—which in the past was more of a slider—wouldn’t behave in quite the way Green had wanted. But something clicked last year.
And so if the sinker temporarily lost some of its bite as a result, Green is more than OK with that trade-off.
“It’s been really satisfying,” said Green a 14th round pick in 2018 from Southeastern Louisiana. “For two or three years now, I’ve been trying to develop that with the slider I was throwing before and it was never quite good enough to be what I wanted it to be.
“Now I have that weapon (with the cutter) to be able to back lefties off the plate when I want to or to extend the plate to righties.”
Green said he spent part of the quarantine period throwing against a quilt that was clamped to a chain-link fence in his backyard. He eventually found a cutter grip that felt right, and when he got the team’s alternate site, he worked with the pitching coaches to further refine it.
He said he is trying to make his sinker and cutter look as similar as possible out of his hand, with the hope that their late life in opposite directions will cause problems for hitters.
“All the feedback I’ve gotten on the cutter is that it’s late and it’s sharp,” he said.
—NICK PIECORO
ATLANTA BRAVES
Young Braves catchers Alex Jackson or William Contreras were poised expanded roles in Atlanta this season.
Jackson, 25, and Contreras, 23, had combined for 13 games in the majors. Jackson was a 2014 first-round pick by the Mariners who, through position changes and inconsistent offense, has struggled establishing himself.
While Jackson boasts high-level power—he hit 28 homers in Triple-A in 2019—it hasn’t translated to major league production Jackson was 2-for-20 across the past two seasons with the Braves.
“Alex is very talented,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said. “I’ve always loved Alex behind the plate, his receiving and throwing. The biggest thing has been contact, even in the minor leagues. He’s got power, we all see that. He’s got natural power. But he hasn’t made a whole lot of contact.”
Contreras, meanwhile, is are considered the best catching prospects in the Braves’ organization.
