The Braves are “95 percent sure” Brandon Beachy will start Monday against the Rockies for injured Tim Hudson. Beachy was back at Turner Field off his minor league rehabilitation assignment to throw a side session on Saturday.
“We’re going to make sure that he wakes up tomorrow and nothing’s messed up,” Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez said. “That’s why we really haven’t officially announced it. But I don’t foresee anything. After his last start he was good, his last couple of starts.”
Beachy is expected to make his first start after 13 ½ months out following Tommy John surgery in place of Hudson, who suffered a gruesome ankle fracture Wednesday night at Citi Field.
“I had completed my game (with Gwinnett),” Beachy said. “I went over and checked my phone and I had a couple messages (that) said ‘hey did you see what happened to Huddy,’ and then found video shortly after. Made me sick to my stomach. I felt terrible.”
The Braves plan to put Paul Maholm on the disabled list when they activate Beachy. Maholm is nursing a sore left wrist, which Gonzalez said still bothered him trying to throw on Friday.
“We shut him down after about 10, 12 tosses,” Gonzalez said. “Just as suspected. It’s going to be a while.”
He wouldn’t be eligible to come off the DL until August 5 in Washington.
Minor benefits from cutter
After Mike Minor held the Cardinals to one run on seven innings in a 4-1 win Friday night, Carlos Beltran commented to reporters that Minor had featured a cutter they hadn’t seen from him before.
Actually, Minor said Saturday, he’s thrown the cutter – or what he considers more of a slider - all along, but against the Cardinals he used it more inside to help him establish both sides of the plate against a good hitting lineup.
He threw it at the back leg of the right-handed hitters like Beltran, Yadier Molina and David Freese.
“I made sure I established in,” Minor said. “Even if it wasn’t a fastball, it was a cutter at the back foot which makes them move their feet or think in. They have to respect it. Then if throw a fastball in, they have to make a decision. I had a couple strikeouts with fastballs in.”
Minor said he lost confidence in the pitch last year, giving up home runs on cutters up, but when Brian McCann calls for it now, he’s been able to throw it in the dirt if he misses, or at the knees.
“It’s one of those things I’m getting more comfortable with it,” Minor said.
