It has taken Mauricio Cabrera only five major league innings to make a suggestion to a team that has been looking for answers all summer.
If it is time for an alternative for the Braves’ wobbly situation in the closer’s role, perhap they should consider the 22-year-old rookie Dominican with the please-help-me-Mommy 103-mph fastball. He pulled out the season’s most perilous win at Wrigley Field late Friday morning and did so with a veteran’s guile.
“I don’t know that I haven’t given him stressful innings since he’s been here, but he’s answered the call,” interim manager Brian Snitker said after the Braves knocked off the Cubs 4-3 in 11 innings. “He’s a very confident young man.”
In his 11th day in the majors, Cabrera was thrown into a dire mess in the bottom of the 11th: Cubs on first and second, no outs and a one-run lead. In seven pitches, he was done: Addison Russell bounced into a double play and Jeimer Candelario, after laying off a couple of 101-mph fastballs, popped out to center field end the game on a 92-mph change-up.
“That wasn’t my first choice, which makes it even better,” catcher Tyler Flowers said of Cabrera’s pitch selection. “I love that a guy comes in here and he hasn’t seen this team. That takes a lot of confidence.”
This places Cabrera in direct opposition to closer Arodys Vizcaino, who has been struggling for over a month. Entering the Braves’ weekend series with the White Sox at U.S. Cellular Field, Vizcaino has allowed 17 base-runners — eight hits, nine walks — in his past 8 1/3 innings.
In his past four outings, he yielded six runs in 3 1/3 innings and his Wednesday performance in Philadelphia — a two-out, two-run homer by Freddy Galvis turned a one-run lead in a 4-3 loss — was brutal. Snitker had brought in Vizcaino in the eighth inning that afternoon, thinking he might also work the ninth in a save situation.
He does not characterize Cabrera’s situation as an audition for closer, even if it might appear that way.
“We’re just trying to win the game today,” Snitker said Friday. “Whatever it takes, however we got to get there, we got a lot of baseball left to play. We’re finding out a lot of things about a few of these guys. What we’re finding out is some good things so down the road, it’s going to make the whole bullpen scenario I think even better.”
Cabrera’s biggest issue has been his control, and while he walked two in his first five innings, he no longer is the flinger who walked 71 in 131 innings in Single-A Rome three years ago. And while appearances may belie what is transpiring below the surface, he has not looked like a kid hiding in a major league uniform.
“I look down there in the bullpen and he gets loose, and then he just stands there and waits for you to bring him in,” Snitker said. “You got a 100 in the tank and you got a pretty good chance. I told him (in the Cubs game), ‘It’s going to be a rough ride if they try to bunt that kid (Russell).’”
Cubs manager Joe Maddon thought so, too. A double-play grounder and a pop-fly later, the Braves had one of their most pleasant final innings in weeks.
