MIAMI – After starting the season at Triple-A Gwinnett, reliever Chris Withrow and rookie left-hander Hunter Cervenka have helped reverse the Braves’ bullpen fortunes since being brought up by the big club.
Withrow was recalled April 10 and has allowed one run in four innings over five relief appearances, working 3 1/3 hitless innings over his past four appearances with one walk and two strikeouts in that span.
Cervenka came up April 11 on the first day of the road trip, and allowed one hit and two walks with three strikeouts in 1 2/3 innings over his first four major league appearances. He had two huge strikeouts of the only batters he faced in Saturday’s 6-4 win, before walking the only batter he faced Sunday.
“I told Cervenka we were going to get into games,” said Withrow, 27, who has made an impressive return to the big leagues after missing most of two seasons recovering from Tommy John elbow surgery and back surgery. “You hope you’re a piece of the bullpen and somebody that’s reliable, and I told him, just do everything you can to be ready. Know who your guys are going to be in the lineup, and just be prepared.
“And we’ve been fortunate enough to go out there and do our job when the phone rings, and continuing to have the right preparation and get yourself ready when the phone rings is a big thing about being part of a successful bullpen.”
Braves general manager John Coppolella praised the work of Cervenka in Saturday’s win, when the lefty came in with two on base and one out in the sixth inning and the Braves nursing two-run lead. Cervenka struck out both batters he faced, pinch-hitter Chris Johnson and leadoff man Dee Gordon.
The Braves bullpen went from being arguably the team’s biggest liability in the 0-9 start to being what manager Fredi Gonzalez said as the biggest factor in the first two wins against the Marlins with 8 1/3 scoreless innings Friday and Saturday.
“The big key, to be honest, is Cervanka,” Gonzalez said. “That second left-hander (to go with Eric O’Flaherty) has been able to kind of settle that bullpen a little bit. We didn’t have one coming out of spring training. We only had one (lefty) in the bullpen the first six or seven days, now we’ve got a second left-hander and he’s doing a great job.
“He’s been able to stabilize that bullpen.”
Withrow pitched in only three Grapefruit League games this spring before he was sent to Triple-A Gwinnett, and was none too pleased by the move at the time. Now, he said he’s glad it happened because it allowed him to work on some things in the low-key environment of minor league spring training.
“In spring training that was my first time against big league hitters in almost two years, so I was amped up in really all three (major league) games I was in in spring training,” he said. “So to go down and kind of take a step back, and really focus on what I was trying to accomplish, and really gather myself every time I went out there and focus on executive of my pitches and a little bit less atmosphere – I mean, the atmosphere around the backfields isn’t as intense, so you can focus on staying within yourself, focus on executing your pitches and really getting a feel for all your pitches.
“I think I had six appearances on the minor league side and they really helped me gather myself and really focus on what I was trying to accomplish, and at the same time really make sure I was feeling my body, not only that day but for the next, day, figuring out how I was going to respond physically. And so doing that was a good thing. Obviously I wasn’t exactly excited to go through that, but looking at it now, it was definitely a blessing.”
As for the bullpen’s turnaround in recent days, Withrow gave credit to the elders in the Braves ‘pen.
“You’ve got an awesome group of veteran guys down there – you’ve got Jason (Grilli), you’ve got Jim (Johnson), you’ve got O’Flaherty, you’ve got guys who’ve been around for a long time,” Withrow said. “And you know those guys are going to keep going in the same direction regardless of how things are going. Being a younger guy, you kind of just follow their lead. I was really excited coming into this season, being able to be with those guys and witness how they’ve done it over the course of their career and learn from them.
“You just know in the back of your head, even when things weren’t going exactly the way that we wanted them to go, you knew at some point, with the guys that were down there, that things were going to start going the right way. And now that we’ve had a good little stretch here, we just hope we can build on that and continue to go out there and do our job.”
