The following, a new weekly feature of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, allows our reporters to open their notebooks and provide even more information from our local teams that we cover daily. We think you’ll find in informative, insightful and fun.
A fun surprise for Ronald Acuña Jr.
On May 25, Ronald Acuña Jr. posted a picture on social media of him looking down at a signed Miguel Cabrera jersey and smiling.
Apparently, Cabrera sent Acuña a jersey with his signature and a written message.
“I was thinking about asking him, knowing that I was coming to Detroit, but then he just sent it without asking,” Acuña told reporters, through interpreter Franco García. “It just came as a surprise.”
Acuña and Cabrera are both from Venezuela. Cabrera has long been the face of Venezuelan baseball, but Acuña is ready to succeed him in that role.
It’s been that long?
Before this week, the Braves had not played in Detroit since 2013.
Yes, it has been that long.
The last time these teams met at Comerica Park before this season, Andrelton Simmons led off for the Braves, who also had Freddie Freeman, Dan Uggla, Justin Upton and B.J. Upton in the lineup. Those Tigers had Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer on the same staff. One Tiger who played versus the Braves in that series: Matt Tuiasosopo, who now manages Triple-A Gwinnett.
It had been a while since these two teams had met in Detroit.
CP playing GM
Falcons do-it-all weapon Cordarrelle Patterson is quite the recruiter on social media, tweeting his endorsement of seemingly every big-name free agent joining the Falcons.
Coach Arthur Smith suggested Patterson could make a good Premier League general manager. (“Do they have budgets?” Smith asked.) Patterson laughed loudly when informed about Smith’s comment.
Patterson also (jokingly) claimed his Twitter is routinely hacked and he isn’t the one sending those tweets: “Who? That wasn’t me. I think somebody is hacking my Twitter. I try to stop it, but they lock me out of Twitter, they go in there recruiting all these players.”
On a more serious note, Patterson praised running back Bijan Robinson.
“Bijan is a great player, just watching practice every day and seeing the things he’s doing,” Patterson said. “It’s going to be a fun year, man. I’m glad we got him. He just brings that much to this offense. We wouldn’t have drafted him if we didn’t need him. We got him, and he’s going to be great for us.”
Is Russ Chandler Stadium to blame for Georgia Tech’s recent pitching woes?
Coach Danny Hall doesn’t think so.
“I think sometimes people will look at this ballpark and say, ‘Well you know it’s a hitter-friendly park,’” Hall said this week. “But yet, Wake Forest is the most hitter-friendly park in our league, and their team is leading not only the ACC, but the country in pitching.
“So you start diving in to all the data and the metrics (for Tech), and it just wasn’t good enough. That’s the bottom line.”
Tech had the ACC’s second-worst ERA in 2023 at 7.10, allowed a league-worst 300 walks and a league-worst 431 runs. The Yellow Jackets also allowed an ACC-high 92 home runs.
Chandler Stadium’s 390-foot distance from home plate to center field is the shortest mark among all ACC ballparks.
Keeping Condon priority for new baseball coach
For the moment, new Georgia baseball coach Wes Johnson remains with LSU as the Tigers entered the College World Series this weekend. But he definitely has his priorities right with regard to the roster he’s trying to build with the Bulldogs.
During his introductory press conference on the UGA campus Tuesday, Johnson mentioned Charlie Condon’s name four times. Condon was, of course, the Bulldogs’ star slugger last season and one of the better young players in the college game.
Convincing Condon to return to Georgia for his third college season is the highest priority for Johnson. So far, so good, as Condon has made no announcements about entering the transfer portal or having any intention of doing so.
“I’ve had a couple conversations with Charlie,” Johnson said as he answered reporters’ questions at the Bulldogs’ football complex Tuesday. “The guy’s going to be the best right-handed hitter in college baseball next year, if he isn’t one of them this year.”
Condon certainly put forth a good argument during his redshirt freshman season with the Bulldogs this year. The 6-6, 215-pound Marietta resident started all 56 games this season for the Bulldogs and led the team in batting average (.386), home runs (25), runs scored (61) and RBIs (67). He was named SEC Freshman of the Year by the league’s head coaches, set the SEC freshman home run record and was selected second team All-SEC and Freshman All-SEC.
Condon also was named the Freshman Hitter of the Year by Collegiate Baseball newspaper, recently was tabbed a finalist for the Bobby Bragan National Collegiate Slugger Award, became a second team All-American and finished as a semifinalist for the Golden Spikes Award and Dick Howser Trophy. He has been invited to the USA Baseball Collegiate National Team (CNT) summer training camp in Cary, North Carolina, to compete for a spot on the 26-man roster. He also is an honor student majoring in finance.
So, yeah, Johnson would like to keep him. He said he talked to Condon on the phone the day he got Georgia job, he called him again Monday after the Tigers punched their ticket to the CWS and again when he was in Athens on Tuesday.
As for Condon, he’s playing in the Cape Cod Summer League for the Falmouth (Mass.) Commodores, who opened their season Saturday.
“Charlie is doing great,” Johnson said. “He’s in the Cape right now. Everybody already knows, but he’s going out for Team USA, and hopefully he’ll go out there and have a good showing to represent our country.”
While Condon currently is not in the portal, it’s reasonable to think he is receiving NIL overtures from other teams trying to lure him away. Both Johnson and Athletic Director Josh Brooks mentioned the importance of NIL in attracting and retaining players for Georgia baseball.
So far, the Bulldogs have had five players enter the portal since Johnson was picked to succeed Scott Stricklin as Georgia’s skipper. They are pitchers Michael Polk, Jake Poindexter, Charlie Goldstein and Luke Wagner and infielder Jonathan Little.
“Everybody in the SEC has got talent on their roster, and we’ve got talent here,” Johnson said. “We are working through some things right now.”
Condon is at the top of that list.
Quotable
Falcons coach Arthur Smith on defensive tackle Grady Jarrett leading a defensive front that features a blend of veterans and youngsters: “Grady is a real guy. There’s nothing phony about Grady Jarrett. So I think people respect authentic people. That’s why we wanted Grady back and invested in him as we did. … In my history, he’s got to be one of the top leaders I’ve ever known.”
-Staff writers Justin Toscano, Gabriel Burns, Chad Bishop and Chip Towers contributed to this article.
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