Sunday’s Braves win was all about the rookies

Sunday might have been the best win of the season for the Atlanta Braves. No, they didn’t win a game to get into first place. They’re not there, yet.

And it has little to do with which team they beat, although you know they had to be glad to finally beat the World Series champion Chicago Cubs, who had won the first six games played between the two teams this season.

Sunday’s game at Wrigley Field was won by the kids, the players most involved in the current rebuilding project. More than any other game this season, this one was a full display of the talent that is the future for the Braves.

Left-hander Max Fried made his first major league start. He allowed one run on four hits in five innings and got his first big league win. Fried flashed a great curveball, and his fastball reached 97 mph.

Rookie A.J. Minter relieved Fried and pitched a scoreless inning. Minter struck out two, including Cubs slugger Anthony Rizzo.

Rookies Rio Ruiz, Dansby Swanson and Ozzie Albies combined to go 5-for-11 with four RBI.

Ruiz is 5-for-11 with a home run and four RBI since being recalled Friday. Swanson is now hitting .342 (27-for-79) with a .442 on-base percentage since being called back up from Triple-A Gwinnett on August 9. And Albies, after hitting only .170 (8-for-47) in his first 14 games in Atlanta, has now hit .369 (24-for-65) with a .438 OBP in his past 17 games.

Yes, the Braves are 60-75. Yes, they have gone 15-30 since reaching the .500 mark on July 16. OK, I get it. But days like Sunday are what are important.

Remember, for the umpteenth time, the Braves are rebuilding.

Fried is one of my favorite prospects. He has great stuff and a tremendous makeup. Can he stand above some of the other top prospects, some of whom are younger and might arguably even have better stuff? Yes, he can. Fried has got great potential, and let’s hope he gets more starts this season.

Minter is Atlanta’s best closer prospect since Craig Kimbrel. Scouts say he has that bulldog mentality that closers need, and the Braves likely will give him a chance at some point. The early returns are promising.

Ruiz deserves the chance to get more at-bats for the rest of the season. He went back down to Triple-A Gwinnett and did well after getting some time in Atlanta in May and June. Ruiz hit 12 home runs and drove in 40 in 66 games after going back to Triple-A. After not showing much power in his first five years of pro ball, Ruiz has 19 home runs this season between Atlanta and Gwinnett.

We’ve waited to see Albies and Swanson man the middle infield for the Braves for more than a year. Since they’ve started together in Atlanta, Albies has hit .315 and Swanson has hit .342. That’s what Atlanta’s middle infield could look like for years to come, and we have to like what we’ve seen so far.

Now that the lineup has a spattering of rookies, we’re starting to see more of what this rebuild is all about. Next year, there will be more, including one of the best prospects in baseball and more starting pitchers.

Look, Brandon Phillips wasn’t the future of this team. Matt Kemp and Nick Markakis aren’t either. They’re just placeholders until the kids arrive.

Wait until Ronald Acuna gets to Atlanta. And just think, as many as five more pitching prospects could knock on Atlanta’s door for a chance to start next season. Luiz Gohara (who we will see later this week), Kolby Allard, Mike Soroka, Touki Toussaint and Kyle Wright are all getting close.

This is starting to really resemble what happened in the late-1980s. That rebuilding Braves team had Mark Lemke and Jeff Blauser in the middle infield. These Braves have Albies and Swanson. That group had David Justice in the outfield, and Acuna could be just as good or even better.

The pitchers back then were named Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, Pete Smith, Kent Mercker, Kevin Coffman, Tommy Greene, Derek Lilliquist and Steve Avery.

No one then, even Bobby Cox, could have predicted that Glavine and Smoltz would get to Cooperstown. And we don’t know what this current group of pitching prospects will do. But we do know that the quantity of what the Braves have now exceeds what they had the last time the rebuilding process took place.

The more pitching prospects you have, the better chance a team has over finding some special ones. And the Braves have a lot of pitching prospects who are impressing as they get more experience.

The 2017 is a transition year in the rebuild. This is turning, and Sunday’s game and the performance of the rookies was a great indication the Braves are heading in the right direction.

This story was originally published September 4, 2017 at 10:37 AM with the headline "Sunday’s Braves win was all about the rookies."