The Atlanta Braves played their first set of split squad games on Thursday, with Dylan Dodd making his 2024 Spring Training debut taking on the Rays on the road, and Spencer Strider leading things off on the mound against the Twins at home.

Strider was backed by mostly projected starters in the lineup, while Dodd had an offense behind him that outside of Marcell Ozuna, Jarred Kelenic, and Travis d’Arnaud, consisted of players fighting for a shot of making the Opening Day roster.

Based on the lineups, one may have assumed that the game against the Twins would have featured the most offense, since that is where most the regulars were playing, and the Rays had Zach Eflin on the mound.

Well, this was not the case. Eflin, who was sixth in Cy Young voting last season, could not handle the young Braves team. (Not that he was necessarily trying to…) Forrest Wall led things off with a flyout, followed by Kelenic being called out on strikes. Ozuna had a single but then d’Arnaud was also rung up.

After the first inning is where the fun began. David Fletcher led off the inning by making his way to first on ball that deflected off the shortstop. Two outs ensued, but that did not stop an upcoming barrage. Luis Liberato singled to put Fletcher on third base. A double steal resulted in Fletcher scoring from third for the first run of the game. Luke Waddell joined in on the fun by walking to first, followed by Forrest Wall knocking a three-run dinger to put the Braves up 4-0.

The Braves didn’t slow down in the third. Ozuna singled, and following doubles from Fletcher and Phillip Evans, the lead went up by two. Then, an almost repeat of the second innings happened again. Waddell once again made it to first (by single this time), knocking in Evans, followed by yet another Forrest Wall three-run homer.

Ozuna seemingly did not want Wall to be the only player to hit a ball over the wall, so he joined in on the fun with his own longball later on.

In the fifth, Kelenic git his first hit in a Braves uniform.

On the pitching side of things, Dylan Dodd looked solid. He worked through two innings with relative ease. He saw the minimum possible hitters (six) while striking out two of them. We saw new Braves acquisition Ray Kerr relieve Dodd in the third inning, where he was charged with two runs off of a double and two singles. But, he did look sharp anyway, striking out two hitters and picking off Yandy Diaz.

Charlie Culberson made an appearance and pitched one inning while giving up one hit and zero earned runs. After that the wheels fell off and the Braves gave up seven more runs with five of those being earned, but still ended up winners when the ninth inning finished.

The game in North Port against the Twins was just as exciting, as we got to see Spencer Strider display his new curveball with aplomb.

After giving up a single to the leadoff hitter, Strider got into a groove. He retired the next three hitters while striking out Matt Wallner. In the second inning, Strider continued where he left off by striking out the side, including a strikeout of Trevor Larnach on his newly-minted curveball. Strider pitched three innings, giving up two hits and one walk, and tallying five strikeouts.

New acquisition Aaron Bummer relieved Strider in the fourth inning. Bummer faced the minimum number of batters via a groundout, flyout, and strikeout.

The Braves’ pitching staff finished the game giving up zero runs, in a solid performance as a whole from the squad.

Per usual, Ronald Acuña Jr. got things going for the Braves on the offensive side of the ball, knocking in Eli White with a double in the third inning. He did get caught trying to steal third base shortly afterwards though, and gave the Twins defenders a silly time evading a rundown for about 15 seconds.

The fourth inning is where the offense really started to get going. Austin Riley singled, followed by a walk from Matt Olson. A wild pitch allowed both runners to move up and Michael Harris wasted no time knocking in Riley on the second pitch he saw. Orlando Arcia struck out and then, after a pitching change, Jordan Luplow walked to load the bases for Eli White.

White got in on the RBI action by hitting a single off of Ryan Jensen that brought Olson and Harris across the plate.

In the bottom of the fifth, the Braves subbed out Acuña, Albies, Riley, Olson, and Murphy with J.P. Martinez, Leury Garcia, Alejo Lopez, Bryson Horne, and Tyler Tolve respectively.

Tolve reached on a single and one of the few remaining regulars, Harris, knocked him in with a double. Not much more happened offensively in this game, but one thing of note is that exciting prospect Nacho Alvarez entered the game in the bottom of the sixth and proceeded to draw a walk in the eighth inning.

Both games were fun ones, and some non-locks for the roster probably increased their chances of heading north with the club today.