Back To Basics For Touki Toussaint

ATLANTA—Ask righthander Touki Toussaint what the key to success is and chances are he will say to simply be yourself.

That’s the advice he received during the first month of 2016 at low Class Rome A. He went 0-3, 12.66 in his first three starts, allowing 19 hits, nine walks and 16 runs in 10.2 innings. A heart-to-heart talk followed, which changed everything.

“(Pitching coordinator) Chuck Hernandez and (Rome pitching coach) Dan Meyer sat me down and said, ‘This isn’t you. Let’s go back and look at high school video and get you back to being you,’ ” said Toussaint, a 20-year-old from Coral Springs, Fla.

“I did that, saw what I was doing wrong, and everything started clicking from there.”

In his final 24 appearances Toussaint recorded a 3.11 ERA in 121.2 innings. He struck out 123 and walked 62 while allowing opponents to hit .198. He allowed more than three earned runs in just three outings.

Toussaint then shined in the South Atlantic League playoffs, when he surrendered only one run in eight innings to earn the victory against Lakewood in the finals.

Selected by the Diamondbacks with the 16th overall pick in 2014, Toussaint struggled in two seasons with Arizona. They tweaked his mechanics and encouraged him to not rely on his curveball.

The Braves acquired Toussaint in June 2015 when they traded second baseman Phil Gosselin to the D-backs, while taking back injured righthander Bronson Arroyo and the $10 million he was still owed.

The key, according to Toussaint, has been getting his arm swing back to where it was in high school. As a result, he is able to command his mid-90s fastball more consistently while making it a swing-and-miss pitch once again. His sharp curveball also returned, which helped him improve his strikeout rate from 6.0 per nine innings in the first half to 11.2 in the second.

WIGWAM WISPS

• President of baseball operations John Hart said at a fan fest in Rome, Ga., that the Braves hope to move into a new complex in Sarasota, Fla., for spring training in 2019.

• Among the prospects who received invitations to big league camp were righthander Patrick Weigel, lefties A.J. Minter and Sean Newcomb, second basemen Ozzie Albies and Travis Demeritte and outfielder Dustin Peterson.

— Bill Ballew is a writer based in North Carolina