Brookwood High School's Lucas Sims makes his Gwinnet Braves debut in a loss.

Brookwood High School graduate Lucas Sims, made his debut playing for the Gwinnett Braves on Saturday night. But despite his impressive triple-A debut, the team fell short by 7-1 to Columbus.

Sims, who pitched five innings, was a first-round draft choice of the Braves in 2012. He made three starts this season for Mississippi. He was 0-2 with a 1.84 ERA and gave up two earned runs on three hits, walked four and struck out five batters. He threw a total of 96 pitches and 55 strikes.

In a 14 2/3 innings, Sims struck out 26 and walked 10.  


Lucas Sims pitching for the Braves on Saturday.                                                                 Source: AJC.com

 

Lucas Sims had pitched for the Mississippi Braves in their season opener against Montgomery and been prompted to Triple-A Gwinnett on Saturday.        

 

RHP Lucas Sims makes his @TripleABaseball debut with @GwinnettBraves tonight. He has 26K, just one off the @MiLB lead in strikeouts. #Braves

— Grant McAuley (@grantmcauley) April 23, 2016

                                                

Prior to joining Braves, Sims had committed to play baseball at Clemson. When offered a $1.65 million signing bonus, Sims joined the Gulf Coast Braves rookie team.

Sims has had a somewhat star-crossed minor league career so far.

Sims was 8-1 as a senior at Brookwood and the only loss he’d ever experienced was to Parkview in the first game of the championship doubleheader in Class AAAAA, which was then the state’s highest classification. In that game, Sims had recorded a 1.09 ERA for the season and was the consensus choice for the top pitching prospect in Georgia.

Braves are evidently promoting Lucas Sims to AAA Gwinnett to start Saturday. Foltynewicz was schedule to start, so maybe he's headed to ATL.

— BillShanks (@BillShanks) April 23, 2016

In 2015, he had a 4.37 ERA, 92.2 IP, 75 H, 54 BB, 100 K at the three various minor league pit stops he had at the Gulf Coast League, High-A Carolina, and Double-A Mississippi. At one point during his time in the Atlanta farm system, Sims was considered as a top prospect. However, after those mishaps had happened, the pitcher dropped a bit in the mind of those who grade future major league players. Not that any of that actually matters, as a few good starts at the Triple-A level will all but erase some iffy outings in the years prior.