The Bottom System, But Intriguing Talent For The Braves
Today, we preview a list of the top 100 prospects in the Atlanta Braves system.
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Pregame Pepper - Braves Beat
Leading Off
A Preview Of The Upcoming Atlanta Braves Top 100 Prospect List
By Benjamin Chase
For eight years now, I have published a top 100 prospect list.
No, not a list of the top 100 prospects in baseball. That would be too easy!
I bore down and decided to publish 100 prospects from one, single organization. In the offseason before the 2015 season, I published my first top 100 Atlanta Braves prospects list.
That list was not pretty, as the Braves farm system at the time was significantly down, one of the five worst in the league at the time. The front office would make the decision to rebuild at that time, and quickly. Writing about Atlanta Braves prospects became a very exciting endeavor for the next few years with the farm system moving up to the point where it was the top-ranked system in the game for a year or two.
Now, as the team's roster is filled with players that once appeared as 16-year-old international signees or fresh-faced draftees on the list, the organization's farm system graduated a lot of talent, and the Braves are rightfully the bottom-ranked farm system in the game.
That does not mean that there is a lack of talent, however. It simply means that there is going to be a different view of what talent is in the system. So, ahead of this week's release of my top 100 list, I'm going to preview some trends in the Atlanta Braves farm system.
It's Lonely At The Top
Scouting grades are given from 20 to 80. A Major League average tool is a 50-grade tool. An average Major League player is an overall 50-grade player.
Right now, the Atlanta Braves system does not possess a 50-grade player, in my view.
The top nine within the farm system are all pitchers, with many of them having various reasons to worry about whether they can hold up as a starter long-term, pushing their grade to a 50. Of course, a player who was just drafted from high school or signed from Latin America is typically too young to have shown the sort of surety that he will be a future average player to garner such a grade as well, even if the ceiling could be higher.
Leaning On Youth
Like those early lists, the Braves are currently leaning heavily on their lower levels to produce future talent that will provide the fodder for trades and future players needed for the big league club. With much of the future of the MLB club signed to long-term deals, the Braves are not terribly reliant on the farm system producing immediate results - and that's a good thing right now.
After the 2017 scandal that resulted in 13 players being removed from the Atlanta farm system, multiple years of punishments were handed down in the international market to the Braves. That has had a noticeable effect on the depth of the farm system. With the team now able to fully engage in the international market, the complex league teams are brimming with talent from the most recent draft class and the last two international classes.
It shows up in the rankings, as eight of the top 30 prospects in this year's top 100 have not played above the complex league and 19 of the top 30 were signed or drafted in the last two years.
What Does It All Mean?
Quite frankly, any prospect list is simply a view in time. The moment the list comes out, there's typically new information that will come out about one player that would adjust where players rank in relation to one another, so taking any sort of spatial relationship of one player to another as gospel is foolhardy at best.
Use a list for the write-ups on the players and to get to know them, especially the guys deeper on the list. For instance, the very first list I did included a little-known signee of the Braves that I only included because he had a brother in the Cubs' farm system at the time that I liked. That first ranking has been lost to the depths of the internet, but my second ranking had that player rocket all the way into the top 30 of the Atlanta Braves' system list after an impressive showing in the Dominican Summer League. He continued to climb his way to the major leagues, and this summer, William Contreras hit 20 home runs for the Braves and was an All-Star!
Also on that first list was a player that the Braves had signed out of Mexico. He played his second season at Rome in the year I did that list, and he was ranked in the 80s, despite pretty solid overall numbers, as he was a 22-year-old repeating A-ball. He was ranked at various spots over the years, but after 2017, he left as a minor league free agent, eventually went to Japan, and finally, this year made his MLB debut at 30.
Among all rookies with 200+ at-bats, Joey Meneses had the highest wRC+ in 2022 with a 156, ten points higher than Julio Rodriguez's!
The Atlanta Braves have used their farm system to fill their roster, so many of these players, especially beyond the top 15-20 or so, will never see the major leagues, but the random guy like Contreras or Meneses is sitting in the bottom of every list like this, and that's what makes it fun to do, and as a reader and fan, it should make it fun to follow the paths of each of these players.
The comprehensive article is tentatively scheduled to come out on December 15. Watch my Twitter (@biggentleben) for the link!
Benjamin Chase is a newspaper reporter in rural South Dakota with a passion for baseball. He is the co-host for the Pallazzo Podcast prospects show each week and writes about baseball on his own website and is available for freelance work. He can be found on Twitter @biggentleben.