Braves Pitching Prospects Had Themselves a NIGHT on Wednesday

The Atlanta Braves beat the Marlins in the afternoon and then watched several of their top prospect arms absolutely SHOVE in the nightcap

The Atlanta Braves have virtually always been built on pitching. From the ‘Big Three’ in the 90s, consisting of Hall of Famers Greg Maddux, John Smoltz, and Tom Glavine, to the 1948 NL Pennant-winning Boston Braves using Warren Spahn, Johnny Sain, and praying for rain the rest of the time.¹

Even the 2024 Braves, who were decimated by injuries to the position player group, still made the postseason on the strength of a league-leading 3.49 ERA. Their rotation was anchored by Cy Young winner Chris Sale and breakout phenom Spencer Schwellenbach, but the bullpen was not slouches, either, with the league’s third-best ERA at 3.32.

And the next wave is working its way through the minors right now. With the sheer pleasure of Atlanta’s afternoon destruction of the Miami Marlins already in the books, I had a chance to cuddle up on the deck with Bandit and flip around some of the games to watch several of the top prospects in action.

Let’s talk about it.

Cam took a bad-luck loss

First up (6:06 PM ET) was game one of a scheduled seven-inning doubleheader for Single-A Augusta, and that meant a consensus top two prospect in lefty Cam Caminiti.

And boy did he deliver.

Cam went six innings, allowing just one run on four hits, walking two and striking out nine. He took the loss because the GreenJackets were held to just one hit in the contest, a Hayden Friese leadoff single in the 6th, and failed to get a runner into scoring position on the day.²

Caminiti used his slider to great effect from a lower lefty arm slot, reminiscent of Chris Sale (without the crossfire delivery). He backdoored sliders to righties, ran it off the plate down and away to lefties, and even got several lefties with a front hip slider that occasionally buckled the knees.

This was Caminiti’s first time going six innings as a professional, as well as a new career high with nine strikeouts. His season ERA now stands at 3.38 in 64 innings, but that counts four rehab starts in the Complex Level after the start to his season was delayed for two months with forearm tightness. Counting just his 12 starts for Augusta, he’s 1-3 with a 2.32 ERA and 68 strikeouts across 50.1 innings.

He will likely finish with around 70 or maybe 75 innings this season, depending on whether the Braves bump him one more level for his final start (Augusta’s season ends on September 7th, so he’s probably just making one more start in Single-A this year). My goal for 2026 is for a quick move from Single-A to High-A (and who knows, they might send him straight there out of spring) and hopefully getting him a brief cup of coffee in Double-A by September.

Ritchie decimated Norfolk

Next on the docket for me was Triple-A Gwinnett, hosting Baltimore Orioles affiliate Norfolk. JR Ritchie, the other of Atlanta’s consensus top two prospects, got the start and was magnificent: six innings with just one hit allowed, walking two and hitting one while striking out a season-high eleven batters.

Ritchie picked up fourteen whiffs and had an absurd 38% CSW, powered by unusual bat-missing ability on his sinker (seven whiffs in sixteen swings) and a 50% whiff rate on his curveball.

It’s definitely a “kitchen sink” profile; he’s throwing all three fastballs, as well as both a slider and a curveball and has a changeup in reserve for certain situations. If there’s one thing I’m still watching for, it’s the endurance to carry his velo deeper into starts. He was firing 94.8, 95, 95.1 in the first inning, but by his final frame was sitting 92-93 and even mixed a few 91s in there to the first batter of the sixth inning, Maverick Handley.

On the season, Ritchie’s compiled an 8-5 record and 2.75 ERA across three levels. He’s at a career-high 117.2 innings, more than double 2024’s 49.2 that he got in after returning from Tommy John surgery. Between the workload and Atlanta’s lack of flexibility with the 40-man roster, I don’t expect the Braves to call him up for a Major League start down the stretch…but stranger things have happened.

My ETA for Ritchie as of now is still sometime in mid-2026, but he’s potentially one of those arms that could debut and stick in the majors if everything breaks right. 2027 still feels like the right timing for “make the rotation out of Spring Training”, but you never know.

The best of the rest

Those were the only two games that I outright sat and watched in nearly their entirety, but I did flip around and catch some of Drue Hackenberg’s start for Columbus as well as Luke Sinnard going for Rome.

Hackenberg’s nightmare 2025 continued tonight - he went four innings against Angels affiliate Rocket City, walking five against four strikeouts and throwing just 41 strikes in his 82 pitches. He also hit a batter and took two separate pitch clock violations.

With the caveat of Drue spending nearly two months on the injured list for an unspecified injury midseason, he’s struggled to a 2-7 record and 6.75 ERA while walking 41 (against 54 strikeouts) in his 61.1 innings. While the walks were there in 2024, as well, issuing 62 in his 129 innings, they were also accompanied by 144 strikeouts and a 1.25 WHIP that’s ballooned to 1.79 this year. Let’s hope a fully healthy offseason can get him back on track.

Sinnard made his 15th start of the season for Rome and took advantage of a struggling Winston-Salem team (White Sox affiliate), going six innings for just the second time this season and allowing only one earned run in the process. Striking out seven Dash hitters, he scattered three walks and got six of his eight fielding outs via groundballs.

Despite missing a month and a half himself due to an unspecified injury, Sinnard put up a 2-5 record and 2.67 ERA in his fifteen starts, striking out 79 against just 25 walks in 67.1 innings of his first major league season.

1. Research from SABR suggests this wasn’t far off from the truth. After Bill Voiselle was lifted from the rotation in early September, Spahn and Sain started 15 of the team’s next 24 games. And yes, they each made back-to-back starts after a doubleheader against the Dodgers on September 6th was followed by two off days and two rainouts, prompting Gerald Hern of the Boston Post to write a short verse that somehow morphed into the legendary “Spahn, Sain, and pray for rain”.

2. Pinch-runner Joe Oslavsky was almost immediately erased by a double play. He was on base for exactly four pitches.