Breaking down Atlanta's 2025 Spring Breakout roster

The Braves took our advice, sort of, when building their 2nd annual Spring Breakout roster

This is admittedly a pretty good move by Major League Baseball.

The Spring Breakout is a mostly¹ made for TV series of matchups between prospects of paired-up MLB teams. Played over seven innings, the Braves prospects dropped last year’s matchup to the Boston Red Sox 8-2, although we got great looks at Spencer Schwellenbach (3 IP, 4H, 2R, 1 ER, 2BB to 3Ks) and Isaiah Drake (1-3, 3B, R, RBI, SB) in the loss.

The roster is out for the 2025 matchup, and Atlanta kinda sorta took our advice when we suggested an “ideal” Spring Breakout roster last month. Let’s look at who the Braves picked and why they’re on there.

We maybe nailed the entire starting infield?

My recommendation was to have John Gil, David McCabe, Luke Waddell, and Drew Compton as your starters and to include Ambioris Tavarez, Keshawn Ogans, E.J. Exposito, and Kobe Kato as your backups.

I’m glad someone in the Atlanta Braves front office reads Braves Today.

The actual roster² includes Gil, McCabe, Waddell, and Compton, although they have them joined by Cal Conley, Lizandro Espinoza, and Will Verdung.

I’ll take that!

Gil’s the highest-rated lower-minors position player, having broken out upon coming stateside last year to a .286 average and .791 in the Complex League. While he scuffled in his brief month-plus in Augusta, hitting .204 with 37 strikeouts in 39 games, he’s still seen as the best infield defender, the fastest player, and one that’s seen as having an above-average hit tool but with work to do against spin and off-speed.

McCabe, now confirmed to be back to first base, and Compton make an interesting corner infield duo. McCabe’s power hasn’t yet come back after Tommy John surgery, while Compton’s an out-of-prototype high OBP/contact hitter at a position that typically profiles as one that generates power.

Conley and Waddell have been discussed in this newsletter before - they’re both good defenders with virtually no power to speak of, but there’s potentially major league utility value to be had if they continue to hit. Espinoza joined the org from St. Louis in the minor league portion of this year’s Rule 5 draft, while Verdung’s an org guy who plays all of the non-shortstop positions in the infield.

We missed a lot of the outfield

All that celebrating I did on the infield? Let’s leave it up there in the infield portion.

We got Luis Guanipa’s inclusion correct, but that’s it. While we suggested running it back with Drake, Kevin Kilpatrick Jr, and Cody Milligan from last year’s team, they instead went with Carlos Rodriguez, Owen Carey, Eric Hartman, and Ethan Workinger.

Rodriguez, who was just optioned out of major league camp on Friday, still has yet to play a single actual game for any of the affiliates but still made two Braves prospect lists, being rated by MLB Pipeline at #30 and FanGraphs at #25. I have him as a starter (RF), along with Guanipa (CF).

My best guess for the third starter would be Ethan Workinger, as he’s the only remaining outfielder that has actually played professionally - both Carey (15th round) and Hartman (20th round) were drafted last year and did not get into an official game after signing.

Yes, there’s only five guys here. My guess is that either one of the infielders spends some innings on the grass in a utility capacity, or either Guanipa or Rodriguez plays the entire game in the field.

Nick Montgomery should get the bulk of the run behind the plate

…but he probably won’t.

In our suggestion, we had Drake Baldwin and Montgomery as the only two catchers - well, Baldwin’s over on the MLB side and might break camp with the major league team as a short-term replacement for Sean Murphy (rib), so he wasn’t exactly available to play with his prospect brethren.

Montgomery made the team, but with TWO other backstops joining him: Mac Guscette and Adam Zebrowski. With Montgomery being a relatively high draft pick for a position player (5th round) but having not appeared in an official game after signing last year, I’d love to give him extended run in this one but Zebrowski (who was in major league camp until last week) is there to replace him if he struggles. Guscette was a UDFA from Alabama who hit .163 in fourteen games after signing last year, so he’s the distant third to me on this grouping.

This is a fun pitching group

Let me victory lap this for a minute. I said this when predicting the group back in February:

If we’re being truthful here, there’s no way to know what relievers the team will send and I’ll be lucky to get one of these six right

I got TWO!

JR Ritchie and Blake Burkhalter were my two picks for the starters, with Cory Wall joining the relievers.

Atlanta selected Ritchie and Garrett Baumann as the two starters instead, with Wall joining Didier Fuentes, Rolddy Munoz, Ian Mejia, Adam Maier, Elison Joseph, Shay Schanaman, and Luis Vargas in the relief corps.

They won’t use all of these guys, obviously - Atlanta threw only four guys last season, with both Murphy (who opened the game) and Schwellenbach (who closed the game) getting three innings each - but it’s still a fun group.

When is the game?

The Braves prospects take on the Detroit Tigers prospects at home on Sunday, March 16th at 4:05 PM ET. Detroit’s got a loaded roster, with six of their top seven position player prospects included, as well as six rated pitchers.

1. A few of last year’s 15 matchups weren’t shown on television last year, which is pretty dumb of MLB and not a great way to grow the game

2. And they also don’t delineate between starters and backups like I did, so I could end up with exactly zero of the starting lineup