Projecting future Braves rotations, pt 1: The ETAs of the prospects

The Atlanta Braves have several "waves" of pitching on their way to the majors

The Atlanta Braves have built their entire farm system around pitching.

As the only organization to devote more than 60% of their available bonus pool money to pitching in the six-draft span from 2018 through 2023¹, Atlanta’s farm system is full of young arms with varying levels of polish and ceiling.

Back in spring of 2024, assistant general manager Ben Sestanovich was quoted as explaining the structure of the organization’s pitching prospects as in “layers”, with different arms having different ETAs based on pedigree, background, etc.

"Last year in the Draft (2023), we spent a bunch of our money up top on college arms. The year before (2022) it was more high school arms.

"You never have enough pitching, so having layers of arms coming is certainly the goal. And it has the added benefit of internal competition amongst them, which is a good thing."

With that theory in mind, let’s look at several of Atlanta’s top pitching prospects and figure out which ‘layer’ or ‘wave’ they might fit into.

2025 debuts

Prospects to watch: Drue Hackenberg, Lucas Braun
Dark horse: Blake Burkhalter

Hackenberg and Braun are two pitchers who impressed in Double-A Mississippi, even after accounting for the extremely pitching-slanted dimensions and park factors of Trustmark Park. While only Hackenberg made it to Triple-A Gwinnett before the season ended, both prospects are on the shortlist of potential 2025 debuts if everything goes right.

Hackenberg, an over-slot second-rounder out of Virginia Tech in 2023, is what I call the ‘platonic ideal’ of a sinker-slider guy - his game is generating weak contact, but he has enough tools to also go for whiffs and be successful. It’s really more of a “kitchen sink” approach, one that’s currently championed in Atlanta by starter Spencer Schwellenbach.²

Most common scouting reports have Hackenberg as throwing five different pitches, featuring three different fastballs (four-seamer at 94, two-seamer at 93, and a 91-mph cutter) as well as a curveball and a changeup. His to-do list for 2025 includes keeping an eye on his walk rate (ticked up to 4.3 BB/9 last year) and getting comfortable with the changeup against lefties.

Braun also needs to get comfortable with his changeup, although that’s because he changed it - Braun’s now throwing a kick-change. His arsenal is now a fastball (four-seamer at 94-ish), both a slider and a curveball, and the aforementioned changeup. His old changeup was…fine, but the kick-change should allow him to continue his excellence against lefties (.204 BAA last year) while also giving him another weapon against righties, who hit .248 off of him.

Burkhalter’s my choice for someone to take an AJ Smith-Shawver-like rocket ride through the system. Down for all of 2023 after Tommy John surgery in spring, Burkhalter was someone I named back in January as a prospect that could rise quickly this year owing to the polish on his cutter and his college experience.

Returning from TJ after the start of last season, ‘Burky’ pitched to a 2.71 ERA in fourteen games for the Emperors, including four quality starts in the final two months of the season. For a former college reliever who had never really been a starter, it was an impressive showing of maturity and development. It’s a fastball/cutter/slider/changeup profile that can all be landed for strikes, although his command needs a tad bit more improvement as he rises (and will naturally tick up a bit as he continues distancing himself from TJ).

2026 ETAs

Prospects to watch: JR Ritchie, Garrett Baumann, Ian Mejia
Dark horse: Elison Joseph

The starter of last weekend’s Spring Breakout game, Ritchie shouldn’t factor into this season’s Major League plans but can get there with some more development. The biggest action areas here are adding strength and the ability to handle a larger workload - even on Sunday, we saw his stuff dip in subsequent innings and he needs to add stamina before the team can plan to use him in the majors.

Baumann’s done a lot of the strength work, but it’s mainly harnessing the stuff and getting more experience. He made one start in High-A Rome at the end of 2024³ and should return there to open 2025. If he makes it to Double-A Columbus by the end of the year, he’ll be on track for a potential late-2026 callup.

Read more: Takeaways from Atlanta's Spring Breakout matchup against the Detroit Tigers

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2027 ETAs

Prospects to watch: Didier Fuentes, Luke Sinnard
Dark horse: Herick Hernandez

Speaking of the Spring Breakout, Fuentes made his presence known with seven strikeouts across the final three frames of the game. Throwing a fastball/slider/changeup trio, it’s a promising package for the young righty who should be opening his age-20 season in Rome.

Sinnard’s a college performer who broke out in 2023, went down with Tommy John, and then got drafted by Atlanta anyway. The data’s a big old here, but he’s a 6’8, 250 lb monster that’s uncomfortable for opposing hitters in the box. Featuring a high spin heater in the top of the zone in the mid-90s and playing a slider and curveball off of that, it’s a package that Atlanta’s done well with if he can come back from Tommy John intact.

This is probably a bit too conservative on Hernandez, but let’s talk about it either way. I make the jokes about a ‘Spencer Strider Starter Kit’, but tell me where I’m wrong with this description:

5’10 with a mid-90s fastball that does well up in the zone, a high-spin slider that had whiff rates in the 40 percent range last season in his post-draft exposure to pro-ball, a curveball, and an okay changeup that’s a distant fourth pitch.

While the velocity isn’t quite where Strider’s is, there’s definitely a package there that the Braves have successfully gotten not only to the majors in recent years, but the All-Star Game and on Cy Young ballots.

(UPDATE: I’d put both Jhancarlos Lara and Adam Maier here, as well. Lara needs to learn a consistent third pitch and has walk rates that threaten a move to the bullpen, while Maier’s thrown only 157.1 innings since high school because of injury and the lost 2020 season, with 83.1 of those came just last year. They’re probably the two hardest for me to pin down and that’s why they were initially excluded from the original piece.)

2028 ETAs

Prospects to watch: Cam Caminiti, Cade Kuehler
Dark horse: Owen Murphy, Carter Holton

Caminiti was just seventeen years old on draft day when he went to Atlanta at #24 overall last year, so a bit more development time than usual is warranted here. It’s an impressive four-pitch mix with tons of projectability, but it’ll take time for the former two-way player to settle into the rhythms of pro ball and professional workloads.

Kuehler, Murphy, and Holton are all at various stages of recovery from Tommy John - Murphy had his in June 2024⁴ while Kuehler’s was in July of 2024 and Holton’s was even later, coming after signing his draft deal in August.

We’ll follow up on this in a few days, looking at who might be the 1-5 and who are the depth options for each of these seasons based on current contracts and these ETAs.

1. Updating this to include 2024 is a long-term project of mine

2. Who himself received the torch from Max Fried

3. It was admittedly a great start - seven scoreless innings with four hits allowed, striking out five with no walks

4. Coincidentally, right before 2022 draft mate JR Ritchie came back from his own elbow surgery.