Prospect Notebook: A Bad Farm System?, 2029 Roster, The Next Needed Change in Draft Strategy

Let's empty out the notebook of Braves prospect thoughts, now that the Arizona Fall League is closing out its season

Let’s empty out the notebook of everything I accumulated about prospects in the last two weeks that can’t fill an entire newsletter, but is still a bit interesting and worthy of discussion.

THIS farm system made a Rookie of the Year?

The Atlanta Braves farm system is widely considered by The Prospect Apparatus™ to be one of the worst in baseball, and has been for several years.

So, how do we square that with the fact that they’ve produced three Rookies of the Year, two more runners-up, and two others who received votes since 2018?

It’s easy - the system isn’t very deep.

You see, the prospect rankings are not looking at just the top-end talent present in your system - it’s also looking at the proximity to the majors of that talent and the overall depth in the system.

And it’s those last two factors where the Braves are struggling.

Of Atlanta’s top 30 prospects per MLB Pipeline, just ten of them are in the upper minors¹. While Baseball America has only named their top ten as of this writing, five of those are in the upper minors, but all arms. Unless you’re looking for a pitching prospect, the proximity is not there - MLB Pipeline has exactly two upper-minors bats in the top 30, while Baseball America doesn’t have any in their top ten.

And looking at ‘The Board’ on FanGraphs, Atlanta’s steep falloff in prospect quality is evident - They have just one prospect labeled at a 50 FV, with seven more at a 45 or 45+ and everyone else being a 40 or lower.²

And if you think about it, this makes sense. The Braves were locked out of the international market for several years and have just not been getting the impact from their international signings since they were allowed to resume participating in international free agency a few years ago. Some of this may be why the Braves brought in Pete Putilla from the San Francisco Giants in 2024, giving him the title of assistant general manager and placing him in charge of the international scouting department.

I’ve been critical of Atlanta’s approach to international free agency in the past, one that was characterized by quality over quantity, despite the research available telling us that’s not the best way to attack the international market. Hopefully, Putilla continues to steer the battleship away from highly paid bonus babies and signs enough prospects to form two DSL teams and have ‘more shots’ at striking gold.

Baseball America names a 2029 lineup

One of my favorite features every offseason is when Baseball America unveils its offseason prospect list, complete with the future lineup in four seasons from now that integrates minor leaguers. It’s always a great exercise in seeing the strengths of a farm system (and/or the weaknesses of a major league roster).

But this year’s future projection has more turnover for Atlanta than maybe I was expecting. (Parentheses indicate the player’s age in the 2029 season.)

Catcher: Drake Baldwin (28)
First Base: Matt Olson (35)
Second Base: John Gil (23)
Third Base: Austin Riley (32)
Shortstop: Alex Lodise (25)
Left Field: Conor Essenburg (22)
Center Field: Michael Harris II (28)
Right Field: Diego Tornes (20)
Designated Hitter: Ronald Acuña Jr. (31)

No. 1 Starter: Spencer Strider (30)
No. 2 Starter: Spencer Schwellenbach (29)
No. 3 Starter: AJ Smith-Shawver (26)
No. 4 Starter: Cam Caminiti (22)
No. 5 Starter: JR Ritchie (26)
Closer: Hurston Waldrep (26)

It’s good to see Alex Lodise on here - I’m strangely high on him as a quality defender that should be able to hit enough in the majors if everything breaks right, despite a rough debut in pro ball after the draft. He chased a lot more than college, coming in at a 31% mark, while whiffing about 33% of the time. That lack of discipline led him to a strikeout rate just shy of 40% and a walk rate under 5%, which obviously needs to be corrected. Seeing him here on this list means that their talent evaluators are either happy with his defensive potential or think his bat will come around with more of a standard sample size (or both).

But when looking at this lineup, I’m concerned about the corner outfield and second base. John Gil is fine, don’t get me wrong - he was one of just two sub-20-year-old minor leaguers with a strikeout rate below 15%, a walk rate better than 10%, and more than 50 stolen bases - but he’s also barely touched Double-A and hasn’t broken the top ten of any major outlet’s prospect list for the team.

And the corner outfield’s in a similar state of concern. Essenburg was a 2025 draftee out of the prep ranks, one that’s switching from a two-way profile to just a hitter, but also one that already has both foot speed and overall power ceiling concerns. ‘Throws-right-hits-left prep outfielder’ isn’t necessarily a profile that has a ton of success in the middle of day two, but maybe solely focusing on being a position player gives him more development runway than your typical prep outfielder?

And for all the concern of Essenburg, Tornes is all of that, but magnified. He just spent his first professional season in the Dominican Republic at age 17, one where he flashed big-time power and upside but also was facing substandard competition.

If these are your two best options to be starters in three seasons, you have a depth problem in your organization. It’s not for lack of trying - Atlanta’s taken several outfielders in recent seasons, whether it be 2023 IFA gem Luis Guanipa or 2023 5th rounder Isaiah Drake - but none of them have even remotely come close to meeting expectations in their first few professional seasons. Drake’s struggled to make consistent enough contact, although he did improve after repeating Single-A last year enough to get bumped to Rome for the final month of the year. Guanipa’s been unable to find impact in his bat, with just seven homers and a career .332 slug, and needs to add more consistent contact to profile as anything more than a part-time or backup outfielder.

I’m starting to wonder if that future outfielder might end up being either 2025 9th-rounder Logan Braunschweig from UAB, who I liked in the limited looks I got of him post-draft, or a position change of one of the multiple middle infielders Atlanta took this year, someone like 3rd-rounder Cody Miller or even 1st-rounder Tate Southisene.

Or if the Braves need to continue loading up on the bats, perhaps by taking more shots at the preverbial apple.

Copy the Brewers

I’m a big fan of the book and movie ‘Moneyball’. For those of you who aren’t familiar, author Michael Lewis chronicled the 2002 Oakland Athletics, who defied the odds (and their owner’s bare wallet) to build a playoff team by focusing on undervalued players - those ‘flawed’ guys that are really good at one specific thing, but don’t fit the conventional stereotype and model of a desirable baseball player. While the actual target of the Oakland front office - in this case, players who get on base - is no longer applicable, the general concept still is: Find out what the market doesn’t value correctly and lean into that.

The Milwaukee Brewers have done that.

I’ve noticed something interesting when going back and looking at draft classes - the Brewers take significantly more prep players on day three than any other organization in baseball.

They’re terrible at signing them - they’ve taken 34 in the last five drafts and signed only 18 of them - but that’s still five more signed than the next closest team, the Angels, and significantly more than the rest of the league, who are in single digits. The Braves, for instance, have taken seven and signed six over that span.

Here’s why I think that matters.

The average college player taken on day three is an organizational guy, at best. Of Atlanta’s 2021 draft, only two of the college guys taken in rounds 11-20 have made the majors, and neither did it with Atlanta. Several are no longer in baseball at all, having retired or been released after two or three seasons. None of 2022’s picks have made the majors, and going back to 2019, under the old draft format, only one of those players (16th-rounder Joey Estes) has made the majors (and he did it for another team, the Athletics.

That’s zero college draftees from day three to make the majors for Atlanta out of 2019, 2021, & 2022. (The 2020 draft was only five rounds, and the Braves only had four picks.)

But those prep players, who take significantly more to sign than your average org player out of college, have a better chance of becoming either actual prospects you can trade for something or major leaguers, provided you scout the right ones (they need to have signability and be a bit under-the-radar to still be available on day three in the first place).

I remember interviewing a prospect, back in the days of the old prospect podcast, who had the single most devastating quote from a coach I’ve ever heard. He was talking to the guys after a bad game, one in which the org guys had played sloppily and the team lost. They gave away a win, one that was driven by a good performance on the mound from one of the team’s top pitching prospects and impressive offensive games from the shortstop and the rightfielder, both highly-rated prospects.

The coach told the org guys, “y’all are only here so they have a team to play on.”

This sounds callous, but…you can always find more organizational guys. Let’s really pivot to quantity and grab multiple prep players with a 5% shot at becoming something instead of grabbing college seniors with a 0.5% shot of making the majors.

What’s the worst that could happen, the system falls from 27th to 29th?

Try something else. It’s clearly working for the Brewers.

UPDATE: This is awkward - Baseball America wrote the same story, just more detailed with more stats than mine. I stumbled upon this when looking up more on Caleb Durbin, to understand why the Braves traded him in the first place. I did not intend to copy or otherwise plagiarize BA’s fine work; this was merely a coincidence. I’d encourage those of you with BA subscriptions to check out their piece, as well, which can be found HERE.

1. Defined as Double-A or above

2. In MLB’s 20-80 scouting scale, a ‘50’ is an average MLB regular, so they’re not predicting any above-average players in this group and only a handful of guys that are even MLB regulars.