Pearl, Mississippi, where offense goes to die, is home of the Braves AA affiliate, the Mississippi Braves. One of my favorite songwriters is Jason Isbell. Years back, he wrote a song called Tupelo and just hearing this lyric makes me start sweating.

“When I get out of this hole, I’m going to Tupelo. There’s a girl out there that’ll treat me fair. Get about a week of spring and the summer is blistering. There ain’t no one from here that’ll follow me there”.

Jason Isbell

No one’s following him there because just thinking about going to Tupelo or Pearl in the summer gives me instant swamp crotch. Unfortunately for Braves MILBers, it’s a must stop for development. Over the last few years, AAA has become, more or less, a place where Quad-A guys go for quick call-ups in case of injury, or players like Vaughn Grissom or Bryce Elder, that could be called up any minute, are stashed so they can be in Atlanta in an hour. We’ve seen several players that have skipped AAA and headed straight to the bigs from Pearl and I can understand why. To me, AA is more about talent and less about the polish and players that can excel in that environment often excel in the bigs.

In today’s piece, we will look at the top performers from Double-A and break down some of their performances.

Mississippi Braves Top Performers

Hitters

Pitchers

Breakdown: At this point, it’s obvious that Slugbauer can hit, and if he would’ve been able to stick at catcher, he might have already gotten his cup of coffee in the bigs. There’s no doubt about it that he can hit, but until he cuts down the Ks (212 in AA last year), he’ll likely keep the “Quad-A” label.

Milligan and Waddell are just so easy to root for because they are baseballers (dirt-dobbers is my preferred nickname) by design. Milligan absolutely demolished High-A last year with a .910 OPS but took a dip at AA. It’s only 14 PAs, but he’s starting strong and could be up to Gwinnett sooner rather than later.

If there’s anyone that I’d put money on in the Braves system to have a Martin Prado-like career, it would be Luke Waddell. The dude just works hard and is all grit and determination. I still remember stories or Prado’s work ethic back in spring and how he inspired his teammates to work harder. Waddell is that same player. There’s nothing he does at an elite level, but he can do a lot at a slightly above average level and that is a valuable asset.

Tanner Gordon is having a solid start to the year, but I’ll have to see more before I really get excited. He’s 24 and been in the org for 4 years and hasn’t shown enough to warrant a trip to AAA.

Victor Vodnick, once a highly touted starting pitching prospect, is now destined for the bullpen because of injury. He’s throwing well gain and he could be utilized out of the MLB pen as soon as the 2nd half of this year.

Jose Montilla is really someone to keep an eye on. He’s been in the org for 7 years and has finally begun to develop into a pretty good starter. It will be interesting to see if he gets promoted to AAA in the coming weeks.

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