Today’s list brings up our Top 25-21 Prospects. If you missed it, here was our 30-25 list that contained writeups on Herrick Hernandez, Hayden Harris, Ian Mejia, Mario Baez, and Luis Vargas.
Braves Top Prospects, #25: Domingo Gonzalez, RHP, 26, AAA, 2025
The Pirates released this guy in 2022? Another diminutive righty, Gonzalez has a fastball/slider
combo that leaves right handed hitters helpless (like 16+k/9). Lefties get a better look and walk
at a 6 per 9 clip. If he can find some way to neutralize lefties he could be our future closer. I
don’t expect that, but a useful back of the pen guy is still a nifty result for a player picked up
from the scrap heap.
Braves Top Prospects, #24: Landon Harper, RHP, 24, AA, 2026
A guy with so-so stuff who just keeps getting outs. Harper had a fluke 90% strand rate during
his first crack at AA. We shall see how it goes in 2025. Minor league closers almost never
amount to anything in the Show.
Braves Top Prospects, #23: Cade Kuehler, RHP, 23, A-, 2027
A fighting Camel from Campbell, Kuehler is another under-sized righty with pretty good stuff. He
threw 7 different pitches in college which often left him without good command of any of them.
The Braves developmental staff thinks they can create a sleeper by cutting back to 3 or 4. They
identified that the split change and cutter have excellent shape and tunnel well with his mid-90’s
fastball and that sounds like a good start. I have him much lower rated than most (MLB.com has
him at 9??) as I want to see the new arsenal in action before I endorse it!
Braves Top Prospects, #22: Daysbel Hernandez, RHP, 28, MLB, 2025
I almost didn’t include him as while he still counts as a rookie we all know who is (a decent, if
wild, reliever) and what he cannot be (a starter or closer). Fastball is fast but too straight whilethe slider is his moneyball. Also throws a curve. Will likely make the MLB pen this season and he could be very effective in a limited role (Snit willing).
Braves Top Prospects, #21: Lucas Braun, RHP, 23, A+, 2027
Another tiny guy who is much shorter than his official 6’0” 185 lbs (I’m guessing 5’10” and 170?)
Braun has 4 average pitches without plus control which screams “make him a reliever” to me.
His fastball touched 96 several times this season and if he could live there – and get a similar
bump on his slider – we might have something.
Ryan’s Pick of the Litter
Daysbel Hernandez: In a small sample, Daysbel has shown that he’s good enough to stick around in the majors. While most of his stats aren’t established enough for Statcast, they have the makings for him to be a very strong 6th/7th inning reliever.
Nice job! I am low-key excited about Domingo Gonzalez.
Daysbel looked good!
Domingo reminds me of (I need to look him up) Tim Collins, another short lefty flamethower who racked up strikeouts and managed despite his wildness to have a few good years with the Royals.
I can’t believe I remembered him since we had him for about 15 minutes in 2010: https://bravesjournal.com/2010/07/14/i-do-not-like-this-deal/
We got him when we traded Yunel Escobar, then we packaged him in a deal with Gregor Blanco and Jesse Chavez (!) to get Rick Ankiel and Kyle Farnsworth from the Royals.
What a long strange decade and a half it’s been…
https://www.si.com/mlb/braves/news/report-braves-balk-at-signing-all-star-reliever-after-failed-physical-01jhgbf5mrjc
huh
I wonder if we would consider giving Flaherty a shorter deal similar to what Sonny Gray signed with the Cards. Especially if it could include one of those patented AA team options as the final year.
Obviously outside of Daysbel, it would be pretty foolish to think that any of these guys will see MLB action. And that’s depressing, so I went back and looked at when our farm was probably at its peak, which I identify to be around 2017. From spots 20-30 in MLB’s list, the following players saw big league action:
22) Aj Minter
23) Rio Ruiz
24) Alex Jackson
25) Bryse Wilson
27) Luke Jackson
28) Akeel Morris
https://www.mlb.com/milb/prospects/2017/braves/
If my memory serves me correctly, 23 of the top 30 saw MLB action. 5 have become All-Stars. 10-12 reached free agency. I’m telling ya, Coppy deserves a lot of credit.
That’s a cool exercise to do. Every five years or so look at the Braves top 30 prospects and see how they turned out. If those lists exists back to the 90’s teams I’d be interested how good we were at drafting back then.
IIRC, our drafts in the late ’90s got pretty fallow. We partly compensated with a pretty strong international free agent signing pipeline, from the Curacaoans to Julio Teheran, though obviously the Kevin Maitan debacle was part of that too. And then there were independent free agent signings, from Brandon Beachy to Julio Franco. But Leo Mazzone’s miracleworking turned a whole lot of couch pennies into dollars, like Chris Hammond and Darren Holmes.
That was back when we were addicted to soft-tossing college pitchers, ostensibly to recapture the Glavine-Maddux magic. But a lot more guys succeed with velocity than guile.
I used to, and may still, have the Braves page from a Baseball America issue from early in 1989 or 1990 listing the top 10 prospects in each organization. Can’t remember if there was also an honorable mention list. Lots of quality major leaguers in the top 10.
https://links.mlb.mlbemail.com/e/evib?_t=c632e003a756446c956a8e0347d00d08&_m=f11e8442ab9248ffb0b8a7e6b0f1a4cc&_e=3cGRzPe6vE-II46TjOmcBYHXMdQShj5teVGqHxMDc6cAWHjbxhEcqKZNKwyNCAnROxbSzZQfufQAk3Wlv27IDQ%3D%3D
Wait, have I been living under a rock? Bowman is saying Acuna is out 6 months? That’s… almost the entire season. Huh?
Reply to my own comment: I’m sure Bowman means 6 weeks.
May have meant “6 months from now” (July 10). However that would still be a first indication at that level.
I hope that he meant 6 weeks….he should send out a follow up correcting himself.
For what it’s worth, looks like there are some recent Instagram posts of him hitting BP back home in Venezuela: https://www.instagram.com/ronaldacunajr13/tagged/
Yeah, Acuna looks great. I think it has to be 6 weeks to start the season, and not even 6 months from today’s date. 6 weeks to start the season is obviously mid-May, which is around what we were told last year.
I just wrote a long thread inspired by our prospect discussion: