I have a theory about the Braves farm system. Across all prospect ranking outlets, the Braves have stayed in the bottom 1/3 for years, yet it seems like every year there’s a rookie that comes up and becomes a star out of nowhere. It’s my opinion that this is by design. Outside of William Contreras (who had already had MLB time with the Braves), what player that the Braves have traded has made a significant impact on their new team? Shea Langeliers comes to mind, but after that, I can’t pinpoint any other traded Brave prospect that has been worthy of an everyday job. Also, I believe both Shea and Contreras were traded because of the Braves desire to keep veteran catchers behind the dish.
Would Michael Harris II have been a top 10 prospect if the Braves media gave him more attention? Spencer Strider? Spencer Schwellenbach? I think so, but the Braves like to keep their stars *hush hush* and trade the players they see as “bust potential”.
Spencer Schwellenbach Player Review
Schwellenbach made his first start on May 29th. And while it wasn’t that bad, at the time, it looked like he’d be another pitcher that would hit the Gwinnett/ATL shuffle. Fortunately for us fans, the Braves believed in his skillset and continued to give him the ball every 5th (or 6th) day for the rest of the season. In his first 6 starts, his ERA was 5.68, but his FIP was 4.02. Over the course of the rest of the season, the bad luck would wear off and Schwellenbach became a real force in the rotation. From July 6th through season’s end (15 starts), Schwelly carried a 2.54 ERA and made his mark to stick in the 2024 rotation and beyond.
If the Braves can get a high 3/Low 4 ERA out of Schwellenbach in 2025, I would be ecstatic. However, I think he’s mature beyond his years and there’s some real upside that could show in 2025 to make him a long term Brave with 2 starter potential.
Ryan: I’m trying to understand the “design” here. Do you think the Braves are purposely avoiding minor league “stars?” Or that this is just some sort of PR downplaying of rising talent other than those the Braves intend to promote to the big club? Or what?
I would note that Acuna was certainly regarded as can’t miss and was indeed the subject of service time manipulation accusations. I agree that Harris sort of came out of nowhere, but I don’t think that was true of Albies or Riley, but maybe I just misremember.
In general, I think the Braves have been pretty good at scouting their own players so as to avoid trading away future stars – Contreras being a hugely notable exception.
Other than him, I’m not sure we’ve traded away any stars since we traded away three future All-Stars in the Teixeira trade; other than those, Brett Butler, Jason Schmidt, and Adam Wainwright pretty much own the two best careers for former Braves farmhands in the last four decades. JonathanF, or Ububba or anybody else, can you think of anyone else I’m missing?
That said, I think we’ve also come by our farm system’s reputation honestly. Being locked out of Latin America for a number of years was a huge blow, and picking at the bottom of the draft every year makes things hard, too. The success of Harris, Strider, and Schwellenbach has been tremendous, but the farm truly does lack depth.
But I don’t think that the team pulled a fast one with Strider and Schwellenbach. They were both guys known to have great stuff but a relatively limited track record of pitching at a high level, because of a combination of the pandemic, Schwell converting to pitcher relatively recently, and Strider’s Tommy John injury and work in the bullpen in college. There just wasn’t a lot for prospect hounds to go on. Harris, on the other hand, was well known among Braves heads and had already begun an impressive climb up the prospect rankings by the time he graduated.
I’ll add Brook Jacoby, who was also part of the Brett Butler deal. He played 11 years and made a couple of All Star teams. He still falls pretty short of the 3 you mention, though
As this trade was also mentioned in the last thread, I bring back this post I wrote while we were killing time during the pandemic.
Jermaine Dye should also go onto the list, too. But that trade was three decades ago, which sort of reinforces the point.
The thing about Contreras is he was already an all star. No projection needed. At least not for his bat.
The thing with the Braves is that because we tend to promote guys as soon as they are ready they don’t get the time in the minors to be labeled as hot prospects. All of Harris, Strider and PDQ started the seasons where they reached the bigs in A ball. Had the org left them at AAA to end those seasons we would have placed much higher in farm system rankings!
That’s a great point, but it does suggest that there’s something wrong with the rankings — too much based on minor league stats and not enough on MLB potential. Those two are bound to be correlated, of course, but where they differ, we’d surely rather have the latter.
Different rankings emphasize those differently. ZiPS tends to go by the numbers – natch – while guys like Jim Callis, Keith Law, and Eric Longenhagen have a more scouting-focused approach, but while Longenhagen can sometimes elevate guys with high ceilings even if they have low floors, Law may try to balance ceiling and floor more. Schwell had 110 total innings in professional baseball and 31 innings pitched in college; there was just not enough data for the prospect watchers to feel comfortable comparing him to other better-known quantities, even as they all liked his stuff. As a recent pitching convert with that few innings under his belt, he was nearly impossible to project.
Strider was in a similar boat – just 63 innings in college, and just 94 in the majors. The pandemic made prospect evaluation much harder, across all of baseball.
But Harris was a top-50 prospect. Every prospect rater liked him. Totally different circumstance!
MH2 was ranked 63rd on MLB’s site, however I feel like MLb has the worst ranking in all of the outlets. Still, he won ROY and any outlet that didn’t have him in the top 20 seriously swung and missed.
Another point is that the Braves minor league development plan does not lend itself to gaudy statistics — as soon as you master one goal you are promoted to work on the next one. Smith Shawver has surface stats that look mediocre or worse — but he made incredible strides last year that have convinced me he now has a floor as a #3 (better tunneling of his pitches and work on his changeup are HUGE).
Nice analysis–this is why we pay you the big bucks. I’m excited to see him in a real game soon.