Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Atlanta Braves. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the fourth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.
A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.
All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here.
Other Prospects of Note
Grouped by type and listed in order of preference within each category.
Pitchability Depth
Parker Dunshee, RHP
Darius Vines, RHP
Ian Mejia, RHP
Drew Parrish, LHP
Luis De Avila, LHP
Dunshee has been floating around the bottom of prospect lists for a little over a half decade now. The 29-year-old is dominating Triple-A this year by mixing in several different breaking balls with his low-90s fastball. Vines is a Day Two draft success story who has made some big league spot starts. He sits about 89 mph and has a four-pitch mix headlined by his changeup. Mejia was a 2022 11th rounder out of New Mexico State. The 6-foot-3 righty has been dominating Double-A thanks to his plus slider; the rest of his repertoire is below average. Parrish and De Avila are soft-tossing lefties with good secondary stuff. Parrish has a plus changeup, while De Avila has a more balanced slider/changeup duo.
Toolsy Youngsters
Luis Parababire, C
Ethan Workinger, OF
John Estevez, LF
John Gil, SS
Isaiah Drake, OF
Parababire is a physically mature 18-year-old catcher with above-average bat speed. Workinger was an undrafted JUCO outfielder from San Diego back in 2020. He’s risen to High-A as an explosive rotator with impressive power but an ineffectual bat path. Estevez, 18, is a projectable 6-foot-3 corner outfield prospect in Florida rookie ball. His swing is compact almost to the point of lacking the oomph necessary for an outfield corner. Gil and Drake (whose brother Kenyan is a journeyman NFL running back) are speed-only players who I’m skeptical will hit.
One Monster Pitch
Brooks Wilson, RHP
Hayden Harris, LHP
Wilson, 28, is an athletic little righty reliever who was hurt for most of 2022 and 2023. He’s back and has been walk-prone at Gwinnett, sitting in the low-90s with upshot angle and a devastating splitter. Harris, 25, is an undrafted free agent from 2022 whose extreme drop-and-drive delivery creates significant uphill angle on his fastball, which he throws more than 80% of the time. He’s paving over Double-A sitting 91-92.
Young Cannons
Seth Keller, RHP
Edward Cedano, RHP
Luis Arestigueta, RHP
Keller is another of the many athletic former two-way players who the Braves draft and try to develop as pitchers. He is listed as active on his MiLB player page but hasn’t pitched in a while, and despite making an effort to figure out why, I have been unsuccessful so far. He was a fair developmental prospect with low-90s heat and a good breaking ball when he was drafted. Cedano, an undersized 18-year-old righty, walked a batter per inning in last year’s DSL and is back there again in 2024. Yesterday, he sat 94-97 in his first start of the year. Arestigueta is an 18-year-old Venezuelan righty on the complex in Florida. He has a prototypical 6-foot-3 frame and might throw much harder than his current 90-93 down the road, but his arm action is currently super long and inconsistent.
Famous Fallen
Jesse Franklin V, LF
Ambioris Tavarez, SS
Diego Benitez, 3B
Douglas Glod, CF
Geraldo Quintero, LF
Franklin has at times looked like he’d get to enough of his power to be a part-time corner outfielder, but he hasn’t been able to stay healthy long enough to put himself on the big league radar. He hit 15 homers at Double-A last year but K’d nearly 30% of the time and is now dealing with shoulder tendinitis. Tavarez, 20, signed for $1.5 million in 2021, but he’s had three years in a row of red flag strikeout rates. He sits near the top of this group because of his defensive ability at shortstop. Benitez signed for $2.5 million in 2022 and had two years of nearly average offensive performance before he started struggling so mightily at Augusta this year that he was demoted back to the complex. He didn’t look very good on either side of the ball when I saw him in Florida a couple weeks ago. Glod signed for $1.3 million in 2022 and has filled out beyond the point of his build being maxed. He has a late-career Kirby Puckett look to him on the complex. Little 5-foot-5 Geraldo Quintero is now mostly playing left field, whereas he once looked like a switch-hitting middle infield utilityman.
System Overview
This is system has an average top end but below-average depth, especially on the position player side of the ledger. Let’s not confuse a mediocre farm system with a mediocre scouting department or player development, however. The Braves are good at this and have a stable contender’s big league roster that is simply hurt and somewhat underperforming to this point in the 2024 season. So many of the big league team’s position player spots are going to be manned by heir current occupants for the foreseeable future that, aside from trade considerations, it’s fine that the Braves are really only set up to churn out good pitchers in the near future. The attributes they look for in the draft (athletic two-way players or underdeveloped small-school guys) require a cohesive relationship between the teams’ scouting and player development departments to facilitate the improvement we often see in the Braves’ pitching prospects.
A common theme among the arms in this system is that they have hard fastballs that play down, and Atlanta’s pitchers often pitch backward off their secondary stuff, even in the lower minors. There is less consistency across the org in terms of release height and fastball shape than what other analytically inclined teams tend to show. This is more evidence that the Braves tend to scout the athlete rather than fixate solely on data, at least as far as the amateur draft is concerned.
Internationally, things have fallen off here. Atlanta’s big money signees haven’t taken early-career leaps of late, and some of them have quickly gone belly up. The decision to push Jose Perdomo to the domestic complex right away is very strange (I can’t think of anyone who wasn’t an older signee who skipped the DSL entirely) and exciting, though I was bummed he was active by the time I swung through the Gulf Coast of Florida to see him and his peers. It’d be pretty shrewd of Atlanta to keep him out until after the trade deadline. They arguably have some needs at the big league level as a result of their injuries. Taking Perdomo off the table because clubs won’t have been able to actually lay eyes on him, especially if you think he’s who teams would covet most, would be a masterclass in scouting gamesmanship. There’s plenty of post-deadline time, especially if the Braves do instructs this year, for him to get meaningful playing time even if his rehab is handled very conservatively.
