<img alt="MLB: Game One-Cincinnati Reds at Atlanta Braves" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/8xxWvsPL7N8c8B4bggFCHGr2eR4=/0x0:4518x3012/1310x873/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/73546622/usa_today_23814131.0.jpg">
Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports
Gwinnett swept their series last week behind the bats of Alvarez and Drake Baldwin The minor league season is quickly coming to a close, as the two lowest level Atlanta Braves affiliates will be playing their final regular season home series of the season this week. At the upper levels the near-MLB players are starting to find their stride, as Nacho Alvarez and Drake Baldwin in particular had fantastic weeks at the plate. On the mound Lucas Braun put up two double-digit strikeout games in one week, while rotation-mate Drue Hackenberg threw five scoreless innings.
Gwinnett Stripers
Record: 64-62, 29-22 2nd half, 2nd in IL West (4.5 GB)
The Gwinnett Stripers are scorching hot, sweeping their series in Louisville to draw a bit closer to first place heading into a huge series next week. Two players represent that hot streak better than anyone, with both Drake Baldwin and Nacho Alvarez having huge weeks at the plate. Baldwin has done more than anyone in the system to create buzz over the last few months, and he is currently hitting better than ever and showing off some key adjustments. This past week he continued his impressive contact streak by only having three whiffs (6.5%) while still hitting the ball hard with an average exit velocity of 96.8 mph. A few weeks ago he started to cut into his already great whiff numbers significantly, but it came with a reduction in his hard hit rates and exit velocity. All of these things could just be noisy samples, but much of his issues stemmed from him not hitting fastballs particularly well as he was in the process of adjusting to pull inside fastballs more frequently and he has started to do that with much more success in the past couple of weeks. Baldwin’s biggest profile hiccup is that he doesn’t lift pitches, especially fastballs, and that’s remaining an ongoing struggle. With his contact, discipline, and batted ball profiles he still projects to a starter-quality offensive catcher at the next level even if that doesn’t come for him, but if he can hit more fly balls like he did at the lower levels of the minor leagues it could unlock a star-level ceiling for a guy with his ability to make hard contact in the zone.
Coming into this series Nacho Alvarez had been in a major slump following his demotion from Atlanta, posting a .570 OPS in ten games despite drawing ten walks and only having seven strikeouts. Coming off of dealing with pneumonia I had my expectations tempered really for the rest of the season, but he quickly proved he was fine by hitting home runs in back-to-back games this week. The bad news is that those results didn’t come against fastballs — he averaged an 82.9 exit velocity on four seam fastballs and sinkers last week — though making such a major adjustment in his profile is going to take time so I wouldn’t expect immediate results there. Alvarez continues to display terrific plate discipline and zone recognition, and combines that with the ability to make contact in any part of the zone while crushing mistake breaking balls. Few 21 year-olds have those traits in the combination Alvarez has them, so despite how much he struggled in his debut it’s important to keep a bit of patience here and wait to see if Atlanta can find an answer to his struggles against velocity.
Friday nights are for Stripers highlights. pic.twitter.com/DGn3X8Tc2i— Gwinnett Stripers (@GoStripers) August 24, 2024
Gwinnett’s pitching staff also lived up to its potential last week, especially in two promising starts from Ian Anderson and AJ Smith-Shawver. The velocity isn’t all the way back for Ian Anderson just yet, but he’s working at a bit higher velocity in the early frames and adjusting well to the Braves focus on adding his slider. All of his pitches are adding a bit more movement as the weeks pass by, and his command is already better than it was when he struggled throughout 2022. Anderson looks to be on track to getting back to the form he showed before all of the injuries stunted his career, and if his slider can continue to get swing-and-miss at a high rate it could add some more depth to an arsenal that is still significantly fastball-changeup focused.
Smith-Shawver’s changeup has been a force in Triple-A and he continues to have success with it pretty much every week, and last week he showed a slider shape that was consistent with his prior week and may be what Atlanta has settled on for him. The Braves have done a lot of tinkering with that pitch and it’s been a significant source of struggle for Smith-Shawver at Triple-A, but over the past couple of weeks he’s shown a short, hard slider with a similar vertical movement profile to his changeup at a similar velocity. His curveball took a back seat last week as the Braves seem to be focusing on shifting Smith-Shawver back to four-seam, changeup, slider as the primary trio of offerings, and given Smith-Shawver’s issues with command this season that may be wise as it’s been in the zone and hittable too often. Smith-Shawver is still leaving pitches in the middle of the plate too often as the adjustments to his new delivery, working at a higher velocity, and working on all of his pitch shapes have caused growing pains, but like Alvarez it’s important to remember that issues like this are expected of 21 year olds in Triple-A.
Hurston Waldrep made another start where he just couldn’t command the ball at all, and while command has never been his strength it’s regressed particularly since coming back from his elbow injury. That could be and probably is a factor in his struggles, but as long as he is scattering all three of his pitches, whereas he previously commanded his splitter at least decently, he is not really going to be a major league option. The positive for Waldrep is that even poorly-located hitters aren’t able to hit his splitter, and over his past four starts his velocity is trending steadily upwards. Hopefully his command can follow soon, because he needs it to have success with his fastball. Hitters have done far too much damage against the pitch, and since coming back from the injured list Waldrep has only forced a 5,1% whiff rate on his fastball. For reference, the lowest number in major league baseball this season minimum 100 four seam fastballs thrown is a 5.6% whiff rate.
Series Preview
Gwinnett welcomes the first place Columbus Clippers to town this week in what will be a pivotal series for the International League’s second half title. Gwinnett has been hot, but still comes in 4.5 games behind Columbus as the team with the best shot to take down the Clippers. Columbus has a star-studded lineup with two top 100 prospects in it, Chase DeLauter and Kyle Manzardo. The Clippers lineup leads the International League with a team OPS of .805, though Gwinnett comes into this series with the second-lowest ERA in the International League. Beyond that duo the Clippers have two other top 30 prospects who have been having great seasons. Juan Brito, Cleveland’s #7 prospect, have 17 home runs and a .798 OPS this season while #15 prospect George Valera has 16 home runs and an .801 OPS.
Mississippi Braves
Record: 57-62, 26-25 2nd half, 3rd in SL South (3 GB)
Mississippi is hanging on in the Southern League race thanks to the strength of their pitching staff, which turned in a handful of great games this past week. They were led by Lucas Braun, who struck out ten batters in both of his starts last week including on Sunday when he went seven no-hit innings. Braun is battling teammate Drue Hackenberg for the system strikeout leader, but with his 20 last week made a huge leap to sit at 137 on the season. That 137 is tied for tenth in all of minor league baseball, and since the middle of May he had put up consistently elite stat lines in all categories. He has a 2.77 FIP in his ten starts with Mississippi, and the real question for him is how he’s going to look once he gets out of Trustmark Park and the Southern League. I think Braun is a back-end starter that will get time in Atlanta next year, but it’s worth noting that he does run a high fly ball rate and has been helped by Trustmark Park’s tendency to hold them in the park. Braun tends to feed his fastball into the zone and with it sitting low-90’s with mediocre movement he can get hit hard, though lately with the way he’s been commanding that and his slider he has been able to avoid the hard contact he often struggled with early in the year.
Talking about Hackenberg now, I had a lot of concern about Hackenberg’s command regression for most of the season but it’s hard to even compare the Hackenberg from April to the one we’re seeing now. Hackenberg is working nearly exclusively off of a four-seam fastball now, and while his command is still inconsistent he’s been able to flash game where the command is good enough to see him eventually getting to average command. Last week wasn’t his best command game and he tends to miss more with his slider than his fastball and sinker, but when he is locating the slider he can rack up strikeouts in a hurry. Hackenberg now has a 2.04 FIP in Double-A, and works with as many as five pitches: Four seam fastball, sinker, cutter, slider, and changeup. Ultimately the changeup is the biggest concern right now as he hasn’t shown one that can consistently get out left handed batters yet and without anything else that is effective against lefties he may be limited by that pitch.
Lucas Braun is untouchable The @Braves' No. 21 prospect makes his second straight 10-punchout outing, going seven hitless innings for the Double-A @mbraves. pic.twitter.com/qSUcYnxW4b— MLB Pipeline (@MLBPipeline) August 25, 2024
We saw a much better version of Jhancarlos Lara on Wednesday as he shook off an awful Double-A debut. Lara was still working primarily with his slider and cutter rather than working off of his four seam fastball, but he was doing a great job of spotting his slider down in the zone and notched 16 swing-and-miss and seven strikeouts across four innings of work. It will be interesting to watch how the Braves develop Lara moving forward as I’ve never seen them have a guy throw this many sliders before. Ian Mejia had a solid start before getting in trouble in the third and leaving three runners on that all scored off of reliever Jorge Juan. Mejia has been focusing on developing his changeup over the past couple of months and while the numbers haven’t reflected improvement the pitch has shown more consistent shape and placement on the arm side and down. He’s using the pitch against both left and right handed batters, and it gives him a much better chance to stick as a starter. Offensively this team is unfortunately barren, as if they had a solid offense they would probably easily run through the Southern League. David McCabe has been putting up better plate appearances recently and had more walks than strikeouts last week, though he isn’t barreling balls up frequently just yet. McCabe has honestly done better than I thought he would coming off of the injured list this late in the year, and it’s given me a lot of confidence in him heading into next year.
Series Preview
Miami may have restocked their farm system at the deadline but not many of those guys headed to Double-A, as this Pensacola roster doesn’t feature any of the Marlins top eight prospects. The best prospect on the team is #9 Robby Snelling, who since coming over from the Padres has been dominant. Snelling has struck out 24 batters in 19 1⁄3 innings with Pensacola, though he is coming off of his worst start with the team where he struck out only one batter and allowed four runs over five innings. The offense is led by Marlins #9 prospect Joe Mack, who is second in the Southern league with 21 home runs this season. Mack obliterated Mississippi pitching in a series in early June when he hit four home runs and went 10-22 in that series, but in the other three matchups this season Mississippi has held Mack to a .268 on base percentage and three doubles in 15 games. Jacob Miller has been great in Pensacola’s rotation recently as well, with a 2.84 ERA in his first four Double-A starts.
Rome Emperors
Record: 57-59, 21-31 2nd half, 5th in SAL South (12.5 GB)
Rome seemed like they were getting hot, then they went up to Greenville and got smoked, losing five of the six games there. The offense was abysmal as they struck out 71 times in six games and had just a .470 team OPS. The one exception to this was EJ Exposito, who finally broke out of a 52 game homerless streak that dated back to the middle of June. Exposito started off the scoring in Sunday’s game with a towering, no-doubt home run to left field, then later hit his second of the game going the opposite way this time. Rome lost 3-2.
While the hitting was mostly to blame the pitching staff didn’t have the greatest week last week, with the exception of the one game they did win when the Emperors threw a combined no-hitter started by Mitch Farris. Farris’s command wasn’t the best as he walked five batters and allowed a run to score on a sacrifice fly in the first inning, but Farris has been dominant throughout August. Even with this start mixed in he has 23 strikeouts to seven walks in 15 innings with only one run allowed over the entire month so far. Farris has a solid mix of secondaries and commands all of his pitches well, and the Braves are making efforts to adjust his mechanics and unlock more velocity. If he can get to even a bit below-average velocity with his secondaries he can fit as a major league starter, and so far this year he fits in third in the system in strikeouts with fewer innings and batters faced than Braun or Hackenberg. After Farris the Emperors got five innings of no-hit ball from the bullpen, with Shay Schanaman and Samuel Strickland each covering two perfect innings with two strikeouts. Ryan Bourassa closed the ninth inning out with a scoreless inning to close out the no-hitter and his sixth save of the year.
It’s a two-homer game for EJ Exposito!#RuleTheLand pic.twitter.com/0wCSJt9D3F— Rome Emperors (@GoEmperors) August 25, 2024
Beyond Farris and Exposito most of the team struggled, with the other prospect starters not posting particularly impressive outings. After Blake Burkhalter had his best professional start last week it helped raise the bar a bit for him going into this week, but his command wasn’t at the same level as last week and he was back to mostly relying on fastball and cutter to have success. He isn’t able to miss bats consistently without his slider factoring in to the equation, not to mention his velocity still being down a bit as he’s coming back from Tommy John surgery, and he’s been alternating between good and bad days for the past month. Adam Maier has pretty much been all struggle as his command has regressed after coming off of the injured list and he hasn’t missed bats without being able to locate his pitches. I’m not out on Maier in any way yet, as coming off of such a long layoff due to his brace procedure and then another injury in the middle of it lowered the expectations for what he would do this season. I was impressed to see him recovering his velocity prior to hitting the injured list and I’m hopefully that he can clean things back up again and be as effective as he was to close his time in Augusta. It’s not uncommon for pitchers to have setbacks while trying to build up stamina and velocity following Tommy John surgery. Spencer Schwellenbach similarly missed time in the middle of last season when his shoulder flared up. In his eight starts prior to getting hurt he had a 22.9% K-BB% and a 2.62 FIP in Augusta. I’m interested to see how he looks next year, though it is concerning that basically the last three seasons of his development have been write-offs or close to it.
Series Preview
Rome welcomes Termarr Johnson and the Greensboro Grasshoppers to town this week. The Pittsburgh Pirates affiliate is on a four game winning streak and has the second-best run differential in the South Atlantic League during the second half, though they have been without their best hitter — Pirates #8 prospect Jack Brannigan — throughout August. In the meantime Termarr Johnson has struggled with a .601 OPS this month. The hottest performer on the team is pitcher Carlson Reed, who since being promoted to Greensboro has been dominant. The 2023 fourth round pick is Pittsburgh’s 24th-best prospect, and in four outings has allowed only one run while striking out 23 batters in 18 2⁄3 innings.
Augusta GreenJackets
Record: 42-74, 15-36 2nd Half, 6th in CAR South (15.5 GB)’
It was an unfortunate week for the GreenJackets, who lost Luis Guanipa to injury after a couple of plate appearances in Wednesday’s game. Guanipa has struggled since being promoted to Augusta, but much of his season has been marked by injury and given that we’re only two weeks from the end of the year this likely will end his season as well. The other two recent promotions from last year’s international class had better weeks this season, especially John Gil. Gil drew six walks, three in Friday’s game, and seems to be toning down the chase issues he had on breaking balls. He hasn’t been hitting the ball very hard still, rolling over pitches too often, but if the approach improves and he becomes more selective on the pitches he can drive he could quickly unlock his natural tools and be one of the best prospects in the system. Junior Garcia is still striking out a ton, but finally had some hits fall with five hits over his final four games.
The best position players on the team so far have been the new draftees, especially Colby Jones and Patrick Clohisy. Clohisy got off to a bit of a slow start and has struck out more than you like to see from college players at this level, but he had a great week last week racking up five doubles in six games. Colby Jones is the only player on the current roster with an OPS over .700, with the other two to do it for Augusta this season both already being promoted. Like Gil, Jones can get too aggressive in the zone and tends to get on top of balls too often, but he’s made a ton of contact despite his aggression and tendency to swing hard. Jones is looking to attack fastballs and yank them to the pull side, and while he does roll over sinkers and offspeed pitches he also hits a lot of hard line drives to the pull side. With some refinement to his approach I think he will fit into that category of utility infielders the Braves haven’t really had a ton of success developing over the past few years, though I think his physical skillset is a bit better than guys like Cal Conley and Luke Waddell and he should have more of a ceiling on both sides of the ball.
Jackets back in front!!Colby Jones a huge two-run double for a 4-3 lead! pic.twitter.com/XUkxXkAdAh— Augusta GreenJackets (@GreenJackets) August 24, 2024
It’s the first time in awhile it felt like none of Augusta’s pitchers really had a standout performance to talk about. Four pitchers had five strikeout outings — the highest total for any player last week — and the best of these belongs to Owen Hackman who covered five scoreless innings in his start on Friday. Hackman hasn’t done a great job of holding his velocity deep into games, but the shape of his fastball helps it play up and he does a great job spotting it at the top of the zone to get swing and miss. His slider and changeup are both fringy, but if either take a step forward and he can get more consistency with his velocity he could fit as a back end or spot starter.
Garrett Baumann also had five strikeouts in this game, and his development this season has been impressive. His velocity has ticked up a bit and he is working the top of the zone with his fastball more often, and similar to Ian Anderson it’s been the ability to change levels and work a solid changeup off of his fastball that has allowed him to succeed. He always seems to command those two pitches well and has found a way to succeed and increase his swing-and-miss without really improving his slider yet. He needs a better breaking ball, but his development as a starter has been impressive to me, as he has taken to instruction well and commands the ball well.
JR Ritchie had his first poor start in awhile, though he didn’t really get hit hard and all three runs he allowed were unearned. Ritchie’s final line wasn’t bad and his stuff was still overwhelming to this level of hitter, but his command wasn’t particularly good as he was pulling all of his pitches glove side throughout the start. He didn’t miss as many bats as he has in the past, but still worked the top of the zone with his fastball and his pitches showed solid shape. Ritchie’s velocity isn’t quite there yet and probably won’t be this season, but he has found success based on command and the quality of his secondaries. Assuming he adds his velocity back he could very well be the system’s top pitching prospect by this time next season.
Series Preview
It’s the final home series of the season for Augusta, and they will welcome the Columbia Fireflies to town. The Fireflies are led by 2023 first round pick Blake Mitchell, who has had a fantastic season for Columbia with 18 home runs and an .845 OPS. Mitchell has been on fire with six home runs so far in August, and in his last series against the GreenJackets hit .409/.435/.682. Hiro Wyatt has been a successful addition to the Fireflies pitching staff, as he has pitched in four games to the tune of a 2.12 ERA and 23 strikeouts to four walks in 17 innings. Wyatt is Kansas City’s #19 prospect.
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Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports
Gwinnett swept their series last week behind the bats of Alvarez and Drake Baldwin The minor league season is quickly coming to a close, as the two lowest level Atlanta Braves affiliates will be playing their final regular season home series of the season this week. At the upper levels the near-MLB players are starting to find their stride, as Nacho Alvarez and Drake Baldwin in particular had fantastic weeks at the plate. On the mound Lucas Braun put up two double-digit strikeout games in one week, while rotation-mate Drue Hackenberg threw five scoreless innings.
Gwinnett Stripers
Record: 64-62, 29-22 2nd half, 2nd in IL West (4.5 GB)
The Gwinnett Stripers are scorching hot, sweeping their series in Louisville to draw a bit closer to first place heading into a huge series next week. Two players represent that hot streak better than anyone, with both Drake Baldwin and Nacho Alvarez having huge weeks at the plate. Baldwin has done more than anyone in the system to create buzz over the last few months, and he is currently hitting better than ever and showing off some key adjustments. This past week he continued his impressive contact streak by only having three whiffs (6.5%) while still hitting the ball hard with an average exit velocity of 96.8 mph. A few weeks ago he started to cut into his already great whiff numbers significantly, but it came with a reduction in his hard hit rates and exit velocity. All of these things could just be noisy samples, but much of his issues stemmed from him not hitting fastballs particularly well as he was in the process of adjusting to pull inside fastballs more frequently and he has started to do that with much more success in the past couple of weeks. Baldwin’s biggest profile hiccup is that he doesn’t lift pitches, especially fastballs, and that’s remaining an ongoing struggle. With his contact, discipline, and batted ball profiles he still projects to a starter-quality offensive catcher at the next level even if that doesn’t come for him, but if he can hit more fly balls like he did at the lower levels of the minor leagues it could unlock a star-level ceiling for a guy with his ability to make hard contact in the zone.
Coming into this series Nacho Alvarez had been in a major slump following his demotion from Atlanta, posting a .570 OPS in ten games despite drawing ten walks and only having seven strikeouts. Coming off of dealing with pneumonia I had my expectations tempered really for the rest of the season, but he quickly proved he was fine by hitting home runs in back-to-back games this week. The bad news is that those results didn’t come against fastballs — he averaged an 82.9 exit velocity on four seam fastballs and sinkers last week — though making such a major adjustment in his profile is going to take time so I wouldn’t expect immediate results there. Alvarez continues to display terrific plate discipline and zone recognition, and combines that with the ability to make contact in any part of the zone while crushing mistake breaking balls. Few 21 year-olds have those traits in the combination Alvarez has them, so despite how much he struggled in his debut it’s important to keep a bit of patience here and wait to see if Atlanta can find an answer to his struggles against velocity.
Friday nights are for Stripers highlights. pic.twitter.com/DGn3X8Tc2i— Gwinnett Stripers (@GoStripers) August 24, 2024
Gwinnett’s pitching staff also lived up to its potential last week, especially in two promising starts from Ian Anderson and AJ Smith-Shawver. The velocity isn’t all the way back for Ian Anderson just yet, but he’s working at a bit higher velocity in the early frames and adjusting well to the Braves focus on adding his slider. All of his pitches are adding a bit more movement as the weeks pass by, and his command is already better than it was when he struggled throughout 2022. Anderson looks to be on track to getting back to the form he showed before all of the injuries stunted his career, and if his slider can continue to get swing-and-miss at a high rate it could add some more depth to an arsenal that is still significantly fastball-changeup focused.
Smith-Shawver’s changeup has been a force in Triple-A and he continues to have success with it pretty much every week, and last week he showed a slider shape that was consistent with his prior week and may be what Atlanta has settled on for him. The Braves have done a lot of tinkering with that pitch and it’s been a significant source of struggle for Smith-Shawver at Triple-A, but over the past couple of weeks he’s shown a short, hard slider with a similar vertical movement profile to his changeup at a similar velocity. His curveball took a back seat last week as the Braves seem to be focusing on shifting Smith-Shawver back to four-seam, changeup, slider as the primary trio of offerings, and given Smith-Shawver’s issues with command this season that may be wise as it’s been in the zone and hittable too often. Smith-Shawver is still leaving pitches in the middle of the plate too often as the adjustments to his new delivery, working at a higher velocity, and working on all of his pitch shapes have caused growing pains, but like Alvarez it’s important to remember that issues like this are expected of 21 year olds in Triple-A.
Hurston Waldrep made another start where he just couldn’t command the ball at all, and while command has never been his strength it’s regressed particularly since coming back from his elbow injury. That could be and probably is a factor in his struggles, but as long as he is scattering all three of his pitches, whereas he previously commanded his splitter at least decently, he is not really going to be a major league option. The positive for Waldrep is that even poorly-located hitters aren’t able to hit his splitter, and over his past four starts his velocity is trending steadily upwards. Hopefully his command can follow soon, because he needs it to have success with his fastball. Hitters have done far too much damage against the pitch, and since coming back from the injured list Waldrep has only forced a 5,1% whiff rate on his fastball. For reference, the lowest number in major league baseball this season minimum 100 four seam fastballs thrown is a 5.6% whiff rate.
Series Preview
Gwinnett welcomes the first place Columbus Clippers to town this week in what will be a pivotal series for the International League’s second half title. Gwinnett has been hot, but still comes in 4.5 games behind Columbus as the team with the best shot to take down the Clippers. Columbus has a star-studded lineup with two top 100 prospects in it, Chase DeLauter and Kyle Manzardo. The Clippers lineup leads the International League with a team OPS of .805, though Gwinnett comes into this series with the second-lowest ERA in the International League. Beyond that duo the Clippers have two other top 30 prospects who have been having great seasons. Juan Brito, Cleveland’s #7 prospect, have 17 home runs and a .798 OPS this season while #15 prospect George Valera has 16 home runs and an .801 OPS.
Mississippi Braves
Record: 57-62, 26-25 2nd half, 3rd in SL South (3 GB)
Mississippi is hanging on in the Southern League race thanks to the strength of their pitching staff, which turned in a handful of great games this past week. They were led by Lucas Braun, who struck out ten batters in both of his starts last week including on Sunday when he went seven no-hit innings. Braun is battling teammate Drue Hackenberg for the system strikeout leader, but with his 20 last week made a huge leap to sit at 137 on the season. That 137 is tied for tenth in all of minor league baseball, and since the middle of May he had put up consistently elite stat lines in all categories. He has a 2.77 FIP in his ten starts with Mississippi, and the real question for him is how he’s going to look once he gets out of Trustmark Park and the Southern League. I think Braun is a back-end starter that will get time in Atlanta next year, but it’s worth noting that he does run a high fly ball rate and has been helped by Trustmark Park’s tendency to hold them in the park. Braun tends to feed his fastball into the zone and with it sitting low-90’s with mediocre movement he can get hit hard, though lately with the way he’s been commanding that and his slider he has been able to avoid the hard contact he often struggled with early in the year.
Talking about Hackenberg now, I had a lot of concern about Hackenberg’s command regression for most of the season but it’s hard to even compare the Hackenberg from April to the one we’re seeing now. Hackenberg is working nearly exclusively off of a four-seam fastball now, and while his command is still inconsistent he’s been able to flash game where the command is good enough to see him eventually getting to average command. Last week wasn’t his best command game and he tends to miss more with his slider than his fastball and sinker, but when he is locating the slider he can rack up strikeouts in a hurry. Hackenberg now has a 2.04 FIP in Double-A, and works with as many as five pitches: Four seam fastball, sinker, cutter, slider, and changeup. Ultimately the changeup is the biggest concern right now as he hasn’t shown one that can consistently get out left handed batters yet and without anything else that is effective against lefties he may be limited by that pitch.
Lucas Braun is untouchable The @Braves' No. 21 prospect makes his second straight 10-punchout outing, going seven hitless innings for the Double-A @mbraves. pic.twitter.com/qSUcYnxW4b— MLB Pipeline (@MLBPipeline) August 25, 2024
We saw a much better version of Jhancarlos Lara on Wednesday as he shook off an awful Double-A debut. Lara was still working primarily with his slider and cutter rather than working off of his four seam fastball, but he was doing a great job of spotting his slider down in the zone and notched 16 swing-and-miss and seven strikeouts across four innings of work. It will be interesting to watch how the Braves develop Lara moving forward as I’ve never seen them have a guy throw this many sliders before. Ian Mejia had a solid start before getting in trouble in the third and leaving three runners on that all scored off of reliever Jorge Juan. Mejia has been focusing on developing his changeup over the past couple of months and while the numbers haven’t reflected improvement the pitch has shown more consistent shape and placement on the arm side and down. He’s using the pitch against both left and right handed batters, and it gives him a much better chance to stick as a starter. Offensively this team is unfortunately barren, as if they had a solid offense they would probably easily run through the Southern League. David McCabe has been putting up better plate appearances recently and had more walks than strikeouts last week, though he isn’t barreling balls up frequently just yet. McCabe has honestly done better than I thought he would coming off of the injured list this late in the year, and it’s given me a lot of confidence in him heading into next year.
Series Preview
Miami may have restocked their farm system at the deadline but not many of those guys headed to Double-A, as this Pensacola roster doesn’t feature any of the Marlins top eight prospects. The best prospect on the team is #9 Robby Snelling, who since coming over from the Padres has been dominant. Snelling has struck out 24 batters in 19 1⁄3 innings with Pensacola, though he is coming off of his worst start with the team where he struck out only one batter and allowed four runs over five innings. The offense is led by Marlins #9 prospect Joe Mack, who is second in the Southern league with 21 home runs this season. Mack obliterated Mississippi pitching in a series in early June when he hit four home runs and went 10-22 in that series, but in the other three matchups this season Mississippi has held Mack to a .268 on base percentage and three doubles in 15 games. Jacob Miller has been great in Pensacola’s rotation recently as well, with a 2.84 ERA in his first four Double-A starts.
Rome Emperors
Record: 57-59, 21-31 2nd half, 5th in SAL South (12.5 GB)
Rome seemed like they were getting hot, then they went up to Greenville and got smoked, losing five of the six games there. The offense was abysmal as they struck out 71 times in six games and had just a .470 team OPS. The one exception to this was EJ Exposito, who finally broke out of a 52 game homerless streak that dated back to the middle of June. Exposito started off the scoring in Sunday’s game with a towering, no-doubt home run to left field, then later hit his second of the game going the opposite way this time. Rome lost 3-2.
While the hitting was mostly to blame the pitching staff didn’t have the greatest week last week, with the exception of the one game they did win when the Emperors threw a combined no-hitter started by Mitch Farris. Farris’s command wasn’t the best as he walked five batters and allowed a run to score on a sacrifice fly in the first inning, but Farris has been dominant throughout August. Even with this start mixed in he has 23 strikeouts to seven walks in 15 innings with only one run allowed over the entire month so far. Farris has a solid mix of secondaries and commands all of his pitches well, and the Braves are making efforts to adjust his mechanics and unlock more velocity. If he can get to even a bit below-average velocity with his secondaries he can fit as a major league starter, and so far this year he fits in third in the system in strikeouts with fewer innings and batters faced than Braun or Hackenberg. After Farris the Emperors got five innings of no-hit ball from the bullpen, with Shay Schanaman and Samuel Strickland each covering two perfect innings with two strikeouts. Ryan Bourassa closed the ninth inning out with a scoreless inning to close out the no-hitter and his sixth save of the year.
It’s a two-homer game for EJ Exposito!#RuleTheLand pic.twitter.com/0wCSJt9D3F— Rome Emperors (@GoEmperors) August 25, 2024
Beyond Farris and Exposito most of the team struggled, with the other prospect starters not posting particularly impressive outings. After Blake Burkhalter had his best professional start last week it helped raise the bar a bit for him going into this week, but his command wasn’t at the same level as last week and he was back to mostly relying on fastball and cutter to have success. He isn’t able to miss bats consistently without his slider factoring in to the equation, not to mention his velocity still being down a bit as he’s coming back from Tommy John surgery, and he’s been alternating between good and bad days for the past month. Adam Maier has pretty much been all struggle as his command has regressed after coming off of the injured list and he hasn’t missed bats without being able to locate his pitches. I’m not out on Maier in any way yet, as coming off of such a long layoff due to his brace procedure and then another injury in the middle of it lowered the expectations for what he would do this season. I was impressed to see him recovering his velocity prior to hitting the injured list and I’m hopefully that he can clean things back up again and be as effective as he was to close his time in Augusta. It’s not uncommon for pitchers to have setbacks while trying to build up stamina and velocity following Tommy John surgery. Spencer Schwellenbach similarly missed time in the middle of last season when his shoulder flared up. In his eight starts prior to getting hurt he had a 22.9% K-BB% and a 2.62 FIP in Augusta. I’m interested to see how he looks next year, though it is concerning that basically the last three seasons of his development have been write-offs or close to it.
Series Preview
Rome welcomes Termarr Johnson and the Greensboro Grasshoppers to town this week. The Pittsburgh Pirates affiliate is on a four game winning streak and has the second-best run differential in the South Atlantic League during the second half, though they have been without their best hitter — Pirates #8 prospect Jack Brannigan — throughout August. In the meantime Termarr Johnson has struggled with a .601 OPS this month. The hottest performer on the team is pitcher Carlson Reed, who since being promoted to Greensboro has been dominant. The 2023 fourth round pick is Pittsburgh’s 24th-best prospect, and in four outings has allowed only one run while striking out 23 batters in 18 2⁄3 innings.
Augusta GreenJackets
Record: 42-74, 15-36 2nd Half, 6th in CAR South (15.5 GB)’
It was an unfortunate week for the GreenJackets, who lost Luis Guanipa to injury after a couple of plate appearances in Wednesday’s game. Guanipa has struggled since being promoted to Augusta, but much of his season has been marked by injury and given that we’re only two weeks from the end of the year this likely will end his season as well. The other two recent promotions from last year’s international class had better weeks this season, especially John Gil. Gil drew six walks, three in Friday’s game, and seems to be toning down the chase issues he had on breaking balls. He hasn’t been hitting the ball very hard still, rolling over pitches too often, but if the approach improves and he becomes more selective on the pitches he can drive he could quickly unlock his natural tools and be one of the best prospects in the system. Junior Garcia is still striking out a ton, but finally had some hits fall with five hits over his final four games.
The best position players on the team so far have been the new draftees, especially Colby Jones and Patrick Clohisy. Clohisy got off to a bit of a slow start and has struck out more than you like to see from college players at this level, but he had a great week last week racking up five doubles in six games. Colby Jones is the only player on the current roster with an OPS over .700, with the other two to do it for Augusta this season both already being promoted. Like Gil, Jones can get too aggressive in the zone and tends to get on top of balls too often, but he’s made a ton of contact despite his aggression and tendency to swing hard. Jones is looking to attack fastballs and yank them to the pull side, and while he does roll over sinkers and offspeed pitches he also hits a lot of hard line drives to the pull side. With some refinement to his approach I think he will fit into that category of utility infielders the Braves haven’t really had a ton of success developing over the past few years, though I think his physical skillset is a bit better than guys like Cal Conley and Luke Waddell and he should have more of a ceiling on both sides of the ball.
Jackets back in front!!Colby Jones a huge two-run double for a 4-3 lead! pic.twitter.com/XUkxXkAdAh— Augusta GreenJackets (@GreenJackets) August 24, 2024
It’s the first time in awhile it felt like none of Augusta’s pitchers really had a standout performance to talk about. Four pitchers had five strikeout outings — the highest total for any player last week — and the best of these belongs to Owen Hackman who covered five scoreless innings in his start on Friday. Hackman hasn’t done a great job of holding his velocity deep into games, but the shape of his fastball helps it play up and he does a great job spotting it at the top of the zone to get swing and miss. His slider and changeup are both fringy, but if either take a step forward and he can get more consistency with his velocity he could fit as a back end or spot starter.
Garrett Baumann also had five strikeouts in this game, and his development this season has been impressive. His velocity has ticked up a bit and he is working the top of the zone with his fastball more often, and similar to Ian Anderson it’s been the ability to change levels and work a solid changeup off of his fastball that has allowed him to succeed. He always seems to command those two pitches well and has found a way to succeed and increase his swing-and-miss without really improving his slider yet. He needs a better breaking ball, but his development as a starter has been impressive to me, as he has taken to instruction well and commands the ball well.
JR Ritchie had his first poor start in awhile, though he didn’t really get hit hard and all three runs he allowed were unearned. Ritchie’s final line wasn’t bad and his stuff was still overwhelming to this level of hitter, but his command wasn’t particularly good as he was pulling all of his pitches glove side throughout the start. He didn’t miss as many bats as he has in the past, but still worked the top of the zone with his fastball and his pitches showed solid shape. Ritchie’s velocity isn’t quite there yet and probably won’t be this season, but he has found success based on command and the quality of his secondaries. Assuming he adds his velocity back he could very well be the system’s top pitching prospect by this time next season.
Series Preview
It’s the final home series of the season for Augusta, and they will welcome the Columbia Fireflies to town. The Fireflies are led by 2023 first round pick Blake Mitchell, who has had a fantastic season for Columbia with 18 home runs and an .845 OPS. Mitchell has been on fire with six home runs so far in August, and in his last series against the GreenJackets hit .409/.435/.682. Hiro Wyatt has been a successful addition to the Fireflies pitching staff, as he has pitched in four games to the tune of a 2.12 ERA and 23 strikeouts to four walks in 17 innings. Wyatt is Kansas City’s #19 prospect.
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