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The Braves first and second rounds picks debuted in Augusta this weekend My weekend trip to Augusta was planned to be just another chance to watch ball and gather information on players, but I got a bit lucky when it just so happened that my days at SRP Park would align with the professional debuts of Atlanta Braves first round pick Cam Caminiti and 2nd round pick Carter Holton. It was a bit unfortunate that I wasn’t a day earlier when fourth round pick Herick Hernandez put up 3 2⁄3 dominant innings in his professional debut, but in any case I have plenty of good stuff to go on for both Caminiti and Holton from their professional debuts. It’s important to realize that this is simply a collection of observations and first impressions, not any final opinions. We’re working with samples of 41 and 55 pitches respectively so this certainly isn’t representative of either players upcoming career, however it did give me some interesting things to watch in each player’s last start and moving forward into their careers.
Cam Caminiti
Caminiti debuted on Friday, and it was a bit of a delayed start to his career as rain earlier in the day necessitated pushing the start time back a bit to give everyone from the grounds crew to the 3.6 million dollar man himself plenty of time to finish preparations. Caminiti is just three weeks past his 18th birthday, but among the pitchers we saw over the weekend showed the most advanced pitch mix and command of the group. Caminiti came in sitting at 95-96 through the first couple of batters of the game, though by the end of the first inning was already down to 94 and then sat 92-93 for the rest of his outing. Given both the amount of time since he last pitched a competitive game and the fact he is young and not fully stretched out it’s no surprise to see him not holding velocity just yet, but the arm talent is clear. He has a quick, loose arm action and repeats his release point remarkably well especially for his age, and showed some feel to move his fastball to both the glove and arm side edges of the plate. His struggled with command in the first inning, but after settling in was sitting up at the top half of the zone where even at a lower velocity the movement profile of his fastball was missing bats or forcing weak contact.
The one pitch I didn’t see much of for Caminiti was his highly-regarded changeup. He threw a couple that were poorly located in the first inning and then I didn’t register any in my notes after that, so it seemed for whatever reason they weren’t focusing on the pitch this game. It’s possible he just didn’t have the feel for it (another issue that can result from long periods of long periods of rest) and he had success without really utilizing the pitch often. The two he did throw were at 85 and 86 and came in the first inning, so a pretty standard 8-9 mph velocity gap. The one thing that is obvious is why the pitch would work, and it goes back to what I mentioned about his release point. I focused in on that for a handful of batters and it really stood out just how well he matched release points and mechanics across different pitches and all of the innings he threw, and that release certainly will add to the effectiveness of his changeup once we start seeing it in games. That can be one of the hardest things to teach players. and his overall athleticism and ability to repeat his mechanics and release are phenomenal traits.
Caminiti’s breaking balls are going to be a subject of debate for as long as he is in the minor leagues, and it’s fairly likely they won’t stay in their current form throughout his career. The Braves love to tweak and mix in different breaking balls, but currently Caminiti throws both a slider and curveball and both are better than the ones he showed in high school. Baseball America’s pre-draft report had Caminiti’s breaking balls both sitting mid-to-upper 70’s, but on Saturday the slowest he threw one was at 79 mph. Both are distinct pitches though they operate at around the same velocity and the shapes of both have quite a bit of variance. Both struggled the more horizontal shape was introduced to them, as they would tend to just spin and hang up in the zone and on his arm side when he missed getting the proper rotation. When he buried his slider with that more vertical-oriented shape he was able to carve up hitters with it and especially gave left-handed batters fits as they struggled to recognize the pitch out of his hand. He utilized the curveball often against right-handed batters and was able to get swing and miss, though he had a bit more trouble with bouncing that pitch in the dirt. Both could be above-average pitches though again I doubt this is the final form of either pitch.
The consistency of the shapes of both is going to be a point of development for Caminiti that will determine how quickly he moves through the system, and the slider between the two is the one that will need the most refinement. He spins the curveball with more consistency and doesn’t make as many mistakes with it, though it lacks the same level of biting sharpness at the bottom of the zone. I’m pleasantly surprised at the velocity shown on both pitches, as the increase over the Baseball America report is a positive trend especially in regards to that slider. Overall Caminiti was about as expected. There wasn’t that wow-factor yet beyond his fastball, but he’s so young and already shows a feel for locating four pitches and has developed nicely since even the last time he pitched in high school. His athletic traits are through the roof and the ceiling is monstrous, though it’s going to take a lot more views to figure out exactly what the Braves plan for him is in regard to how he shapes and mixes his breaking balls.
Carter Holton
Holton’s debut in Augusta was awful and didn’t really do much for me to ease concerns over his ultimate role, though I’ll go back to the first paragraphs where I said this is a small sample to work with. Holton’s mechanics — specifically his landing — gave him fits throughout his start and though he made minor adjustments that led to him improving in later innings ultimately his command suffered in a way that he wasn’t able to overcome in this outing. The fear for Holton given his size, delivery, and injury history is that he will end up in the bullpen and after one game of watching him I would tend to lean towards that conclusion though it is easily a major-league pitch mix.
Holton has a tendency to jam his lead foot into the ground when he plants, and this violence is where much of his command woes originate. When Holton landed balanced and with a bit more softness he stayed well on line to home plate and would spot his fastball at the top of the zone with relative consistency. His fastball sat 92-94 and with his low release the shape of the pitch allowed him to miss bats in that part of the zone. The problem is that he typically did not land well, and early in the game it was particularly problematic. Holton would land on his heel and spin off of it, and as a result scattered pitches in the first inning and a half of his outing. Later in his outing he did a better job of getting downhill and transferring his weight onto his front foot, though he still would land on the side of his foot and spin off introducing the same sort of command issues he saw early in his outing. The mechanical issues make it hard to judge his outing because they weren’t this prevalent when he was at Vanderbilt, and I’m hoping that it’s not something that will follow him past this outing.
Holton’s slider was responsible for most of his good pitching throughout the game, though it too was impacted by his mechanical problems. When located well it sits at 86-88 and has a sharp two-tilt bite that dove underneath the bats of hitters, but flattens out when his arm slot is off and will hang in the upper half of the zone. He also mixed in a changeup around 86-87, and of the pitches he threw it was the one he seemed to locate most effectively. It had a deep fade away from right handed batters and he never really left one in the middle of the zone, and it tunnels well with his fastball. It’s a solid average changeup and his secondary mix is plenty good enough for him to be a starter, but I have even more concern now if he will command the ball well enough and stay healthy enough to start. Holton supposedly throws a curveball but I did not see one.
Young hitters
With all of the recent promotions this is also the first time I got an in-person look at the new trio of hitters from the FCL, and admittedly none of them had the best weekend. Luis Guanipa played only in the Saturday game as he is just now coming off of the injured list, but I liked one aspect of his game significantly. MiLB tv doesn’t make it easy to judge an outfielder’s defense, and Guanipa making a few baffling defensive mistakes this season left me questioning what exactly I would see of him in center field. I was impressed by his instincts and route-running, as players his age are rarely so good at both taking proper angles and knowing how to position their bodies to make good throws. He did both exceedingly well in the few times I saw him in the outfield, though his arm strength is a weakness out there. Offensively I saw a couple of great swings in his last at bat that he wasn’t able to put in play, correcting some of the issues I had with his mechanics earlier in at bats. Guanipa starts out with a closed stance, and rather than lifting them planting his foot directly square to the plate will sometimes lower his foot then slide it backwards as he goes to swing. This caused a whole host of issues with him not being able to involve his core properly and struggling with his bat path flattening out, but later in the game he had a couple of swings where he planted properly and really showed out. He needs to improve his pitch recognition and approach significantly, though the injuries he’s faced haven’t helped him in his development.
John Gil is a frustrating player right now because his approach is kind of caught in a weird place and his swing isn’t helping him much. The first problem is that Gil’s bat tends to be descending into the zone, and when he makes contact he’s often catching the ball with his bat still on a downward path or in the process of switching directions. This causes him to typically beat the ball directly into the ground, especially on inside pitches. Gil’s short swing path and tendency to open up to chase inside pitches makes it difficult to reach anything away where he has to dive to reach anything on the outer half. Even with this he still struggles on the inner half, where the lower half of the zone he tends to swing down on the ball and roll over it to the left side. The bat speed is there, and when he gets into one he has the strength to hit it hard, but he has quite a lot of learning to do and tweaking of his swing before we’ll see game power. I’m impressed by his athleticism and hands in the field though his arm is fringy for the shortstop position and I could see a second base role being his future.
Junior Garcia takes the best swings and plate appearances of the trio, maybe on the entire team, which is impressive for a player his age. He seemed calm and cool in all of his at bats, and his ability to recognize the zone and not expand in two-strike counts stood out. Garcia’s issue is that he combines a long swing with lackluster bat speed, and even low-90’s velocity consistently beats him. Garcia needs to be quicker to contact or he’s going to stall out pretty quickly as anyone with velocity is able to overwhelm him. When he does catch up or get secondary pitches he has a great feel for line drive contact, and there seems to be a bit more emphasis on him starting early and opening up to try to hit the ball harder on the pull side.
Bullpen standouts
There was one expected and one unexpected pitcher from the crew that I liked this weekend. Let’s start with neither though, and look at Adam Shoemaker. Shoemaker struggles with his arm slot and tends to drop down to a low 3⁄4 slot where both his command and pitch shapes struggle to do anything. However when he maintains a higher arm slot his curveball is devastating, as his height enables him to throw a pitch that explodes down in the zone and hitters have trouble picking up on. His fastball is hard to pick up and gets on hitters quicker than you would expect, but I have trouble seeing him able to succeed sitting in the upper-80’s and it definitely won’t come if he commands the ball like he has.
Owen Hackman was the player I was expected to see on Friday and excited to get an in-person look at, and although he did get bumped from the starting role I got a chance to see him pitch and found a lot to like there. Hackman is a solid athlete on the mound, and his low-90’s fastball has plus carry and is hard to pick up out of his hand due to his delivery, so he misses a lot of bats up in the zone. He struggles with locating a slider though, and it’s partially due to that delivery. He can fall into a tendency to throw cross-body, and his slider will float into the middle of the zone where he doesn’t have the velocity or movement to succeed. When he properly rotates his trunk and buries the pitch on the glove side and/or down I was surprised at how good the pitch looked, and even if the velocity doesn’t improve I see him as a big league quality reliever. He also has a fantastic pickoff move, nabbing two runners in this game.
I didn’t really have Anthony Garcia on my radar coming into this game as his numbers weren’t particularly impressive and his low-90s fastball didn’t stand out. However I am more intrigued now by him than I was a couple of days ago, and if he can add a bit of velocity I can see him in a big league bullpen in a couple of years. Garcia missed all of 2023, and I suspect an injury but haven’t been able to confirm anything on that front. He also started this year on the injured list. Garcia throws a fastball that sits around 90-92 along with a slider and a changeup, and his fastball was commanded fairly well which was not the case for him earlier this season. Garcia has been working on his slider throughout the year, and on Saturday night he showed a pitch that could be average or better and was able to get swing-and-miss from both left and right handed batters. It’s a short slider that sits in the low 80’s and while he lacks command of the pitch it has the movement profile to be an above-average breaking ball. The pitch can tend to flatten out and gets hit hard when does, but he likes to bury it with a sharp downward movement and can get swing and miss when he does. Garcia’s changeup has solid shape and he matches his release well, though he didn’t really land any in good spots. Garcia’s best trait is his extension, as he gets down the mound and as a result his fastball gets on batters more quickly than the velocity would suggest. His throws a sinking fastball with loads of run, and when he can pair it with that slider effectively has two pitches that can tunnel well in the lower half of the zone. Garcia still has some room to add strength and velocity, and given his extension traits and the improvement of his slider I like his potential in a middle relief role.
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Photo by Rob Tringali/MLB Photos via Getty Images
The Braves first and second rounds picks debuted in Augusta this weekend My weekend trip to Augusta was planned to be just another chance to watch ball and gather information on players, but I got a bit lucky when it just so happened that my days at SRP Park would align with the professional debuts of Atlanta Braves first round pick Cam Caminiti and 2nd round pick Carter Holton. It was a bit unfortunate that I wasn’t a day earlier when fourth round pick Herick Hernandez put up 3 2⁄3 dominant innings in his professional debut, but in any case I have plenty of good stuff to go on for both Caminiti and Holton from their professional debuts. It’s important to realize that this is simply a collection of observations and first impressions, not any final opinions. We’re working with samples of 41 and 55 pitches respectively so this certainly isn’t representative of either players upcoming career, however it did give me some interesting things to watch in each player’s last start and moving forward into their careers.
Cam Caminiti
Caminiti debuted on Friday, and it was a bit of a delayed start to his career as rain earlier in the day necessitated pushing the start time back a bit to give everyone from the grounds crew to the 3.6 million dollar man himself plenty of time to finish preparations. Caminiti is just three weeks past his 18th birthday, but among the pitchers we saw over the weekend showed the most advanced pitch mix and command of the group. Caminiti came in sitting at 95-96 through the first couple of batters of the game, though by the end of the first inning was already down to 94 and then sat 92-93 for the rest of his outing. Given both the amount of time since he last pitched a competitive game and the fact he is young and not fully stretched out it’s no surprise to see him not holding velocity just yet, but the arm talent is clear. He has a quick, loose arm action and repeats his release point remarkably well especially for his age, and showed some feel to move his fastball to both the glove and arm side edges of the plate. His struggled with command in the first inning, but after settling in was sitting up at the top half of the zone where even at a lower velocity the movement profile of his fastball was missing bats or forcing weak contact.
The one pitch I didn’t see much of for Caminiti was his highly-regarded changeup. He threw a couple that were poorly located in the first inning and then I didn’t register any in my notes after that, so it seemed for whatever reason they weren’t focusing on the pitch this game. It’s possible he just didn’t have the feel for it (another issue that can result from long periods of long periods of rest) and he had success without really utilizing the pitch often. The two he did throw were at 85 and 86 and came in the first inning, so a pretty standard 8-9 mph velocity gap. The one thing that is obvious is why the pitch would work, and it goes back to what I mentioned about his release point. I focused in on that for a handful of batters and it really stood out just how well he matched release points and mechanics across different pitches and all of the innings he threw, and that release certainly will add to the effectiveness of his changeup once we start seeing it in games. That can be one of the hardest things to teach players. and his overall athleticism and ability to repeat his mechanics and release are phenomenal traits.
Caminiti’s breaking balls are going to be a subject of debate for as long as he is in the minor leagues, and it’s fairly likely they won’t stay in their current form throughout his career. The Braves love to tweak and mix in different breaking balls, but currently Caminiti throws both a slider and curveball and both are better than the ones he showed in high school. Baseball America’s pre-draft report had Caminiti’s breaking balls both sitting mid-to-upper 70’s, but on Saturday the slowest he threw one was at 79 mph. Both are distinct pitches though they operate at around the same velocity and the shapes of both have quite a bit of variance. Both struggled the more horizontal shape was introduced to them, as they would tend to just spin and hang up in the zone and on his arm side when he missed getting the proper rotation. When he buried his slider with that more vertical-oriented shape he was able to carve up hitters with it and especially gave left-handed batters fits as they struggled to recognize the pitch out of his hand. He utilized the curveball often against right-handed batters and was able to get swing and miss, though he had a bit more trouble with bouncing that pitch in the dirt. Both could be above-average pitches though again I doubt this is the final form of either pitch.
The consistency of the shapes of both is going to be a point of development for Caminiti that will determine how quickly he moves through the system, and the slider between the two is the one that will need the most refinement. He spins the curveball with more consistency and doesn’t make as many mistakes with it, though it lacks the same level of biting sharpness at the bottom of the zone. I’m pleasantly surprised at the velocity shown on both pitches, as the increase over the Baseball America report is a positive trend especially in regards to that slider. Overall Caminiti was about as expected. There wasn’t that wow-factor yet beyond his fastball, but he’s so young and already shows a feel for locating four pitches and has developed nicely since even the last time he pitched in high school. His athletic traits are through the roof and the ceiling is monstrous, though it’s going to take a lot more views to figure out exactly what the Braves plan for him is in regard to how he shapes and mixes his breaking balls.
Carter Holton
Holton’s debut in Augusta was awful and didn’t really do much for me to ease concerns over his ultimate role, though I’ll go back to the first paragraphs where I said this is a small sample to work with. Holton’s mechanics — specifically his landing — gave him fits throughout his start and though he made minor adjustments that led to him improving in later innings ultimately his command suffered in a way that he wasn’t able to overcome in this outing. The fear for Holton given his size, delivery, and injury history is that he will end up in the bullpen and after one game of watching him I would tend to lean towards that conclusion though it is easily a major-league pitch mix.
Holton has a tendency to jam his lead foot into the ground when he plants, and this violence is where much of his command woes originate. When Holton landed balanced and with a bit more softness he stayed well on line to home plate and would spot his fastball at the top of the zone with relative consistency. His fastball sat 92-94 and with his low release the shape of the pitch allowed him to miss bats in that part of the zone. The problem is that he typically did not land well, and early in the game it was particularly problematic. Holton would land on his heel and spin off of it, and as a result scattered pitches in the first inning and a half of his outing. Later in his outing he did a better job of getting downhill and transferring his weight onto his front foot, though he still would land on the side of his foot and spin off introducing the same sort of command issues he saw early in his outing. The mechanical issues make it hard to judge his outing because they weren’t this prevalent when he was at Vanderbilt, and I’m hoping that it’s not something that will follow him past this outing.
Holton’s slider was responsible for most of his good pitching throughout the game, though it too was impacted by his mechanical problems. When located well it sits at 86-88 and has a sharp two-tilt bite that dove underneath the bats of hitters, but flattens out when his arm slot is off and will hang in the upper half of the zone. He also mixed in a changeup around 86-87, and of the pitches he threw it was the one he seemed to locate most effectively. It had a deep fade away from right handed batters and he never really left one in the middle of the zone, and it tunnels well with his fastball. It’s a solid average changeup and his secondary mix is plenty good enough for him to be a starter, but I have even more concern now if he will command the ball well enough and stay healthy enough to start. Holton supposedly throws a curveball but I did not see one.
Young hitters
With all of the recent promotions this is also the first time I got an in-person look at the new trio of hitters from the FCL, and admittedly none of them had the best weekend. Luis Guanipa played only in the Saturday game as he is just now coming off of the injured list, but I liked one aspect of his game significantly. MiLB tv doesn’t make it easy to judge an outfielder’s defense, and Guanipa making a few baffling defensive mistakes this season left me questioning what exactly I would see of him in center field. I was impressed by his instincts and route-running, as players his age are rarely so good at both taking proper angles and knowing how to position their bodies to make good throws. He did both exceedingly well in the few times I saw him in the outfield, though his arm strength is a weakness out there. Offensively I saw a couple of great swings in his last at bat that he wasn’t able to put in play, correcting some of the issues I had with his mechanics earlier in at bats. Guanipa starts out with a closed stance, and rather than lifting them planting his foot directly square to the plate will sometimes lower his foot then slide it backwards as he goes to swing. This caused a whole host of issues with him not being able to involve his core properly and struggling with his bat path flattening out, but later in the game he had a couple of swings where he planted properly and really showed out. He needs to improve his pitch recognition and approach significantly, though the injuries he’s faced haven’t helped him in his development.
John Gil is a frustrating player right now because his approach is kind of caught in a weird place and his swing isn’t helping him much. The first problem is that Gil’s bat tends to be descending into the zone, and when he makes contact he’s often catching the ball with his bat still on a downward path or in the process of switching directions. This causes him to typically beat the ball directly into the ground, especially on inside pitches. Gil’s short swing path and tendency to open up to chase inside pitches makes it difficult to reach anything away where he has to dive to reach anything on the outer half. Even with this he still struggles on the inner half, where the lower half of the zone he tends to swing down on the ball and roll over it to the left side. The bat speed is there, and when he gets into one he has the strength to hit it hard, but he has quite a lot of learning to do and tweaking of his swing before we’ll see game power. I’m impressed by his athleticism and hands in the field though his arm is fringy for the shortstop position and I could see a second base role being his future.
Junior Garcia takes the best swings and plate appearances of the trio, maybe on the entire team, which is impressive for a player his age. He seemed calm and cool in all of his at bats, and his ability to recognize the zone and not expand in two-strike counts stood out. Garcia’s issue is that he combines a long swing with lackluster bat speed, and even low-90’s velocity consistently beats him. Garcia needs to be quicker to contact or he’s going to stall out pretty quickly as anyone with velocity is able to overwhelm him. When he does catch up or get secondary pitches he has a great feel for line drive contact, and there seems to be a bit more emphasis on him starting early and opening up to try to hit the ball harder on the pull side.
Bullpen standouts
There was one expected and one unexpected pitcher from the crew that I liked this weekend. Let’s start with neither though, and look at Adam Shoemaker. Shoemaker struggles with his arm slot and tends to drop down to a low 3⁄4 slot where both his command and pitch shapes struggle to do anything. However when he maintains a higher arm slot his curveball is devastating, as his height enables him to throw a pitch that explodes down in the zone and hitters have trouble picking up on. His fastball is hard to pick up and gets on hitters quicker than you would expect, but I have trouble seeing him able to succeed sitting in the upper-80’s and it definitely won’t come if he commands the ball like he has.
Owen Hackman was the player I was expected to see on Friday and excited to get an in-person look at, and although he did get bumped from the starting role I got a chance to see him pitch and found a lot to like there. Hackman is a solid athlete on the mound, and his low-90’s fastball has plus carry and is hard to pick up out of his hand due to his delivery, so he misses a lot of bats up in the zone. He struggles with locating a slider though, and it’s partially due to that delivery. He can fall into a tendency to throw cross-body, and his slider will float into the middle of the zone where he doesn’t have the velocity or movement to succeed. When he properly rotates his trunk and buries the pitch on the glove side and/or down I was surprised at how good the pitch looked, and even if the velocity doesn’t improve I see him as a big league quality reliever. He also has a fantastic pickoff move, nabbing two runners in this game.
I didn’t really have Anthony Garcia on my radar coming into this game as his numbers weren’t particularly impressive and his low-90s fastball didn’t stand out. However I am more intrigued now by him than I was a couple of days ago, and if he can add a bit of velocity I can see him in a big league bullpen in a couple of years. Garcia missed all of 2023, and I suspect an injury but haven’t been able to confirm anything on that front. He also started this year on the injured list. Garcia throws a fastball that sits around 90-92 along with a slider and a changeup, and his fastball was commanded fairly well which was not the case for him earlier this season. Garcia has been working on his slider throughout the year, and on Saturday night he showed a pitch that could be average or better and was able to get swing-and-miss from both left and right handed batters. It’s a short slider that sits in the low 80’s and while he lacks command of the pitch it has the movement profile to be an above-average breaking ball. The pitch can tend to flatten out and gets hit hard when does, but he likes to bury it with a sharp downward movement and can get swing and miss when he does. Garcia’s changeup has solid shape and he matches his release well, though he didn’t really land any in good spots. Garcia’s best trait is his extension, as he gets down the mound and as a result his fastball gets on batters more quickly than the velocity would suggest. His throws a sinking fastball with loads of run, and when he can pair it with that slider effectively has two pitches that can tunnel well in the lower half of the zone. Garcia still has some room to add strength and velocity, and given his extension traits and the improvement of his slider I like his potential in a middle relief role.
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