Notes of spring: Exploring Braves’ prospect philosophies
By Sam Dykstra/MiLB.com
The word best used to describe the Braves farm system over the last 12 months is “aggressive.”
Mike Soroka and Kolby Allard spent their entire age-19 seasons at Double-A Mississippi. Ronald Acuna Jr. climbed three levels at the same age. Luiz Gohara began 2017 at Class A Advanced Florida and finished it as a 21-year-old in the Major Leagues. Ozzie Albies, who was the youngest player at pretty much every stop in the Minor Leagues, became the first Major Leaguer born in 1997.
There were plenty of reasons to think the organization had a policy of pushing prospects up the chain as quickly as they could. (Stopping short of giving Acuna his own Major League taste, of course.) Director of player development Dom Chiti pushed against that idea, saying the quick paths have more to do with the players than any club mandate.
“I think the organizational policy is to treat everybody as an individual,” he said. “What’s right for one guy might not be right for the other guy. That doesn’t mean one player is going to be better than the other. They all move at their pace, not at the pace we choose to move them at. All we do is sit back and evaluate.”
Part of the evaluation process to determine when a prospect is ready for a bump is dominance of the previous level, of course, but a good amount has to do with more micro concepts than macro.
“With pitching, there are certain things like locating the fastball, throwing the off-speed when behind in the count, the ability to handle stressful situations in a game and minimize damage, what they do in the four days between their next start. All of that is part of the equation,” Chiti said. “For a position player, how he can move on from day to day, what’s his value of defense so when he doesn’t hit he can still help our club win. Those are parts of the equation there.”
There were two examples, however, of players who got promotions seemingly before they were ready, only to see major improvements at the next level.
Neither Austin Riley nor Touki Toussaint looked like he was tearing up the Florida State League when both were moved from Class A Advanced Florida to Double-A Mississippi last July. Riley was hitting .252/.310/.408 with a 109 wRC+ over 81 games with the Fire Frogs; Toussaint owned a 5.04 ERA in 105 1/3 innings with the club. But both produced much more impressive stat lines with the M-Braves. Riley’s numbers jumped to .315/.389/.511 and 162 in 48 Southern League games, while Toussaint’s ERA fell to 3.18 while he maintained an impressive 26 percent strikeout rate over 39 2/3 innings.
While the easy answer might be that both made major changes with the M-Braves, Chiti contends that the improvements were the result of months-long processes that only bore serious fruit by the time both made it to Double-A.
“Statistically, you may see those jumps, but our staff has done a really good of laying the foundation with players who originally might not really show up statistically,” he said. “But as they go higher, they’re able to put those into play. So you may think he really improved, but the work had been done six or nine months earlier. Even if they’re in the lower Minor Leagues and not performing, they’re still sticking to things we know work in the big leagues. Everyone goes at their own pace. But when it pays off, you don’t see those lulls and dips in Double-A and Triple-A because once they get there, it starts to become about performance. ‘You’re in Double-A, Triple-A, OK now it’s time to perform.’ The lower levels are more about that foundation so they’re ready to take off.”
MORE FROM BRAVES CAMP
— No. 2 prospect and 2017 first-rounder Kyle Wright is likely to begin his first full season with Mississippi after making six starts forFlorida last year. “It’s probably the best place to start him off,” Chiti said. More on the former Vanderbilt right-hander in the Braves Prospect Primer later this month.
— Soroka, Allard and No. 9 prospect Cristian Pache were the headliners of those reassigned to Minor League camp Friday. More on that here.
Allard has seen his stock fall a bit after his velocity dropped as low as the high-80’s at times last season. He’s still ranked as MLB.com’s No. 58 overall prospect because of his special changeup and control of all three pitches, but he’s now considered the fifth-best pitching prospect in the system. Allard’s dip in heat didn’t concern Chiti in 2017, and though the southpaw wasn’t lighting up the gun in two Grapefruit League appearances, the Braves exec remains excited for what’s ahead.
“It dropped a little bit, but he also went from [87 2/3] innings to 150. That’s a big jump,” Chiti said. “He challenged himself to make it through the season healthy, and he did it with flying colors. For us, the dip was in June and July and not so much in August. So that was really good to see. I don’t have any concerns there.”
