Braves Prospects weekly report: Hurston Waldrep shines after Triple-A promotion (2024)

It has been a relatively tame year for the Atlanta Braves system, with the bats starting out slow at every level and major promotions fairly limited. Then they hit us with a flurry, promoting Spencer Schwellenbach for his major league debut and then promoting Hurston Waldrep to Triple-A. There could be more coming soon as well, as a handful of guys are getting close to earning promotion throughout the system.

Gwinnett Stripers

Record: 27-30, 7th in IL West (13 GB)

The Stripers had a solid week up in Virginia, taking four of six from the Tides, but more to that point gained a huge boost in interest with the addition of Atlanta’s 2023 first round pick Hurston Waldrep. Waldrep had been dominant throughout May with Mississippi, and continued the same work with 11 strikeouts in his Gwinnett debut. While his final line was a bit disappointing - three earned runs and a loss across six innings - most of that was due to a first inning home run that wasn’t even particularly well hit. Waldrep settled in down the stretch and will take the mantle as by far the most impressive prospect on the Stripers roster. One other interesting note from that game was the fate of Dylan Dodd, who slid into the bullpen behind Waldrep and pitched two innings. Dodd’s velocity saw a significant bump in that shorter role, averaging 95.3 mph and maxing out at 96.6. That certainly adds a bit of intrigue to his profile if this is a long term move for Dodd.

The Braves added Ramon Laureano on a minor league contract and sent him to Gwinnett over the past week, adding a bit of emergency depth to the outfield. Laureano has been a terrible player since his PED suspension, so despite the somewhat intriguing name he likely wouldn’t be the first player they would pull up from the Stripers roster. In my opinion that should be reserved for Eli White, who has been fantastic for Gwinnett of late and could provide some platoon at bats for Atlanta down the stretch. White has had an OPS over 1.000 against left handed batters each of the past two seasons with Gwinnett, and has looked good in his comeback from last year’s season-ending shoulder injury. White’s mobility and ability to play all three outfield spots may come in play for a team looking to move forward now without Acuna Jr.

Series Preview

The Stripers now head to Durham for a series against the Rays-affiliated Bulls, and unfortunately for fans of fun baseball (but not fans of Stripers pitchers) the Rays top prospect Junior Caminero is currently sidelined with a quad injury. This leaves the Bulls top prospect as Shane Baz, who while certainly a talented young starter has struggled immensely while returning from Tommy John surgery. Baz has more walks than strikeouts in six outings this season, but is coming off of his best outing of the season where he went 4 scoreless innings on Sunday with four strikeouts.

Offensively the Bulls have been led recently by Austin Shenton (BA #17), who has raked since being optioned down from the Rays major league roster. Shenton has an .872 OPS and three home runs in 18 games with Durham, though strikeouts remain a problem and when looking specifically at matchups he may fare poorly as a lefty against Waldrep’s splitter. Kameron Misner (BA #23) has had a solid year at the plate with a .783 OPS, though he too struggles with swing and miss.

Mississippi Braves

Record: 23-28, 3rd in SL South (7 GB)

Mississippi faced off against the Biscuits last week with a chance to make major waves in the first half division race, and they fell flat on their faced pulling out only one win on the week. This pushed them effectively out of the picture for the standings, and now the team has lost significant steam with the loss of two of their top three starters. Spencer Schwellenbach was promoted to Atlanta this past week and as mentioned Waldrep was pushed to Gwinnett, leaving Ian Mejia as the lone member of the three-headed monster that spent just a brief few weeks dominating the Southern League. Mejia headed back down to Mississippi after a rough start in Gwinnett the week prior, and he got right back down to business by throwing seven shutout innings in a double header. This is the third time in May that he threw seven scoreless innings and he didn’t allow a run in the entire month. Now the intrigue of the pitching staff can swing over to David Fletcher, the infielder-turned-knuckleballer who the Braves are going to give an actual chance to develop as a pitcher in Double-A. This is a weird one guys, but I guess if they have to pay the guy anyways and he wants to do it we might as well have some fun with it.

Even with the loss of two great starters the problem for the team isn’t and hasn’t really been pitching. Mississippi just isn’t scoring runs, and last week averaged just over two runs per game. Even more concerning to this is the absence of Nacho Alvarez from the lineup, as he missed the entire weekend and there hasn’t been an announcement of his status as of the time of writing. As a whole this team has slowed to a crawl even compared to a poor start to the season, and last week that was very notable in Drake Baldwin. Baldwin had shown some signs of resurgence, but a 3-19 performance with no extra base hits doesn’t help his case much. Tyler Tolve has been one of the few bats in the lineup capable of providing thump, but his hit tool has regressed tremendously. Tolve has been slightly better since the start of May with a 30% strikeout rate in that time, but overall his numbers are horrendous with 61 strikeouts to four walks — the fifth-worst ratio in all of minor league baseball.

Series Preview

Despite Mississippi’s offensive struggles they no longer sit at the bottom of the Southern League, and in fact that honor goes to their upcoming opponent. The Pensacola Blue Wahoos barely edge out the M-Braves for the worst team OPS in the league at .609, and they had a brutal May with a .592 OPS. Despite this they managed a 14-13 record, with a team ERA of 2.95 in May. This isn’t the weakest team a Braves affiliate is going to face this week but it’s close, as all four of Pensacola’s top prospects are hitters and only one of those is doing particularly well. Jakob Marsee (BA #7) has been quite impressive, putting up a 140 wRC+ this year despite only having a .250 BABIP. Marsee has as many walks as strikeouts, though his line drive rate has been a paltry 9.5%.

The thing that makes Pensacola good is their experience, as the pitching staff is the oldest in the league and has been primarily led by pitchers age 25 or older. None have been better than Jonathan Bermudez, the now-28 year old lefty who the Marlins picked up in free agency and stashed in Double-A last year. Bermudez has a 2.14 ERA in eight starts this season, and is in line to pitch Saturday’s game which is this week’s lone TBD for Mississippi. The Pensacola pitching staff overall has the lowest strikeout rate in the Southern League, though it’s not a huge problem when facing a team that doesn’t do much of anything when they do make contact.

Rome Emperors

Record: 28-21, 1st in SAL South (+2 G)

The Rome Emperors are on an absolute tear, though their success has come with the worst news in the system. Starting with last week Rome was well on their way to a sweep, winning the first five games of the week and taking a 6-1 lead into the ninth inning on Sunday. They then made a bevy of errors both pitching and defensive, letting up six runs to get walked off in the final game of the week. Nonetheless they sit two games up in the division, and there is plenty of reason to believe they can hold fast to this lead and lock up a playoff spot.

Unfortunately the news that was feared ended up being true, as it was reported that Rome’s top pitching prospect Owen Murphy underwent Tommy John surgery last week. This is a huge blow for Murphy and the Rome roster, as Murphy had started out the year with a 1.54 ERA and 60 strikeouts in 41 innings. Rome still has a strong rotation to work with, with Lucas Braun currently doing his best to step up and lead the rotation. Mitch Farris has come up from Augusta and done quite well for Rome, striking out 15 batters and walking just four in 14 ²⁄₃ innings across three starts. I’m somewhat skeptical of Farris long term, I think his velocity and fastball shape fall into the unfortunate category of just not being good enough for a major league arm, but his command and secondary offerings are no doubt nasty and his changeup is especially a weapon. Drue Hackenberg had his worst start of the season by runs allowed last week, and while I’m not hugely worried with his results especially after a much-stronger May, it feels like he hasn’t really lived up to his draft status. His curveball and slider are both devastating pitches however, and I can see both being major league above average to plus pitches, but he struggles to land them consistently and his crossfire delivery is constantly dueling with his natural athleticism and causing him issues repeating delivery and location on all pitches.

Offensively Rome has seen so many players step up this season, and lately the biggest surprise of them all has been Ambioris Tavarez who has a 121 wRC+ over his last 14 games. Tavarez had home runs in back-to-back games last week, then disappeared from action where it turns out he had a minor fracture in his hand that will knock him out of the lineup for an extended period of time. It really felt like things were clicking for Tavarez. The power was starting to show and he was making contact and significantly better swing decisions, along with improvements in his defensive consistency to go along with his immense talent on that end of things. This was the most locked-in we’ve seen him as a professional by a wide margin, and to have this injury happen now is frustrating. Still, I’ve liked the development from Tavarez and I’m hopeful he can return strong later this season.

Rome still has a deep lineup of mostly older fringe prospects who have done quite well for themselves, including Kevin Kilpatrick who had an outstanding week for himself with nine hits in six games. Sabin Ceballos kept his on base streak alive as well, narrowly extending it with a ninth inning single in Sunday’s loss. Ceballos had a bit of a blip with strikeouts last week, but finally hit his first High-A home run when he went deep to dead center field to show off easy power. Ceballos is one of those guys that has frustratingly lacked power production, but it’s moments like that which remind you that he has the raw strength to turn into that kind of bat if he can find the barrel more often with his contact.

Series Preview

Rome currently has the third-best scoring offense in the league, and they have a huge chance to improve that standing this week as they welcome the Winston-Salem Dash to AdventHealth Stadium. The Dash, affiliated with the White Sox, are the worst pitching staff in the South Atlantic League by ERA. Their main weakness is issuing walks, though they also lead the South Atlantic League in strikeouts. The pitching staff is headlined by Peyton Pallette (BA #13), who has not being able to find control this season and has a 5.52 ERA. They also feature Riley Gowens, one of the players the Braves traded to Chicago to land Aaron Bummer this winter.

The top prospect for the Dash is 19 year old outfielder Samuel Zavala, who has struggled to the tune of an 80 wRC+ this season. Still Zavala’s underlying numbers are better than that as he draws a lot of walks and doesn’t strike out a ton, and he’s really being held back by a .212 BABIP. Zavala’s power is currently a bit inconsistent, but he has shown some solid signs of life this season despite overall poor numbers. The overall best producer for the team has been Shawn Goosenberg, who is now in his third season with the Dash. Goosenberg has a 123 wRC+ this year with seven home runs, though he has never really figured out how to make contact at a high rate.

Augusta GreenJackets

Record: 20-30, 6th in CAR South (11 GB)

The terrible Augusta GreenJackets played a perhaps equally terrible Fayetteville Woodpeckers team, and what transpired was a mix of ugly baseball on all sides of the ball. Still it was an interesting series, flipped by Augusta getting shut out twice in 1-0 losses. Cade Kuehler took the most brutal of those losses, allowing only a single unearned run in Sunday’s game yet getting stuck with the loss. Kuehler has been an interesting guy for me this season, as I think he’s seen a ton of progression with his ability to locate pitches. Unfortunately that also has come with them being less lively, and he has overall struggles to miss bats this season.

That has overall been true for most of the pitching staff, as the handful of players who have struck out guys at a high rate have been swiftly promoted to High-A. That should come soon for Adam Maier as well, although this past week was not his best start. Still he has seen a recent uptick in his whiff rates and overall his secondaries have improved in quality, with the only time he gets hurt being the poor GreenJackets defense struggling with all of the ground balls from his sinker. This past week he issued the only two walks from his entire May, where he struck out 25 batters in 22 innings. Didier Fuentes may have an argument as the second-best pitching prospect on the team behind Maier, as his fastball has reached another level now that he has some consistency in locating it and he was a force in May. Fuentes struck out 11 batters and only walked four across 18 innings.

The pitching staff really isn’t the concern for this team, the problem is they just can’t hit and it starts at the top of the lineup. Isaiah Drake has continued to be a disappointment this season, and last week was somehow his worst as he went 1-23 with 15 strikeouts. I really don’t see what the benefit is to him even being in full season ball given that he isn’t ready and there are older players kicking around in the complex right now. Jace Grady has been the team’s steadiest bat, as ever since a cool start to April he has been a consistent on base threat and last week had a home run and reached base nine times in five games. Grady being an older player should be expected to be doing this well, and his hit tool is going to be a concern as he climbs the levels, but he has flashed some raw power and has the plate discipline to be a major leaguer if he keeps hitting.

Series Preview

From one ugly matchup to another, Augusta will be welcoming the Myrtle Beach Pelicans of the Cubs organization to town this week. This Myrtle Beach team is bereft of prospect intrigue, with their top gun being Baseball America’s #21 Cristian Hernandez. Hernandez has been solid for the team, posting an .805 OPS this season and leading what is a decent lineup. The Pelicans lead the Carolina League in home runs, and in that they are led by Andy Garriola and his 8 home runs, but they also lead the league in strikeouts. Then as a ptiching staff they are a mess, ranking worst in the league by both ERA and walk rate. Their only other top 30 pitching prospect is BA #27 Nazier Mule (moo-lay), a guy with a ton of arm talent but that is coming off of Tommy John surgery and struggles in his one appearance this season. Their best pitcher has been 20 year old Juan Bello, who has pitched to the tun of a 3.12 ERA and 43 strikeouts in 34 ²⁄₃ innings this season, though he has also struggled with walks

FCL Braves

Record: 5-17, 6th in FCL South (10 GB)

There was some interesting intrigue in the complex league, most notably with the return of Blake Burkhalter for a couple of rehab appearances. Those have been met with mixed results, but this is a guy who has largely not even been considered when talking about some of the Braves more major league ready arms. While the injury makes a major league spot this year unlikely, if the Braves do decide to move him as a reliever (or start him just to give him extra innings before he moves to the bullpen) a 2025 debut is if not likely, very possible.

The FCL Braves are really only intriguing when Jeremy Reyes and Luis Arestigueta are pitching, as at other times they struggle to even stay in games. The lineup is solid, John Estevez has been putting up good contact and John Gil has shown some power, but they’re extremely young and haven’t been producing consistently. Then outside of those two pitchers it is basically non-existent on the talent projections and the FCL Braves allow the most runs in the league overall.

Other News and Notes:

ESPN mock draft from last week

Keith Law put Hurston Waldrep in his updated top 50

My most recent stock watch

Baseball America updated mock draft

MLB Pipeline mock draft