Originally Posted by
50PoundHead
The decision not to field a Dominican Summer League team in 2021 never made a ton of sense to me. The Coppolella sanctions are the hatrack on which a myriad of excuses are hung and when you add the COVID lay-off year into the mix, I guess a case can be made to not have a team that year although it didn't deter any other major league franchise from putting teams in that league. That threw Tavarez into the FCL for his first taste of professional experience, which turned out to be a steep climb for someone who had basically taken a year off from competition.
I've griped about it before, but a lot of the Braves' minor league hitting prospects seem to have horrendous K-rates. I get that they have a "swing hard" approach to hitting, but if that's not combined with pitch recognition and some measure of contact, AA is often the ceiling for a ton of those guys. Notable exceptions appear to be Baldwin and Alvarez, so it's not universal. I've always thought the contact-recognition-power progression is the optimal approach. Things might be changing a bit in terms of instruction because the K-rates for the DSL players was considerably lower this year than it has been in the past.