Braves rated the best farm system of the decade by MLB

[CyYoung31]

https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-top-farm-systems-of-decade

1. Braves
At the beginning of the decade, Atlanta spawned Freddie Freeman, Andrelton Simmons, Jason Heyward and Craig Kimbrel. At the end, the Braves unveiled Acuña, Ozzie Albies and Mike Soroka, who appear destined to star throughout the 2020s. They also developed several longtime starting pitchers in Julio Teheran, Mike Minor and Alex Wood and more intriguing youngsters such as Dansby Swanson and Max Fried.

[BeanieAntics]

I'm surprised the Dodgers are that far down on the list. They seemed to have a top 10 farm for the entire decade and churned out a ton of quality players and stars.

[thewupk]

And where did that get us?

[nsacpi]

Golden Wren Era

[Metaphysicist]

Golden Wren Era

It's funny, I was just thinking about how they bracketed out the Wren era so politely.

At the beginning of the decade, Atlanta spawned Freddie Freeman, Andrelton Simmons, Jason Heyward and Craig Kimbrel. At the end, the Braves unveiled Acuña, Ozzie Albies and Mike Soroka, who appear destined to star throughout the 2020s.

The 3 guys on that list who entered our system during the Clark-interregnum are the two Curaçao guys and Acuña. Wren seems to have been poor on the domestic front*, but we may have underestimated his international genius.

*Simmons was drafted of course, but all players from Curaçao are destined to be Braves. Wren must have sensed this, which was why his first trade was for Jair Jurrjens.

[nsacpi]

Simmons and Wood were the most productive Wren draftees. We didnt have many high picks in those years.

[Super]

We didnt have many high picks in those years.

come ahhhn. can't believe this is still used as an excuse lol

[nsacpi]

come ahhhn. can't believe this is still used as an excuse lol

the 10th pick of the draft on average is worth more than twice as much as the 30th

the 5th pick is worth more than three times the 30th

the 3rd pick is worth about four times as much as the 30th

so having early picks and having multiple early picks is a pretty big deal

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/an-updat...e-draft-picks/

[CyYoung31]

Golden Wren Era

Gold-standard organization.

[thewupk]

Imagine Wren with this payroll.

[Heyward]

Imagine Wren with this payroll.

Wren couldnt draft and thats why he got fired, he had so many misses, you need more than 2 hands to count them. Him getting fired was the best thing for this organization.

[nsacpi]

Him getting fired was the best thing for this organization.

Hartcoppy say hello.

[Enscheff]

For a pitching factory, the Braves sure did churn out a lot of star position player talent.

[Hudson2]

For a pitching factory, the Braves sure did churn out a lot of star position player talent.

We were all worried about the amount of pitching they were drafting too. They hit on the bats about as well as you could dream of.

[Enscheff]

We were all worried about the amount of pitching they were drafting too. They hit on the bats about as well as you could dream of.

It’s almost like the correct move would have been to stockpile bats with higher success rates, and then trade them for pitchers that were finished products. Let other teams deal with pitcher attrition.

Almost like value charts have shown us for many years that position prospects are much more valuable assets than pitching prospects.

Weird. Who could have possibly foreseen that being the case and stated as much over and over years ago when the Braves were grabbing up all those arms? Braves way!!

[Carp]

Imagine Wren with this payroll.

Donaldson and MadBum would be Braves by now. We would have traded half the farm system for Realmuto last year and the remaining pieces would have been traded for Lindor this year. Snitker would get a 5 year extension.

[Enscheff]

These lists of names contain a lot of failed pitching prospects. Almost like they are a poor use of draft resources.

[nsacpi]

These lists of names contain a lot of failed pitching prospects. Almost like they are a poor use of draft resources.

You have to draft some pitchers. But yeah the Braves took too many during the rebuild and I would argue also they took too many HS pitchers in parts of the draft where the relative yield for that demographic is especially poor. And they did this during a time period when the rest of the baseball industry was wising up to the fact that HS pitchers carried a lot of risk and adjusted their draft boards accordingly.

[Southcack77]

Imagine Wren with this payroll.

Padres fans would appreciate Preller not making the worst moves anymore.

[Carp]

The Golden Wrens did great on the international front. HartCoppy was a disaster there. I was going to say that HartCoppy did well in the draft, but, they didn't really.

If you take a critical look at the positions where they drafted and the number of picks taken, I would have to say that HartCoppy really was a disaster all the way around, except for the one outlier trade with Arizona.

Hart/Coppy actually "hit" very well on their draft classes, though certainly the focus on pitching was overkill. There hasn't been much graduation from his classes yet, but from a prospect stsndpoint those classes produced a bunch of a potential.


2015 class was very strong. It produced Allard, Soroka, Riley, and Minty as guys who have already made an impact at the ML level and seem like MLB mainstays. Weigel, Phillips (with Baltimore), Graham, and Withrow all have varying degrees of potential and seem like impactful BP arms.

2016 was the most debated draft class of them all and it also has turned out very strong at least among prospect ratings. Anderson is our top pitching prospect currently and Wilson is probably our 2nd or 3rd best pitching prospect. Muller has been shooting up prospect lists and Wentz is a solid, though unspectacular pitching prospect in Detroit now. Cumberland is still a solid prospect in the Orioles system. Davidson is doing well. Burrows, Walker, and Clouse are potential impact BP arms too.

2017 was his weakest class, though he still had some hits. Wright and Waters are top prospects. Tarnok is a very solid pitching prospect. Zimmerman (in Baltimore) has some helium,

The over emphasis on pitching notwithstanding, he did very well with his draft classes.